Nearly half of the contractor websites in our sample run on WordPress. We checked the websites of 511 local contractors named by ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews on 72 trade-and-city boards, and 49.3% run on WordPress (95% confidence interval 45.0–53.6%)[1]. The boards come from people who used our free tool, so this is a convenience sample, not a random sample of US contractors. Another 15.9% showed no website builder our detector recognizes, so their platform is unidentified; Duda follows at 6.8% and Wix at 6.5%, and point-and-click builders together account for 22.5%[1]. AI engines named contractors on every common platform, and this study cannot show that a platform causes a recommendation. It also cannot measure how often each engine cites a business’s own website, because our records do not keep each engine’s cited sources[1].
BaaDigi builds websites, mostly on Next.js. Sites we built are excluded from the headline figures below so they cannot tilt the result; the full breakdown is in the methodology section. Corrected October 2, 2026: see the note under "Can this data show how often AI answers cite a contractor’s website?"
Which website platforms do AI-recommended contractors use?
| Platform | Sites | Share | 95% CI |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 252 | 49.3% | 45.0–53.6% |
| Unidentified (no builder our detector recognizes) | 81 | 15.9% | 12.9–19.3% |
| Duda | 35 | 6.8% | 5.0–9.4% |
| Wix | 33 | 6.5% | 4.6–8.9% |
| Next.js | 19 | 3.7% | 2.4–5.7% |
| GoDaddy Website Builder | 15 | 2.9% | 1.8–4.8% |
| Squarespace | 14 | 2.7% | 1.6–4.5% |
| Hibu (built on Duda) | 13 | 2.5% | 1.5–4.3% |
| Webflow | 11 | 2.2% | 1.2–3.8% |
| GoHighLevel site builder | 10 | 2.0% | 1.1–3.6% |
| Other (React, Astro, Weebly, HubSpot CMS, Drupal, Framer and more) | 28 | 5.5% | — |
Point-and-click builders combined (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Weebly, Duda, Hibu and Hostinger) account for 115 of the 511 sites, 22.5% (95% CI 19.1–26.3%)[1]. The "unidentified" group is not a finding that those sites are custom-built: it can include hand-coded sites, headless content systems, agency platforms and builders our detection rules do not recognize, and the detector cannot tell these apart[1]. Eleven sites carried a GoHighLevel chat widget; eight of them were built on something other than GoHighLevel’s own site builder, four of those on WordPress[1].
Can this data show how often AI answers cite a contractor’s website?
No. For each business on a board, our stored record keeps its name, the engines that named it and at most one website domain. That domain was attached when an automated extraction step matched the business to a domain among the sources the engines cited, and it is shared by every engine that named the business. Each engine’s own list of cited sources was not kept for these boards. So the records cannot show which engine cited a business’s website, or how often[1].
Correction, October 2, 2026: an earlier version of this page reported separate rates at which ChatGPT and Perplexity cited the business’s own website. Those figures measured whether the merged business record had a domain attached, not engine-specific citations, so they are withdrawn. We have not replaced them with new figures.
What the records do show is narrower. On contractor boards, 943 of 1,588 business entries (59.4%) had no website domain attached[1]. That does not mean those businesses lack a website, or that no engine cited one; it means our process did not match a cited domain to them. It also means the platform shares above describe only businesses that had a domain attached.
Google AI Overviews barely featured. Every published board asked Google too, yet AI Overviews named only 21 of the 1,835 business entries, too few to analyze by platform[1][2].
A mention and a website citation are different things. Check the sources an answer lists before counting a mention as a citation of your site.
Does ChatGPT favor different platforms than Perplexity?
This data cannot answer that. Among the 511 headline sites, WordPress made up 47.9% of the 211 sites ChatGPT named (95% CI 41.2–54.6%) and 49.9% of the 439 sites Perplexity named (95% CI 45.2–54.5%)[1]. The shares are close, but this is a description, not a test: the two groups overlap (143 sites were named by both), the boards are not a random sample, and which engine named a business comes from the same automated extraction step. It does not show that the engines have no platform preference.
Does the platform mix change by trade?
| Trade | Sites | WordPress share | 95% CI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbing, drain and septic | 45 | 55.6% | 41.2–69.1% |
| General and custom building | 37 | 54.1% | 38.4–69.0% |
| Roofing | 57 | 50.9% | 38.3–63.4% |
| Paving and pavers | 56 | 50.0% | 37.3–62.7% |
| Remodeling | 44 | 38.6% | 25.7–53.4% |
| Tree, lawn and landscape | 48 | 35.4% | 23.4–49.6% |
Remodeling and landscaping lean less on WordPress than plumbing or building in this sample, but every interval is wide and they overlap, so do not read a trade rule into it. The trade figures include BaaDigi-built sites.
What do national franchises use?
Mostly platforms our detector could not identify. Of 30 franchise and national-brand sites the engines named, 46.7% showed no builder our rules recognize and 23.3% ran WordPress[1]. They are excluded from the local contractor headline because a franchise location does not choose its own website.
What does this mean for your contractor website?
- Your platform did not keep contractors out of this sample. AI engines named contractors on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Duda, GoDaddy, Webflow and platforms our detector could not identify, so do not switch platforms hoping to get recommended.
- This study cannot show that any platform helps you get recommended. It describes the businesses that were named; it has no comparison group of businesses that were not.
- Check citations yourself. This data cannot say how often engines cite a contractor’s own site, so ask the questions your customers ask and look at the sources each answer lists. Make sure your site plainly states your business name, services and service area, so an engine has something of yours to cite.
How was this study done?
We started from BaaDigi’s published AI recommendation boards: for each trade and city, the same customer-style questions are asked of ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and an automated extraction step records the businesses named, which engines named each one, and a website domain when it can match one among the cited sources[2][3]. The 85 boards that pass our publication gate were checked between July 28 and September 16, 2026; 72 cover contractor and home-service trades[1].
- Population: 1,835 business entries, 768 unique website domains. We set aside 134 non-contractor sites, 39 franchise or national brands, 5 directories and 1 domain that appeared on three or more boards, leaving 589 local contractor domains (768 − 134 − 39 − 5 − 1 = 589)[1].
- Fetch: each homepage was requested once on September 21, 2026 with a standard browser user agent. 552 loaded; the rest failed on blocks, dead domains or certificate errors. Eight sites were dropped because the page no longer matched the business name, leaving 544[1].
- Detection: the platform was identified from signatures in the raw HTML, such as WordPress content paths or a builder’s asset host. Scripts were not executed, so a builder that only reveals itself after JavaScript runs is counted as unidentified[1].
- Accuracy: a random sample of 20 classifications was checked by hand against the saved pages; 19 were correct. The one miss revealed a missing rule, which was added before the final count[1].
- BaaDigi-built sites: 33 of the 544 matched sites link to baadigi.com, 23 of them on Next.js. They are removed from the headline (n = 511)[1].
- Website domains: a business entered the platform count only if the extraction step attached a domain to it. Domains are stored once per business, not per engine, which is why this study reports no engine-by-engine citation rates[1].
Limits: the boards come from trades and cities people chose to check with our free tool, weighted toward our prospects and markets, so this is not a random sample of US contractors. The study is a correlational snapshot with no comparison group. AI answers vary from run to run[2]. The underlying business records are not published. Cite as: BaaDigi, "What Website Platform Do the Contractors AI Recommends Actually Use?", September 2026, corrected October 2026.
Frequently asked questions
- What website platform do most AI-recommended contractors use?
- WordPress, in our sample. In BaaDigi’s September 2026 check of 511 local contractor websites named by ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews, 49.3% ran on WordPress. The boards come from people who used our free tool, so it is not a random sample. Another 15.9% ran a platform our detector could not identify, then Duda at 6.8% and Wix at 6.5%.
- Do I need WordPress to be recommended by ChatGPT?
- No. AI engines named contractors on every common platform, including Wix, Squarespace, Duda, GoDaddy and Webflow. The study describes who was named; it cannot show that any platform causes a recommendation.
- Does this study show how often ChatGPT links to a contractor’s website?
- No. Our records keep one website domain per business, shared by every engine that named it, and do not keep each engine’s cited sources. An earlier version of the page reported per-engine citation rates from those records; they were withdrawn on October 2, 2026 because they did not measure engine citations.
- Are Wix and Squarespace bad for AI search?
- This data does not show that. Point-and-click builders made up 22.5% of the 511 contractor sites in our sample that AI engines named, so contractors on Wix and Squarespace do get named. The study cannot show whether any platform helps or hurts your chances.
Related reading
Sources
Every source was opened and read on the date shown. Vendor prices change; check the vendor's page before buying. How we research: methodology.
- BaaDigi website platform study: method summary (run September 21, 2026; corrected October 2, 2026). The underlying business records are not published. — checked 2026-10-02
- BaaDigi methodology: AI recommendation boards — checked 2026-10-02
- BaaDigi AI search visibility boards by trade and city — checked 2026-09-21