Home → The Chicago HVAC Index
Who the machines trust.
Every month we ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the questions Chicago homeowners actually ask, and publish every name that comes back. 200 recommendations were handed out this edition. One shop took 1 in 5 of them. 36 shops took zero. Nobody here paid to be listed — and nobody can pay to move.
⚑ Edition 1 is the baseline. Every future edition is measured against this page — and this record cannot be back-dated.
Don't take our word for it. Run the test yourself.
Copy this exact question — one of the questions in our published battery — paste it into ChatGPT, and count who comes back. Then find your shop on the board below. That feeling is what this Index measures.
58 of 58 businesses shown
What the Invisible 36 are losing, in dollars
A furnace replacement is a four-figure ticket. Every one of the answers below handed a real question — “who should I call?” — to three or four shops, and 36 businesses were in none of them. There is no page two of an AI answer. You’re in it, or you don’t exist in that moment.
Not on the board yet?
Leave your email for the shop name you searched. We’ll email if it lands on the Chicago HVAC board, its stamp changes, or AI starts naming it.
Double opt-in only: you are not on the list until you click the confirmation link. No alert blast this week.
🏆 Top Mover — September 2026
The first shop to climb this board gets named here, on the public record, in front of every competitor. Somebody will be first. The month it happens is the month everyone else starts paying attention.
Dropped out of the answer
Visibility is a position you hold, not a task you finish. When a model stops naming a shop, it shows here — and the shops being watched find out the day it happens, not the month after.
Reliability: every signal checked twice, hours apart — 1.7% disagreement this edition, published every time, edition held if it ever reaches 5%. Full method: how scoring works · machine-readable: /index.json
$149 a month. One job pays for the year.
Watching is the readout: the moment a model starts naming you — or stops — plus what moved, why, and what on your site is responsible. No login. Cancel with one reply. And no, paying cannot move your rank: that’s the entire reason this board is worth being on.
Agency with a book of clients? Watching for agencies — $500–1,500/mo →
Email me if this shop moves
Pick or search a shop on this board first, or type the business name. An email alone isn’t enough — we need which shop to watch for moves. Double opt-in. Soft launch (DRAFT). No alert blast this week. Payment never touches the grade.
Weekly move digest
Free weekly rollup of who got named and who shifted on the Chicago HVAC board. Not “email me if this shop moves” — that’s a different list for one shop. Soft launch (DRAFT). Payment never touches the grade.
Digest = the whole board, once a week. Shop-moved = one shop, when it moves.
My market isn't Chicago HVAC
The pilot is one market on purpose. Tell us your trade and city and you'll be first to know when Lodestar Stamp covers it — an honest waitlist, no other email. Double opt-in. Payment never touches the grade.
We publish coverage by demand. Your request is the signal that picks the next market.
Payment never touches the grade. Every business here is scored free, whether it has heard of us or not. We are the referee, not a vendor of the fix — we sell watching, never the ranking, never leads, never placement. This table exists so somebody who isn't paid by the outcome keeps the record.
Where to next
Search this board, jump to your scorecard, or tell us if you are missing from the roster.
Watch a whole book of clients against an independent number.
The battery, the dual-pass probe, and the reliability checks.