Guides
How ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude find and choose local businesses. Every number comes from our weekly measurements or from a checked source, with its date.
The shift from search to AI
- Are AI assistants replacing Google for finding contractors? Not yet, but they are changing itWhat the published data says about AI Overviews, zero-click searches, and visits from AI assistants, what Google itself reports, and why a contractor now has two channels to watch instead of one.Published
- How many people use ChatGPT and other AI assistants to find local servicesWhat the published surveys say about how many Americans use ChatGPT, how many use AI assistants to find local businesses and home-services pros, and what each figure does and does not measure.Published
What our data shows
- Whether ChatGPT can recommend a business that does not rank on Google, and what else the engines readChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity each document their own search crawler. What the engines document, what they read besides Google, and what our Phoenix measurements show so far.Published
- Why your business ranks on Google but ChatGPT does not mention itGoogle visibility does not carry over to AI answers on its own. How often Phoenix home-services businesses that Google shows go unnamed by the AI engines, why it happens, and what an owner can check.Published
- The websites AI assistants cite when recommending Phoenix contractorsThe sites AI assistants link when they answer questions about hiring a Phoenix contractor, measured in weekly runs that so far cover Claude and Gemini on window and door questions, and what that means for the business being recommended.Published
- Why AI engines can recommend different contractors for the same questionChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude each search the web their own way, so they can name different contractors for the same question. Why, what our first Phoenix measurement of Claude and Gemini found, and what it means for a business that wants to be named on all of them.Published
How the engines find and choose businesses
- How to check whether ChatGPT recommends your businessA practical way to test whether ChatGPT names, cites, or recommends your business, what a single check can and cannot tell you, and how to get a measured answer across the AI engines.Published
- How ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude find local businesses through search indexes, crawlers, and citationsThe mechanics behind an AI recommendation: training data versus live search, each engine's documented crawler, what a citation means, and the checks a local business can run on its own site.Published
- llms.txt and AI crawler access: a technical guide for business websitesWhich AI crawlers a local business should allow, which it can safely block, how hosts and CDNs shut them out by accident, and what llms.txt does and does not do.Published
- Structured data for AI visibility: what business details the engines readWhat schema.org markup can and cannot do for a local contractor in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude, which business details matter, and why consistency across the web matters more than the markup itself.Published