Industry breakout
AI visibility for tradies in 2026: the least visible industry we scanned.
We scanned 50 Australian trade businesses across five capital cities as part of our 300-business national study. Tradies average 29.8 out of 100 for AI visibility against a national mean of 38.3, and 76% of the 21 with complete records from both engines were never named once by ChatGPT or Gemini.
Key numbers
Tradies, by the numbers
Fifty trade businesses, ten each in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, scanned 30 July 2026. "Never named" means zero mentions from both engines across every question asked, counted over the 21 tradies with complete records from both engines, because blank Gemini rows cannot be counted either way. The site checks are counted over all 50.
The mean AI visibility score for tradies, the lowest of the six industries in the study. The median is 29.
The national mean across all 300 businesses in the study. Tradies sit well under it.
16 of the 21 tradies with complete records from both engines were never named once by either ChatGPT or Gemini, the worst rate of any industry we scanned.
12% of the 50 trade sites block AI crawlers in robots.txt, so the engines cannot read them at all.
28% of the 50 trade sites have no structured data (JSON-LD) for the engines to parse.
82% of the 50 trade sites have no llms.txt file. We report it as a legibility signal only: Google has said it does not use llms.txt.
Mean site readiness. Tradie websites score 71.5 for on-site AI readiness while the businesses behind them score 29.8 for visibility.
The top tradie score in the study, held by Fallon Solutions of Brisbane.
The website is not the bottleneck. Across the whole study, on-site readiness barely correlates with who actually gets named: Pearson r = 0.116 over the 137 complete two-engine records. Tradies show that gap at its widest, with readable sites and invisible businesses. The full method and caveats are in the national report.
Who leads
The five most visible tradies we scanned
Scores are AI visibility out of 100, summarising each business's whole scan record across both engines, site readiness included. Two of the five are electrical firms, and none of the five is from Sydney or Melbourne.
| Rank | Business | City | AI visibility score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fallon Solutions | Brisbane | 71 |
| 2 | CPR Electrical Services | Perth | 68 |
| 3 | Connex Electrical | Brisbane | 50 |
| 4 | Ember Plumbing & Gas | Perth | 50 |
| 5 | ABA Plumbing & Gas | Adelaide | 46 |
Household names
How the national trade brands fared
The study seeded each industry with recognisable national anchor brands. "Named by ChatGPT" counts how many of the five ChatGPT buyer questions in a brand's cohort volunteered it. Blank Gemini fields in the dataset mark rows without a complete Gemini record, and they are shown that way here rather than counted as zero. Being named in one question and not another describes our questions on one day, not the quality of anyone's work.
| Brand | AI visibility score | Named by ChatGPT | Named by Gemini |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fallon Solutions | 71 | 4 of 5 | No complete record |
| Jim's Electrical | 36 | 1 of 5 | No complete record |
| Metropolitan Plumbing | 36 | 1 of 5 | 1 |
| Jim's Plumbing | 29 | 1 of 5 | No complete record |
| G.J. Gardner Homes | 25 | 0 of 5 | No complete record |
| Dale Alcock Homes | 24 | 1 of 5 | No complete record |
By city
Where tradies are most and least visible
Ten trade businesses per city. Brisbane leads at a mean of 34.5 and Melbourne trails at 25.2, and even the best city sits under the national all-industries mean of 38.3.
| City | Businesses | Mean score |
|---|---|---|
| Brisbane | 10 | 34.5 |
| Perth | 10 | 32.2 |
| Adelaide | 10 | 30.2 |
| Sydney | 10 | 26.8 |
| Melbourne | 10 | 25.2 |
What it means
What this means for a trade business
When a homeowner asks ChatGPT or Gemini who to call, the engines answer with names. In our scan, 76% of the tradies that could be measured on both engines were never among them.
The encouraging read is that the bar is low. The trade businesses that do get named are not doing anything exotic: they are the ones the rest of the web already talks about, through reviews, directories and local coverage, on top of a site the engines can actually read. In the least visible industry we scanned, a tradie who fixes the basics and earns a handful of credible mentions is competing against the thinnest field in the study.
Start with the site: 12% of the trade sites we checked block AI crawlers outright and 28% carry no structured data, and both are fixable in an afternoon. Then earn the footprint, because that is what the data says separates the named from the unnamed. What that work looks like for a trade business is on our AI visibility for tradies page, the method behind every number here is in the full national report, and if the vocabulary is new the glossary covers it in plain English.
Keep reading
Where to go next
The full study
State of AI Visibility in Australia 2026
All 300 businesses across six industries, with the full methodology and the raw data free to download under CC BY 4.0.
Read the report →For your business
AI visibility for tradies
What we check, what we fix and what it costs to get a trade business named by ChatGPT and Gemini.
See the service →Another industry
Law firms: 2026 study data
Law firms average 37.5 out of 100, and 30% of the firms with complete two-engine records were never named.
See the breakout →Questions
Common questions about the tradie data
How visible are Australian tradies to AI in 2026?
How many tradies are never named by ChatGPT or Gemini?
Which tradies does AI recommend most?
Are tradie websites the problem?
Find out whether AI names your business.
The same scan we ran on these 50 trade businesses is free for yours. See whether ChatGPT and Gemini name you, who they name instead, and you keep the report.