How do AI search tools decide which local businesses to recommend?

Owners now ask a fair question: if a customer types “who’s the best roofer near me” into ChatGPT instead of Google, will my business come up? The honest answer is that nobody outside these companies knows exactly how each one picks local businesses. But the platforms have published enough to separate what is known from what is guesswork.

A fast-growing minority. BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, based on 1,002 US adults, found use of ChatGPT and other AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% to 45%, making AI the third most used source of business recommendations⁸. In the same survey, 40% said they trust AI platforms to recommend businesses and 32% said they do not⁸.

Inside Google, AI summaries change click behavior. Pew Research tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. About 18% of their Google searches produced an AI summary. When one appeared, users clicked a regular result in 8% of visits, against 15% when none appeared, and clicked a link inside the summary in just 1% of visits⁹. Longer, question-style searches were much more likely to trigger a summary: 60% of searches starting with “who,” “what,” “when” or “why” did⁹.

Whitespark’s 2026 report adds an expert view: local discovery “is still predominantly done through Google’s local results” because they work better for local intent than chatbot answers⁷. That is opinion, but it fits the data. AI is growing fast. The Map Pack is still where most local calls start.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google is the most open about this. Its guidance says “the best practices for SEO remain relevant” and “there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary”¹. Its newer guide explains why: the features use retrieval-augmented generation, which relies “on our core Search ranking systems to retrieve relevant, up-to-date web pages,” and “query fan-out,” which runs several related searches at once². For local businesses, Google says Business Profiles “can help your products and services to be visible in both AI responses and other Google Search results”².

Google also lists what you can ignore: llms.txt files and other special markup, “chunking” content into tiny pieces, rewriting content just for AI, and “seeking inauthentic ‘mentions’”². And it addresses the new acronyms directly: “From Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO”².

ChatGPT search

OpenAI’s help page says “ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers” and rewrites your question into targeted queries for them³. Its example: someone near San Francisco asking for “good restaurants near me” may become the query “top restaurants San Francisco”³. ChatGPT may also share approximate location “with trusted third-party providers that help provide more local information, such as nearby business listings”³. OpenAI does not name those providers on that page, so any claim that ChatGPT uses one specific directory should be treated as unverified.

To be eligible, OpenAI says to “allow OAI-Searchbot to crawl the site” and let traffic from its published IP addresses through your host or CDN³. Sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”⁴. OpenAI also says placement “is not guaranteed” and that results use “multiple factors” it does not list³.

Perplexity

Perplexity says PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in its results and “is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models”⁵. It recommends allowing the bot in robots.txt and permitting its IP ranges, and warns that firewalls may need to whitelist it⁵. A web host’s default bot blocking can quietly remove a business from Perplexity answers.

Gemini

Google’s developer documentation shows Gemini models can be grounded in Google Maps, which it describes as a database of “over 250 million places worldwide,” pulling places, reviews, photos, addresses and hours⁶. That is developer documentation, not a description of every Gemini answer, but it points the same way as everything else: for Google’s AI, your Business Profile is the source of truth.

Whitespark’s 2026 survey added an AI search score for each factor for the first time. The author notes the scores are ambiguous, since a Google-only signal might matter for Gemini and not at all for ChatGPT⁷. The top 10⁷:

The pattern: experts believe AI tools lean harder on what other credible sites say about you than on your own profile tweaks. Posts, photo counts and keywords in owner replies sit near the bottom⁷.

Note the tension with Google’s guidance on “best of” lists. Being on real editorial lists earned by good work is one thing. Paying for placement on fake “top 10” pages, or creating your own, is the kind of inauthentic mention Google says is not helpful².

1. Get the foundations right, because every AI tool reads them. Complete, accurate Business Profile. Same name, address, phone and hours on your site, Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp and your trade association. Google lists “checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date” among its AI feature best practices¹.

2. Write answer-first service pages. Put the direct answer near the top: what you do, where, typical price range, how fast you come. Then the detail. This is just good writing. Google says pages organized “by paragraphs and sections, along with headings” help readers, and that there is no ideal length².

3. Say things only you can say. Google’s guide favors “non-commodity content” with “unique expert or experienced takes” over generic tips². A roofer’s write-up of what hail actually does to 20-year-old shingles in your county beats “10 signs you need a new roof.”

4. Earn real mentions. Local news, trade associations, supplier dealer pages, chamber listings and genuine “best of” coverage line up with the experts’ top factors⁷.

5. Keep the reviews coming. A high Google rating is a top-10 AI factor⁷, and 82% of consumers in BrightLocal’s survey read AI-generated review summaries⁸. Those summaries are built from your reviews.

6. Let the crawlers in. Check robots.txt and your firewall for OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot³⁵. For Google, AI features follow normal Googlebot rules¹.

7. Do not buy shortcuts. Mass-produced pages for every query variation violate Google’s scaled content policy². Google also warns that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems².

For Google, AI Overview and AI Mode traffic is counted inside the normal Search Console performance report, and Google points to a Generative AI performance report in Search Console¹². For ChatGPT and Perplexity there is no owner dashboard, so a manual sample is the honest method.

Worked example (illustrative inputs). A plumber writes 20 questions customers really ask, such as “who does same-day water heater replacement in Westerville.” Each month they run each question in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, twice, from their service area.

• Checks per month: 20 questions x 3 platforms x 2 runs = 120.
• Month 1: the business is named in 18 answers. Mention rate: 18 / 120 = 15%.
• Month 4, after fixing listings and adding 3 real job write-ups per service page: named in 33 answers. Mention rate: 33 / 120 = 27.5%.

Treat the numbers as directional. OpenAI says results vary with location and saved memories³, so two people asking the same question can see different businesses. Log which sources each answer cites. Those citations show which sites to fix or earn a place on.

• Ranking factors. No AI platform publishes how it picks local businesses. OpenAI says only “multiple factors”³.
• ChatGPT’s data providers. OpenAI says it shares approximate location with third-party providers of local information such as business listings, but does not name those local providers on its help page³.
• Stability. The same question can return different businesses for different users³.
• Traffic value. Google says clicks from pages with AI Overviews are “higher quality”¹. Pew found fewer clicks overall⁹. Both can be true, and no public data covers local service calls specifically.

• AI tools mostly retrieve from search indexes and map data. Strong local SEO is the foundation¹².
• Google says no special files, markup or “AEO” tricks are needed for its AI features¹².
• Allow OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, or those tools cannot show your site³⁴⁵.
• Experts think third-party mentions and reviews matter most for AI answers⁷.
• Measure with a fixed set of real customer questions each month, and treat any vendor’s “AI ranking score” with caution².