Independent AI research

How AI recommends local businesses.

We asked ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI to recommend local businesses across 5 cities. The patterns were consistent, and not what most people expect.

Explore the data

AUDITING ACROSS 4 AI PLATFORMS · 40 QUERIES PER AUDIT

4,478+
Citations
5
Geographies
10
Categories
4
Platforms
From the data

Three things we didn't expect.

AI has a personality.

ChatGPT links to every business it mentions. Claude never links — it names local favorites and sends you to Yelp. Perplexity leans on directories. Google AI barely participates. Same query, four different answers. These patterns hold across every city we've tested.

Being recommended is different from being listed.

When AI recommends a business repeatedly, it mentions years in business, service depth, and availability. When it only lists a business once, it falls back on address, star rating, and phone number — basic directory data with no endorsement. The difference isn't technical optimization. It's whether AI has a story to tell about you.

AI mirrors what humans already decided.

The businesses AI recommends most are the ones with decades of community presence, hundreds of reviews, and profiles across multiple platforms. Not because they optimized for AI — because they earned trust from real people, and that trust became training data.

From the data

Three things we didn't expect.

People used to search "plumber near me" on Google. Now they ask ChatGPT. They ask Google's AI. They ask Perplexity. And those tools give them a short list of names, sometimes two or three businesses, sometimes just one.
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If you're not on that list, the customer never finds you. They don't scroll past it. They just call whoever was recommended.
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This isn't about your website ranking anymore. It's about whether AI knows enough about your business to recommend you with confidence.
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Most small businesses have no idea where they stand.

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Under the hood

Curious where you stand?
We'll check.

1

We ask what your customers ask.

Questions like "best HVAC company near me" or "who do people recommend for emergency plumbing" — the queries that lead to new business.

2

You see what AI actually says.

Real responses from real platforms. Who got named, what was said about them, and whether your business appeared.

3

We share what we'd suggest.

Based on what our research shows works — not generic SEO advice, but patterns we're seeing in the data across thousands of citations.

Built by a researcher, not a marketing agency.

Cited started as a question: what does AI actually say when people ask about local businesses? We built a tool to find out, then kept going. The dataset now covers thousands of AI responses across multiple states and categories.
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We're sharing what we learn as we go. Some of it confirms what people assume. A lot of it doesn't.
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This is independent research. No venture funding, no growth hacking, no inflated claims. Just data.

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Pricing plan

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STEP 1
FREE CHECK
$0
See if AI recommends your business to customers.
Working / At Risk / Missing breakdown
Sample AI responses (receipts)
Basic competitive snapshot
STEP 2
FULL AUDIT
$199
Complete diagnostic of how AI recommends your business and tools to fix it.
Structured page to implement
Schema Markup (JSON-LD)
llms.txt file
Full receipts for all 40 queries
Prioritized action plan
Competitive analysis
Complete AI Visibility Report (PDF)
STEP 3
ONGOING MONITORING
$79/mo
AI answers change constantly. Monitoring ensures your business stays recommended.
Monthly AI visibility re-audits
Competitor movement tracking
Visibility change alerts
Updated action recommendations
Access to the audit toolkit
Historical performance tracking

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