Web Cited Research / Head-to-Head

Roto-Rooter vs Mr. Rooter in AI search.

We asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity 5 buyer questions about emergency and residential plumbing services. Then we counted how often each brand showed up.

Published May 15, 2026 · National plumbing service franchises (service area)
Roto-Rooter
21 / 60
LLM responses cited Roto-Rooter
Mr. Rooter
23 / 60
LLM responses cited Mr. Rooter

Mr. Rooter is more visible in AI search across this prompt set, by 2 citations.

The finding in one paragraph

Service-area businesses (plumbing, HVAC, electrical) compete for the moment a customer types an emergency search into Google or, increasingly, an AI assistant. We tested 5 standardized buyer questions a homeowner or facility manager might plausibly ask. Each question ran 3 times per engine across 4 engines. The result, per-engine breakdown, and per-prompt comparison are below.

Per-engine breakdown

Engine Roto-Rooter Mr. Rooter Edge
ChatGPT12 / 156 / 15Roto-Rooter by 6
Claude3 / 159 / 15Mr. Rooter by 6
Gemini0 / 153 / 15Mr. Rooter by 3
Perplexity6 / 155 / 15Roto-Rooter by 1

Per-prompt comparison

Each prompt was asked 12 times (4 engines × 3 trials). The cells show how often each brand showed up in those 12 responses.

Buyer prompt Roto-Rooter Mr. Rooter
Who is the best national plumbing service for emergency repairs in the United States?7 / 126 / 12
What national plumbing franchise has the most US coverage and 24-hour availability?4 / 127 / 12
Which plumbing service provides the fastest emergency response for residential customers?2 / 125 / 12
What are the top national plumbing service companies for commercial buildings?4 / 125 / 12
Who should a homeowner call for an emergency clogged drain or backed-up sewer line?4 / 120 / 12

Methodology

Identical to the Web Cited AI Visibility Index methodology. Replicable by anyone with API access to the four engines.

Engines tested
OpenAI ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini)
Anthropic Claude (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001)
Google Gemini (gemini-2.5-flash-lite)
Perplexity (sonar)
Settings
temperature 0.2
max_tokens 800
N = 3 trials per (engine, prompt)
Total LLM calls
120
2 brands × 4 engines × 5 prompts × 3 trials
Match criteria
case-insensitive substring match of brand domain OR brand name anywhere in the response

The 5 standardized buyer prompts

  1. Who is the best national plumbing service for emergency repairs in the United States?
  2. What national plumbing franchise has the most US coverage and 24-hour availability?
  3. Which plumbing service provides the fastest emergency response for residential customers?
  4. What are the top national plumbing service companies for commercial buildings?
  5. Who should a homeowner call for an emergency clogged drain or backed-up sewer line?
Known limitations. Substring matching can miss paraphrased mentions. LLM responses vary; N=3 reduces but does not eliminate variance. Same domain-based methodology as the full Web Cited audit.

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