Method, instrument and changelog

The index is a fixed panel of 100 questions put to the same AI engines once a month through their search-grounded APIs. Every answer and every cited URL is stored and published. Nothing on the site is typed in; every page is generated from the rows.

Panel v1

Template Who is the best {vertical} in {city}, Florida?, frozen 2026-07-02. 10 verticals (roofer, AC repair company, plumber, personal injury lawyer, dentist, chiropractor, real estate agent, landscaping company, pest control company, CPA) by 10 cities (DeLand, Daytona Beach, Deltona, Ormond Beach, Port Orange, New Smyrna Beach, Sanford, Lake Mary, Orlando, Winter Park). A prompt is never edited. If the panel changes it gets a new version number and the old one stays comparable with itself.

Instrument

DataForSEO ai_optimization/{engine}/llm_responses/live with web_search: true, United States, English, no location override, no logged-in state. The model is part of the instrument: a month asked with a different model is a different instrument and is compared to earlier months as directional only. Movers are reported only between months with the same instrument. "Charge" is the DataForSEO task charge recorded per call, the figure the collector caps on.

Month	ChatGPT	Perplexity	Claude	Gemini	Calls failed	Charge
November 2026	gpt-5.4-2026-03-05	sonar-pro	claude-sonnet-5	gemini-3.6-flash	0	$13.36
July 2026	gpt-5.3-chat-latest	sonar	not run	not run	0	$4.05

July 2026 was collected for EVOIX's Central Florida AI Citation Study on ChatGPT gpt-5.3-chat-latest and Perplexity sonar. From November 2026 the panel runs on four engines with pinned models (ChatGPT gpt-5.4-2026-03-05, Perplexity sonar-pro, Claude claude-sonnet-5, Gemini gemini-3.6-flash), so the ChatGPT and Perplexity lanes changed instrument between month zero and month one. The model shown on every page is the one the API reported serving, not the one requested: in November 2026 the collector asked for gemini-3.5-flash and DataForSEO served gemini-3.6-flash on all 100 rows, so the Gemini lane is pinned to the served name from December.

Gemini returns every citation as a vertexaisearch.cloud.google.com redirect link. The collector follows each link once and stores the real URL; the redirect link is kept in the row as redirect_url. The handful that fail to resolve fall back to the domain in the citation title and are flagged in the row.

What is counted

Answers returned. A call that errors or returns no text is a failed call. It is counted and shown, and excluded from every rate, so "80 of 88" means 88 answers came back out of 100 calls.
Naming a business. An answer counts if at least one business name is extracted from its bold text or its table body rows (table headers are skipped). The extraction is automatic and conservative; it can miss a name written in plain prose. It never invents one.
Source classes. Each cited domain is one of three things in a given month. Directory: on the published list in scripts/classify.py (directories, aggregators, review, social, reference and lead-gen sites). Multi-city site: not on the list, but cited for the same template across 5 or more of the 10 cities that month, which catches regional businesses, franchises and business sites that publish "best in {city}" listicles. Own site: everything else, read as a local business's own website. The class is decided per month across all engines, so a domain has one class per month and can change class between months; the domain pages show the class for every month. Disclosure: delandlocal.com is a DeLand business directory published by EVOIX, the publisher of this index. It is on the directory list, so a citation of it never counts as a business's own site, and it appears in the tables like any other directory.
Own-site share. Each answer contributes its distinct cited domains once. The share is own-site citations divided by all domain citations (own site, directory and multi-city together), summed over the engine's answers that month. It is not the share of the engine's distinct domains across the whole month, which runs higher because directories repeat across answers and business sites mostly do not.
Most cited source. The number of answers citing a domain at least once; a domain counts once per answer.
Samples. One answer per question per engine per month. AI engines are not deterministic, so any single question's monthly result is provisional. The aggregate figures across 100 questions are the index. The noise floor is measured, not assumed, with the subsample below.

Same-day repeat subsample

With each monthly run, 10 of the 100 questions (one per vertical, city rotating) are asked three times on the same day on every engine. The agreement rate on the named businesses and on the cited domains is published here and is the floor under which a month-over-month move is noise. "Same first-named business" is an exact match on the first extracted name, so a spelling or suffix difference counts as a miss, and a group in which any sample extracted no name counts as disagreement. The name rates are therefore conservative, and a low figure on an engine that often names nobody (Claude in November 2026) mixes real instability with answers that declined to name a business.

November 2026

Engine	Question groups	Same first-named business in all samples	At least one shared name	At least one shared domain
ChatGPT	10	2 (20%)	10 (100%)	7 (70%)
Perplexity	10	4 (40%)	10 (100%)	10 (100%)
Claude	10	0 (0%)	3 (30%)	4 (40%)
Gemini	10	0 (0%)	7 (70%)	10 (100%)

Changelog

2026-07-02: month zero collected (two engines) for the Central Florida AI Citation Study. Its published analysis (a1) split domains into two classes, aggregator and own site, with a 4-city rule; the figures on this site are recomputed under the current analysis and can differ from the study page.
2026-11-02: Local AI Sources filed as EVOIX aeo-lab experiment EXP-015 with predictions written before the first monthly run. Domain registered. Analysis a3: nine domains appended to the July directory list (experience.com, lawnstarter.com, homeguide.com, trustanalytica.com, bing.com, apple.com, tiktok.com, x.com, twitter.com); the city rule became its own class, multi-city site, at 5 cities, decided per month across all engines, after a code review found the 4-city rule labelling regional businesses as directories; table header rows excluded from name extraction; failed calls counted and shown.
2026-11-02: month one collected, four engines, 400 answers, 04:52 to 05:30 EST, charge $13.36. Analysis a4: 46 domains appended to the directory list after reading the November top sources on the two new lanes and the long tail (directories, aggregators, ranking and listicle sites, media, reference, government, professional associations, manufacturer and insurer finders; the full list is in scripts/classify.py, including delandlocal.com, disclosed above). Nine domains cited in three or more answers could not be verified today and are left to the multi-city rule for now: smarfle.com, theroofingbrief.com, legaldirectorate.com, toptaxhq.com, prosgrade.com, cityvetted.com, myheronhome.com, roof.info, hvacservice.io. Gemini redirect links resolved to real URLs (above). The collector stops on a confirmed empty account balance and treats a one-off 40200 as a retryable row.

Related work

Three public indexes measure AI citations at the global, category level and are worth reading alongside this one: Promvia's AI Source Index (weekly, 40 buyer questions, every row published), BrandInsightAI's AI Source Bias Index and HeyAmos's AI Sources Index. This index is the local complement: fixed cities, fixed verticals, named businesses, monthly, from July 2026.

Corrections

If a name was extracted wrongly, a domain is misclassified, or a business believes an engine's answer about it is inaccurate, write through the EVOIX contact page. Extraction and classification errors are fixed in the next build and logged above. Engine answers themselves are reproduced as returned and are not edited.

The 100 prompts

Who is the best roofer in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best roofer in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best AC repair company in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best plumber in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best personal injury lawyer in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best dentist in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best chiropractor in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best real estate agent in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best landscaping company in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best pest control company in Winter Park, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in DeLand, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in Daytona Beach, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in Deltona, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in Ormond Beach, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in Port Orange, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in New Smyrna Beach, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in Sanford, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in Lake Mary, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in Orlando, Florida?
Who is the best CPA in Winter Park, Florida?