We Checked 1,882 Security Companies Against ChatGPT — Here's What We Found

Watch the 40-second breakdown above.

We wanted a real answer to a question a lot of dealers have started asking us: when someone types "best security company near me" into ChatGPT, does my business come up?

So instead of guessing, we ran a benchmark.

What We Actually Did

We took a list of 1,882 U.S. security and alarm companies — a mix of big names, regional players, and small independent dealers — and checked each one against ChatGPT. We asked the kinds of questions real homeowners ask: who should I trust for home security, who's a good local alarm company, who do you recommend for monitoring.

Then we tracked one simple thing: did the company's name ever come up.

The Numbers

Out of all 1,882 companies, only 151 ever got recommended by name. That's 8%.

The other 92% never came up at all. Not once. Not in any version of the question we tried. If a homeowner in their service area asked ChatGPT who to call, these companies simply weren't part of the answer.

That's not a small gap. That's the difference between being the obvious choice and not existing at all, in a conversation that's happening whether the dealer knows about it or not.

Why This Is Happening

This isn't really about "AI being unfair" to smaller companies. ChatGPT and tools like it build their answers from what's out there — reviews, mentions, structured information, consistent online presence. Companies that show up clearly and consistently across the web tend to get named. Companies that don't have much of a footprint outside their own website tend to get skipped, no matter how good the actual service is.

In other words, the 92% aren't necessarily worse security companies. They're just invisible in the specific place more and more people are starting to ask for recommendations.

What This Means for Dealers

For years, being findable meant showing up on Google's first page. That's still true, but it's no longer the whole picture. People are starting to skip the search results page entirely and just ask ChatGPT directly — especially younger homeowners and anyone comparing multiple local options.

If a dealer isn't part of that answer, they're not losing a little bit of business. They're not in the conversation at all. And the scary part is most owners have no way of knowing where they stand until they check.

How to Check Where You Stand

We built a public leaderboard at mostrecommendedhomesecurity.com so any dealer can see how security companies are actually showing up in AI recommendations right now. It's worth a look even if just out of curiosity.

If you want to know specifically where your own company stands — and what's actually holding it back — Hometown Security offers a free AI visibility check at /audit. It takes a few minutes and gives you a real answer instead of a guess.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly did the benchmark measure?

We checked whether ChatGPT would recommend each of 1,882 real U.S. security and alarm companies by name when asked common questions homeowners actually use, like who to trust for home security or monitoring.

Is this the same as ranking on Google?

No. A company can rank fine on Google and still never get mentioned by ChatGPT, because the two systems pull from different signals. That's part of why this gap surprises so many dealers.

Does being in the 92% mean my company is bad?

Not at all. It usually means your online presence isn't structured in a way that AI tools pick up on, not that your service is lacking. It's a visibility problem, not a quality problem.

How can I find out if my company shows up?

You can check the public leaderboard at mostrecommendedhomesecurity.com, or get a full breakdown of your own company with the free AI visibility check at /audit.