A new industry study just put a hard number on something a lot of local business owners have suspected for a while:
AI search tools are barely recommending local businesses at all, even ones that rank well on Google.
SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index analyzed nearly 350,000 business locations and found:
ChatGPT recommended only 1.2% of them
Google's local 3-pack showed 35.9%
Gemini did better at 11%
Perplexity landed at 7.4%.
Even when a business did get mentioned, the details weren't always right: business profile accuracy came in at just 68% on ChatGPT and Perplexity, versus 100% on Gemini.
Here's the part that matters for your business: AI search doesn't rank the way Google does.
It isn't primarily weighing proximity or how long you've been open. It's weighing how confident the AI is in your information, how consistent that information is across the web, and whether it can even access your site in the first place. A business that dominates the local 3-pack can still be functionally invisible in ChatGPT or Perplexity if its site blocks AI crawlers, its listings disagree on basic facts, or it simply isn't mentioned anywhere the AI trusts.
Key Items to Check:
Check whether your site blocks AI crawlers. Sites running through Cloudflare in particular can block them by default, often without the owner ever knowing.
Make sure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) match exactly everywhere online. AI tools weigh consistency heavily, and conflicting information erodes trust fast.
Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews about your business and your top competitors, using the kind of questions a real customer would type.
If you do show up, check whether the details are accurate. Wrong hours or an old address will quietly cost you customers who never call to double-check.
Revisit this every few months. AI visibility shifts quickly, and a business that looks fine today can quietly drop out of results within a quarter.
Google Business Profile is still worth optimizing, but it's no longer the whole picture.
A growing share of your customers' searches are happening in tools that use a different set of rules to decide who gets recommended.
Finding out where you stand is a quick check; fixing what's broken protects the customers who never make it to a traditional search result at all.
[Note: PeaksLocal offers a FREE audit of your online identity with Report Card - see link below]
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