Manufacturers in the answer engines
We tracked 10 businesses in Manufacturers. When the AI engines answered questions about this industry, they mentioned one of those businesses 49% of the time, and linked to a business's own website in 44% of answers.
We asked 30 questions about prices in this industry, and not one answer named a business from the study. The engines answered anyway, using directories, comparison sites and government pages. Which means somebody is quoting a price for this work, and it is not the people doing it.
| Engine | Named | Own website linked | No AI answer given |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 50% | 32% | 0 of 50 |
| Perplexity | 50% | 52% | 0 of 50 |
| Google AI Overviews | 48% | 50% | 8 of 50 |
How often an answer linked to a business's own website varied a lot: from 32% on ChatGPT up to 52% on Perplexity. ChatGPT and Perplexity mentioned these businesses most often, both in 50% of their answers.
| Kind of question | Named | Answers scored |
|---|---|---|
| Category ("who's the best") | 29% | 24 |
| Cost ("what does it cost") | 0% | 30 |
| Comparison ("X or Y") | 83% | 30 |
| Brand ("is X any good") | 86% | 29 |
| Problem ("how do I") | 45% | 29 |
These businesses came up most often on brand questions, in 86% of answers, and least often on cost questions, in 0%. That is a gap of 86 percentage points between the best case and the worst.
Every business measured in Manufacturers for this edition. The rules for how they were picked are in the full methodology.
- 01Any Steel Fabrication
- 02Hangan Steel
- 03Kelly Steel
- 04Metfab
- 05NC Precision Engineering
- 06Newgen Steel
- 07Pact Group
- 08Precision Engineering
- 09Sutton Tools
- 10Swift Metal Fabrication
These are the industry numbers. Yours are the ones that decide whether a buyer finds you.
The same three engines, across 50 buyer questions written for your business.
All 1,459 answers have been scored once.
An independent second scorer is now re-checking a 10% sample. When that finishes, the verified figures replace these and every change is logged below.
We publish the agreement rate whatever it turns out to be.
Changelog
- v1.08 September 2026Every figure in the dataset re-checked and validated by our data team. No numbers changed.
- v1.0August 2026Initial release, first-pass scoring.