AI visibility of Christchurch plumbers: the data.
We audited 28 plumbers’ websites in Christchurch. The average AI-visibility score is 70/100: 7% block at least one AI search crawler and 25% have no structured data — meaning ChatGPT and Google’s AI often can’t read the businesses they’re asked to recommend.
avg score
70/100
block AI crawlers
7%
no structured data
25%
JS-only content
4%
As of July 2026, the average AI-visibility score of 28 audited plumbers’ websites in Christchurch, New Zealand is 70 out of 100. 7% of the audited sites block at least one AI search crawler (such as OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot) in their robots.txt, 25% publish no structured data identifying their business, 4% serve their main content only through JavaScript that AI crawlers cannot execute, and 71% show no visible “last updated” date. The businesses were drawn from Google’s local results for plumber services in Christchurch, where the average Google rating is 4.9 stars with a median of 87 reviews. Source: Surfaced audit dataset, n=28, July 2026. Method: surfaced.co.nz/methodology.
What are Christchurch plumbers getting wrong?
71% show no visible 'last updated' date
The fix: Display and maintain a visible update date — AI engines strongly favour recently-updated pages.
25% have no structured data at all
The fix: Add LocalBusiness JSON-LD so AI engines can identify the business, its services and its area.
7% 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.
4% 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.
Why does this matter for a plumber in Christchurch?
When someone in Christchurch asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for “a good plumber near me”, the engines recommend from the businesses they can actually read and verify. With an average score of 70/100, 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 plumbers is 70/100 across 256 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 Christchurch average of 70.
Check my siteLast updated July 2026 · based on 28 audited websites from 30 local listings · methodology · aggregates only — no individual business is named without consent