daviespublicaffairs.com · United States · September 2026
Scored out of 100. Benchmarked against Tigercomm, RenUSA, Bodewell Group and Bernstein Crisis Management.
When a developer asks Perplexity which firm can win community approval for a renewable energy project, Davies Public Affairs is the first firm it recommends, ahead of KAOH Media, Cozen O'Connor and Silverline. That answer is built from pages Davies already publishes. The expertise on the site is strong enough to win the recommendation when an assistant finds it.
Most of the time, the assistant does not find it. Ask ChatGPT the same question and Davies is not named; it recommends Edelman, FleishmanHillard, SKDK and FTI Consulting instead. Ask either assistant which firms get data center projects approved despite local opposition and Davies is absent from both answers, even though it runs a dedicated data center practice. On Google, Davies receives about 38 visits a month, and every one of them comes from someone who already typed the Davies name. Not a single visit comes from a developer searching for the service. Tigercomm ranks first on Google for clean energy public relations, appears in the top ten for 20 searches in the category, and is quoted 8 times in Google's AI Overviews for this category. Davies is quoted in none.
The problem is not the quality of Davies' work or thinking. The site is holding that work back in three measurable ways:
Developers who have not heard of Davies never meet it. The people choosing a public affairs firm for a contested project search by problem, not by name. Those searches go to Tigercomm on Google and to Edelman, FTI and FleishmanHillard on ChatGPT. Every developer who shortlists firms that way removes Davies from the running before a proposal is ever requested.
AI assistants are not sure who Davies is. The site calls itself Davies Group. The industry directories call it Davies Public Affairs. In ChatGPT's data, "the Davies Group" points to an unrelated company, and one Perplexity answer about Davies quoted a different firm, Davis Public Affairs. An assistant that is unsure which firm it is describing will not stake a recommendation on it.
The fastest growing practice is the least visible one. Data center opposition is now a national story, and Perplexity alone names ten firms for it. Davies is not one of them. Land use in California is similar: ChatGPT does not name Davies and Perplexity lists it last, eleventh of eleven. This is where developer demand is moving, and the assistants are forming their shortlists now.
Why this is fixable without starting from scratch: Perplexity already ranks Davies first on renewables using two pages that exist today. The material is there and it wins when it is read. The Davies team does not need to work harder; the site needs to stop holding them back.
| Firm | Monthly visits1 | Service searches2 | Searches ranked3 | Top ten3 | Value, USD4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Davies Public Affairs | 38 | 0 | 13 | 4 | 134 |
| Tigercomm | 297 | 117 | 97 | 24 | 796 |
| RenUSA | 33 | 1 | 17 | 1 | 8 |
| Bodewell Group | 742 | 227 | 401 | 20 | 1,197 |
| Bernstein Crisis Management | 663 | 201 | 305 | 13 | 509 |
1 Monthly search visits: estimated monthly visits from Google organic results in the United States. Source: DataForSEO, based on the Google Ads keyword database, September 2026.
2 Service searches: monthly visits from searches that do not contain the firm's own name and relate to its services. Bodewell's total is inflated by its former name, Southwest Strategies, and Bernstein's by blog posts about unrelated slang, so this column is the fairer comparison. Novastacks analysis of the same data.
3 Searches ranked: distinct Google searches where the site appears in the top 100. Top ten: of those, how many rank on page one.
4 Value: what the same monthly visits would cost as Google Ads clicks each month.
Davies ranks for 13 searches on Google. Eleven contain its own name and the other two are names of unrelated firms that bring no visits. Tigercomm holds page one for 20 searches that describe the service, including first place for clean energy public relations, and Google's AI Overviews quote Tigercomm 8 times across this category. ChatGPT named Davies in 1 of the 4 category questions we tested, and only on crisis work.
Novastacks' AEO solution addresses this by making Davies the firm Google, ChatGPT and Perplexity reach for when a developer describes the problem instead of naming a firm.
The site presents itself as Davies Group. LinkedIn, O'Dwyer's and PR Agency Review list Davies Public Affairs. ChatGPT's records attach "the Davies Group" to a different company, and Perplexity quoted a different firm, Davis Public Affairs, in an answer about Davies. One of the pages Perplexity quotes for Davies no longer exists.
Novastacks' AEO solution addresses this by giving every assistant one unambiguous identity for Davies, so a recommendation lands on the right firm every time.
When ChatGPT and Perplexity answered our questions, they leaned on the same outside sources again and again. Davies appears on 4 of the 8 we checked. It is absent from YouTube, Clutch and PressFeatured, all three of which carry Tigercomm.
Novastacks' AEO solution addresses this by building Davies' presence on the platforms AI models reference when they recommend firms in this category.
The full report includes detailed breakdowns, implementation roadmaps and priority sequencing for each area.
| Full audit section | What you get |
|---|---|
| AI Visibility | Every question we asked ChatGPT and Perplexity, how each one scored Davies, and every source they quoted |
| Platform presence | Davies against four competitors on the eight outside sources the assistants rely on |
| Page readiness | Six page types compared side by side with Tigercomm, RenUSA, Bodewell Group and Bernstein |
| Technical findings | Each issue with the exact address, what we tested and why it matters |
| Content and search | The searches competitors win and Davies does not, and the pages that should win them |
| Competitive intelligence | What each competitor does well and where each one is exposed |
| Roadmap | A sequenced plan with projected score movement |
Google's AI Overviews quote Tigercomm 8 times across this category. They quote Davies Public Affairs none. Perplexity already ranks you first on renewables, so the gap is in how you are found, not in the quality of your work.
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Six questions, each put to ChatGPT and Perplexity with web search switched on. Four describe a problem without naming any firm, so a mention there means the assistant chose Davies on its own. Each answer is scored from 0 to 10: named and quoted with correct detail scores 8 to 10, named without a source scores 3 to 5, not named scores 0.
| Type | Question | ChatGPT | Perplexity | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Branded | What is Davies Public Affairs and what services do they offer? | 4 | 8 | Both know the firm. ChatGPT answered from memory with a generic description and no source. Perplexity was accurate and quoted daviespublicaffairs.com, but also quoted davispublicaffairs.com, a different firm, and www.daviespublicaffairs.com/who, which returns an error. |
| Category | What are the best public affairs firms in the United States for winning community approval for renewable energy projects? | 0 | 9 | Perplexity ranked Davies first of four and quoted /renewableenergy and /proven-strategies. ChatGPT named Edelman, FleishmanHillard, SKDK, FTI Consulting, Hill+Knowlton, Glover Park Group and Kivvit. |
| Category | Which public affairs consulting firms help developers get data center projects approved despite local opposition? | 0 | 0 | Perplexity named PLUS Communications, Coover Goss, Gigawatt Group, PHA Group, Milldam, Hicks Partners, AMAUTA, DGA Group, McGuireWoods Consulting and Bracewell's Policy Resolution Group. ChatGPT named AECOM, Edelman, FleishmanHillard, Hill+Knowlton, Teneo and FTI. |
| Category | What are the best land use public affairs and community outreach firms in California? | 0 | 5 | Perplexity listed "Davies Group" last, eleventh of eleven, behind seven law firms and three other public affairs firms, and quoted /landuse. ChatGPT named five planning firms. |
| Category | Which crisis communications firms specialize in oil, gas and mining companies in the US? | 5 | 6 | Both named "Davies Group". ChatGPT listed it among roughly 25 firms and quoted /naturalresources. Perplexity listed it third of ten. |
| Comparison | Compare Davies Public Affairs vs Tigercomm vs RenUSA vs Bodewell Group vs Bernstein Crisis Management for community engagement and public affairs on energy and land use projects. | 5 | 9 | Perplexity called Davies the strongest documented fit and said it could not find enough evidence to assess the other four. ChatGPT gave a generic comparison with no sources. |
Davies has a practice page at www.daviespublicaffairs.com/data-centers and two data center articles. Neither assistant used them. Perplexity described most of the ten firms it named through pages built specifically around data center approval.
Across the AI Overview answers we could measure for this category, Tigercomm is quoted 8 times, on questions asked about 680 times a month. Davies does not appear in the index of AI Overview answers at all.
Wherever Perplexity found a Davies page, it quoted it with correct detail and, on renewables, placed Davies first. Perplexity said it could not assess the other four firms from their material.
We asked with web search switched on, but ChatGPT chose to search for only one of the six questions, the crisis question, which is also the only category answer that names Davies. For the other five it answered from what it already knows, and that knowledge places Edelman, FTI and FleishmanHillard in this category, not Davies.
Why it matters: most ChatGPT users never trigger a search. What ChatGPT already believes about a category comes from what outside sources have written over time, which is why the platform table below matters as much as the website.
The site titles read "Davies Group". Perplexity called the firm "Davies Public Affairs" in some answers and "Davies Group" in others. In ChatGPT's records, the question "what does the Davies Group do?" is answered from davies-group.com, an unrelated company. Perplexity's branded answer also quoted davispublicaffairs.com, a separate firm with a similar name.
Why it matters: an assistant that is unsure which firm it is describing hedges or recommends someone else. The competitors each operate under one name.
Platform presence: the outside sources the assistants quoted
These are the independent sites ChatGPT and Perplexity quoted most often across our twelve answers, plus YouTube, which assistants quote in every market. For each firm we checked whether the site carries a genuine listing, profile or mention.
| Source | Davies | Tigercomm | RenUSA | Bodewell | Bernstein |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| linkedin.com | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| everything-pr.com | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| odwyerpr.com | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| pragencyreview.com | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| pressfeatured.com | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| society22pr.com | No | No | No | No | No |
| clutch.co | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| youtube.com | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Present on | 4 / 8 | 6 / 8 | 1 / 8 | 3 / 8 | 4 / 8 |
AI Visibility score breakdown
| Dimension | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Branded questions | 60 | Both assistants know the firm; ChatGPT generic and unsourced, Perplexity accurate but mixed with a similarly named firm |
| Category questions | 31 | Named in 4 of 8 answers; first on renewables in Perplexity, absent from every data center answer |
| Comparison questions | 70 | Named first by both; Perplexity called Davies the strongest documented fit |
| Independent reviews | 40 | Listed by O'Dwyer's, PR Agency Review and Everything PR, but none of them were used in a category answer about Davies |
| Platform presence | 50 | 4 of 8 sources, no YouTube and no Clutch profile |
| AI Visibility | 46 |
ChatGPT (gpt-4o) and Perplexity (sonar-pro), United States, English, web search enabled, 21 September 2026. Google AI Overview figures come from DataForSEO's index of AI Overview answers for the United States.
| Dimension | Score | Effort to fix | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code that describes each page | 20 | Quick win, 1 to 2 weeks | The homepage carries a two line site label. No other page carries anything. Every competitor describes the firm on every page. |
| How easily AI can lift the content | 40 | Medium, 2 to 4 weeks | The text is real and reaches crawlers, but no page has a main heading, section labels like "WORK" and "SERVICES" are used as headings, and there are two question style headings across seven pages. |
| Depth of citable material | 50 | Strategic, 2 to 6 months | Practice pages of 876 to 1,154 words and about a dozen short articles. Good substance, but articles carry no date and no author, and there are no FAQs. |
| Technical readiness for AI | 60 | Quick win, 1 to 2 weeks | All AI crawlers are allowed, the content is delivered in the page, and a sitemap and an AI guide file exist. Offset by a 9.6 second mobile load, a duplicate page, a misspelled page and a broken address that AI still quotes. |
| Site Readiness | 46 |
Page level comparison. One representative page per firm in each category, fetched on 21 September 2026. "Main heading" means an H1 in the page code; "Describes itself" means structured data that names the firm and the page.
| Page type and check | Davies | Tigercomm | RenUSA | Bodewell | Bernstein |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homepage | |||||
| Main heading | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Describes the firm (Organization) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Words on page | 477 | 842 | 3,454 | 496 | 1,193 |
| Page size, KB | 838 | 54 | 229 | 70 | 119 |
| Energy or core service page | |||||
| Main heading | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | n/a |
| Describes itself | No | Service | WebPage | WebPage | n/a |
| Search description | Missing | Yes | Sitewide copy | Yes | n/a |
| Words on page | 1,154 | 497 | 3,742 | 773 | n/a |
| Land use page | |||||
| Main heading | No | n/a | n/a | Yes | n/a |
| Describes itself | No | n/a | n/a | Yes | n/a |
| Words on page | 876 | n/a | n/a | 458 | n/a |
| Data center or technology page | |||||
| Main heading | No | n/a | n/a | Yes | n/a |
| Search description | Missing | n/a | n/a | Yes | n/a |
| Words on page | 917 | n/a | n/a | 625 | n/a |
| Crisis page | |||||
| Main heading | No | Yes | n/a | n/a | Yes |
| Search description | Copied from land use | Yes | n/a | n/a | Yes |
| Words on page | 575 | 466 | n/a | n/a | 590 |
| Article or case study | |||||
| Main heading | No | Yes | none | Yes | Yes |
| Describes itself as an article with an author | No | No | none | No | Yes |
| Words on page | 536 | 5,322 | none | 458 | 876 |
| Team page | |||||
| Main heading | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Words on page | 410 | 445 | 3,384 | 300 | 215 |
Pages compared. Davies: /, /renewableenergy, /landuse, /data-centers, /crisis, /why-renewable-energy-developers-turnto-specialized-public-affairs-firms, /team. Tigercomm: /, /services/community-engagement, /services/public-affairs, /insights/renewable-energy-public-relations, /about-tigercomm. RenUSA: /, /representation/, /about/. Bodewell Group: /, /industries/energy/, /industries/land-use/, /industries/technology/, /case-studies/point-molate/, /people/team/. Bernstein: /, /portfolio-item/crisis-communications/, /what-does-crisis-mean-to-you/, /our-team/.
Davies has more words on its practice pages than most competitors. What it lacks is the structure around those words: no main heading, no description of the firm in code, and several pages with a missing or borrowed search description. The substance is ahead; the packaging is behind every competitor on the list.
The foundations are sound: every AI crawler is allowed, the text is delivered in the page rather than assembled later, and the old address daviespagroup.com forwards cleanly to the current site. The problems sit one layer up.
None of the seven Davies pages we fetched contains an H1, the heading that tells Google and AI what a page is about. Section labels such as "WORK", "INDUSTRIES", "SERVICES" and "LET'S TALK" are coded as headings instead, and the homepage repeats most of them twice. One homepage heading is misspelled: "Capabilites".
Checked on https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/, /renewableenergy, /landuse, /data-centers, /crisis, /team and /why-renewable-energy-developers-turnto-specialized-public-affairs-firms. Tigercomm, RenUSA, Bodewell Group and Bernstein each have one on their homepage.
Why it matters: a page with no main heading and headings that read "WORK" gives an assistant nothing to anchor a summary to. Competitors tell the machine in one line what each page offers; Davies leaves it to guess.
The homepage carries one small block that gives only the name "Davies Group" and the web address. There is no Organization description with the logo, address, founding year, leadership or links to the LinkedIn, O'Dwyer's and PR Agency Review profiles. Every inner page carries nothing at all.
| Firm | What its pages declare |
|---|---|
| Davies | Homepage: WebSite (name and address only). Inner pages: none |
| Tigercomm | Organization with postal address; Service on each service page |
| RenUSA | Organization, WebSite, WebPage and BreadcrumbList on every page |
| Bodewell Group | Organization, WebSite, WebPage and BreadcrumbList on every page |
| Bernstein | Same as Bodewell, plus Article and Person on blog posts |
Why it matters: this is the direct cause of the name confusion in section 02. Without a formal description that ties "Davies Group" and "Davies Public Affairs" to one firm and its profiles, ChatGPT resolves the name to davies-group.com instead.
https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/copy-of-renewable-energy is live, titled "New Renewables | Davies Group", declares itself the original, and is listed in the sitemap. So is https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/crisis-commununication, titled "Crisis Communication | Davies Group", which competes with https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/crisis. Neither carries a search description.
Why it matters: two pages about the same service split the credit between them, and a page with "copy of" in its address is the one an assistant may pick up and quote.
Perplexity's answer to "What is Davies Public Affairs?" cites https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/who. That address returns a 404 error page.
Why it matters: anyone who follows the source to check the answer lands on an error. Forwarding the address to https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/team recovers the visit and keeps the citation working.
The Davies homepage takes 9.6 seconds on a phone to show its main content (good is under 2.5 seconds). The page code alone is 746 KB to 995 KB on every page we fetched, against 40 KB to 229 KB for competitors, most of it platform code rather than content.
| Homepage, mobile, same day | Performance score | Main content visible | Accessibility | Search basics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bernstein | 84 | 3.5s | 83 | 100 |
| Davies | 67 | 9.6s | 100 | 100 |
| Tigercomm | 66 | 4.3s | 77 | 92 |
| Bodewell Group | 60 | 9.9s | 95 | 92 |
| RenUSA | 31 | 26.4s | 85 | 100 |
Why it matters: Davies scores a perfect 100 on accessibility, the best on the list, but loses developers on a phone who leave before the page appears. Google Lighthouse lab measurement, not field data.
https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/robots.txt allows every AI crawler, and https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/llms.txt exists. The guide file is the platform's generic default, though: it describes a "First Impression Program" and lists shop and booking tools rather than the three practice areas.
Davies ranks for 13 Google searches in the United States. Eleven contain the name, such as davies public affairs (first) or davies company (fifth); the other two, novus public affairs (27th) and dci public affairs (50th), are other firms' names and bring no visits. Davies shares no ranking searches with any of the four competitors. Tigercomm holds these category searches on page one:
| Search | Monthly searches | Tigercomm position | Tigercomm page | Davies position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| clean energy public relations | 110 | 1 | www.tigercomm.us/ | not ranked |
| cleantech pr firms | 90 | 2 | www.tigercomm.us/ | not ranked |
| cleantech pr agency | 140 | 3 | www.tigercomm.us/ | not ranked |
| renewable energy public relations | 50 | 3 | www.tigercomm.us/ | not ranked |
| renewable energy pr | 50 | 5 | www.tigercomm.us/insights/renewable-energy-public-relations | not ranked |
| energy pr firms | 30 | 5 | www.tigercomm.us/ | not ranked |
Why it matters: the volumes are small because the buyers are few, and each one is a developer with a contested project and a budget. A firm that is not on page one for those searches is not on the list the developer starts from.
Davies publishes about a dozen articles as standalone pages rather than in a blog. The one we measured, https://www.daviespublicaffairs.com/why-renewable-energy-developers-turnto-specialized-public-affairs-firms, is 536 words with no date, no author and no main heading, and its address contains the typo "turnto". Tigercomm's guide at https://www.tigercomm.us/insights/renewable-energy-public-relations runs to 5,322 words across 12 sections, with the year in its title.
Why it matters: assistants prefer to quote material that shows who wrote it and when. An undated, unsigned page is harder to trust than a dated guide from a named author, even when the thinking is better.
| Page | What Google shows | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| /why-renewable-energy-developers-turnto-specialized-public-affairs-firms | Title "Davies Group | Data Center" | A renewables article labelled as a data center page; its description is copied from the team page |
| /crisis | Description begins "When new developments, both commercial and residential, become public" | Copied from the land use page |
| /team, /ceoblog, /crisis-firm-of-year | Description begins "John Davies leads a core team of senior vice presidents" | The same description on four pages |
| /renewableenergy, /data-centers, /dgptoolkit, /daviessurvey | No description | Google writes its own from page fragments |
| /insights | Title "Davies Group | Webinar" | The insights hub is labelled as a webinar |
Titles lead with the brand and a single word ("Davies Group | Crisis", "Davies Group | Land Use"). Bodewell titles the same pages by what the buyer needs: "Energy & Renewables PR & Strategic Communications Services", "Land Use Communications, Strategy & Public Affairs".
Why it matters: the title and description are the first thing a developer reads in Google and the first thing an assistant reads about a page. Borrowed descriptions tell both that the crisis page is about housing developments.
Across the seven Davies pages we fetched there are two headings phrased as questions ("What is land use public affairs?" and "Why Davies?") and no FAQ section. The questions developers actually put to assistants (how long approval takes, what to do when opposition organises, when to engage the community) are answered inside the prose but never stated as questions.
Why it matters: assistants lift answers most easily from a clearly stated question followed by a direct answer. Davies has the answers; they just are not in the shape assistants look for.
Tigercomm is the only firm here with a deliberate search and AI programme: a cleantech glossary at https://www.tigercomm.us/cleantech-glossary-terms-and-definitions, two podcasts, a YouTube channel, a Clutch profile, a 5,322 word renewable PR guide, and a service page titled exactly "Win community approval for projects". It is the firm Google's AI Overviews quote 8 times in this category.
Where it is exposed: its positioning is communications and PR for cleantech companies, not approval campaigns on the ground, and Perplexity could not find enough on Tigercomm to compare it with Davies. On its homepage 30 of 39 images carry no description.
Bodewell covers land use, energy, water and technology with case studies such as the Point Molate redevelopment (seventh on Google for point molate, 1,300 searches a month). Its technical build is the cleanest on the list: a full description of the firm on every page, and a main heading on every page we checked except the team page.
Where it is exposed: more than a third of its search traffic still arrives under its former name, Southwest Strategies, our LinkedIn check found no profile under the new name, and neither assistant named it in any category answer.
Bernstein has one of the largest search audiences on the list, but more than half of its estimated visits land on a single post about the slang term "WTAF". It is the only competitor that marks up its articles with an author, and it has the fastest homepage (3.5 seconds).
Where it is exposed: it is a generalist crisis firm with no energy or land use practice, and neither assistant named it in the oil, gas and mining crisis answers where Davies appeared.
RenUSA is focused entirely on renewable projects, but earns one visit a month from anyone not searching its name, takes 26.4 seconds to show its homepage on a phone, and appears on 1 of the 8 sources the assistants quote.
The only firm here that Perplexity recommends for a category question, the only one with a listing on PR Agency Review, the longest practice pages of the five apart from RenUSA's, the best accessibility score, and a client list on the homepage (Chevron, Exxon, PG&E, NRG, Invenergy, The Irvine Company) that speaks directly to the developers these searches come from. The raw material to lead this category is already on the site.
AI already trusts Davies when it finds the material. The work is to make the site readable, give the firm one identity, and put that material where assistants look. Two tracks run in parallel.
| Score | Today | After Track A | After Track B |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site Readiness | 46 | 58 | 72 |
| AI Visibility | 46 | 48 | 61 |
| Combined | 46 | 52 | 65 |
Projected, not guaranteed. Track A moves the site score quickly because it is build work with no new writing. AI Visibility moves mostly in Track B, because category answers change only when there is more for assistants to find and more outside sources that name Davies.
Davies sits in an unusual position: when AI reads Davies, it recommends Davies. The shortfall is reach, not reputation. That makes this a faster fix than most, because the material that wins is already written.
This is an outside view. It uses public search data, pages fetched directly from each site, and twelve AI answers. Without access to Search Console, analytics or the pipeline of inbound enquiries, it cannot say how many enquiries arrive from search or AI today. Those would be the first inputs to a full engagement.
Novastacks builds and operates agentic marketing systems to help your brand get cited by AI assistants.
Perplexity already picks Davies first on renewables. Let's make ChatGPT and Google do the same.
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