AI visibility of Nelson builders: the data.
We audited 18 builders’ websites in Nelson. The average AI-visibility score is 68/100: 0% block at least one AI search crawler and 0% have no structured data — meaning ChatGPT and Google’s AI often can’t read the businesses they’re asked to recommend.
avg score
68/100
block AI crawlers
0%
no structured data
0%
JS-only content
11%
As of July 2026, the average AI-visibility score of 18 audited builders’ websites in Nelson, New Zealand is 68 out of 100. 0% of the audited sites block at least one AI search crawler (such as OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot) in their robots.txt, 0% publish no structured data identifying their business, 11% serve their main content only through JavaScript that AI crawlers cannot execute, and 83% show no visible “last updated” date. The businesses were drawn from Google’s local results for builder services in Nelson, where the average Google rating is 4.6 stars with a median of 7 reviews. Source: Surfaced audit dataset, n=18, July 2026. Method: surfaced.co.nz/methodology.
What are Nelson builders getting wrong?
83% show no visible 'last updated' date
The fix: Display and maintain a visible update date — AI engines strongly favour recently-updated pages.
11% serve their content only via JavaScript
The fix: Server-render the key pages — AI crawlers don't run JavaScript, so a JS-only site reads as a blank page.
0% block at least one AI search crawler
The fix: Allow OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Googlebot in robots.txt — training-only bots can stay blocked without losing citations.
0% have no structured data at all
The fix: Add LocalBusiness JSON-LD so AI engines can identify the business, its services and its area.
Why does this matter for a builder in Nelson?
When someone in Nelson asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for “a good builder near me”, the engines recommend from the businesses they can actually read and verify. With an average score of 68/100, most of the local market is effectively invisible to those answers — which means the few businesses that fix their basics take a disproportionate share of AI recommendations. That gap is the opportunity.
Compare: the national average for builders is 71/100 across 257 sites.
Are you one of the visible ones?
Run the exact same audit on your own site — free, 20 seconds, no signup. You’ll see your score against the Nelson average of 68.
Check my siteLast updated July 2026 · based on 18 audited websites from 27 local listings · methodology · aggregates only — no individual business is named without consent