The ChatGPT local business recommendation rate is the share of local businesses that ChatGPT names when someone asks it to recommend a type of business in a specific market. According to SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, ChatGPT recommended 1.2% of roughly 350,000 U.S. multi-location brand locations, while the same locations appeared in Google’s local 3-Pack 35.9% of the time. Every study defines “recommended” differently, so this report states the definition and population behind each number.
This report compiles published primary research released between January and September 2026, plus one consistency study run in November and December 2025. The core benchmark is SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, which tested ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity across 2,751 multi-location brands. It is compared with studies from Local Falcon, Steady Demand, SparkToro and Gumshoe, and Uberall, and with consumer surveys from SOCi and BrightLocal. Every figure was traced to the page where it was first published. Driven Metrics did not run its own survey for this report.
Four numbers frame the topic. ChatGPT recommended 1.2% of brand locations in SOCi’s 2026 index, against 11.0% for Gemini and 7.4% for Perplexity. Local Falcon found that 83% of restaurants never appeared in a ChatGPT result in February 2026, compared with 14% that never appeared on Google. ChatGPT’s business details were accurate for 68.3% of locations it described. On the demand side, 45% of U.S. consumers in BrightLocal’s 2026 survey said they use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier.
Key Statistics
- ChatGPT recommended 1.2% of U.S. multi-location brand locations in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, which analyzed about 350,000 locations across 2,751 brands.
- Google’s local 3-Pack showed the same brand locations 35.9% of the time in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, about 30 times ChatGPT’s 1.2% recommendation rate.
- Gemini recommended 11.0% and Perplexity 7.4% of multi-location brand locations in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index.
- 83% of restaurants never appeared in any ChatGPT result in Local Falcon’s February 2026 analysis of 189,905 ChatGPT results, versus 14% that never appeared on Google.
- ChatGPT business profile information was 68.3% accurate for multi-location brand locations in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, compared with 100.0% for Gemini.
- Locations recommended by ChatGPT averaged a 4.3-star rating in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index.
- Yelp appeared in the structured business-card data of 95.83% of ChatGPT local responses in Steady Demand’s August 2026 test of 2,880 prompts, while Foursquare appeared in 0.00%.
- 45% of U.S. consumers used ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for local business recommendations in BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, up from 6% in 2025.
What Is ChatGPT’s Local Business Recommendation Rate in 2026?
ChatGPT’s local business recommendation rate was 1.2% in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, released January 28, 2026. SOCi asked ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to recommend 10 businesses for a given category and market, and counted a location as “likely to be recommended” only if it appeared in the first five results. The table compares the three assistants with Google’s 3-Pack for the same set of locations.
ChatGPT Local Business Recommendation Rate vs. Gemini, Perplexity and Google, 2026
| Platform | Locations recommended or shown | Profile completeness | Profile accuracy | Average rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 1.2% | 99.9% | 68.3% | 4.3 (recommended locations) |
| Gemini | 11.0% | 97.1% | 100.0% | 3.9 (recommended locations) |
| Perplexity | 7.4% | 78.1% | 68.0% | 4.2 (recommended locations) |
| Google local 3-Pack | 35.9% (appearance rate) | 86.6% (Google Business Profile) | Not measured (source of truth) | 4.2 (all brand locations on Google) |
Source: SOCi, 310 Digital Marketing Facts & Statistics (2026 Local Visibility Index data), September 29, 2026. Population: about 350,000 U.S. locations of 2,751 multi-location brands in five industries. Gemini is grounded in Google Maps, which SOCi used as the source of truth for accuracy, so Gemini’s 100.0% is partly a product of the method. The Google rating row is the average for all brand locations, not only recommended ones, so it is a baseline rather than a like-for-like comparison.
The gap is large in either direction you read it. A 1.2% rate means ChatGPT recommended about one location in 83, and Google’s 35.9% 3-Pack rate is roughly 30 times higher. Gemini recommended about nine times as many locations as ChatGPT. SOCi reported a simple average of 6.5% across the three AI platforms in a March 2026 follow-up.
Accuracy is a separate problem from visibility. When ChatGPT did describe a location’s name, address, phone, hours, website, and ratings, those profiles were complete 99.9% of the time but accurate only 68.3% of the time, so close to one in three contained at least one error. SOCi attributes the gap to ChatGPT and Perplexity drawing on fragmented third-party sources rather than a single maintained business database.
The 1.2% figure describes multi-location brands, not every local business. The index covers brands with 50 or more locations plus property management companies with at least 10 properties. In its March 2026 methodology post, SOCi wrote that multi-location brands appear far less often in AI recommendations than local SMBs and that early patterns show models often favor single-location businesses. Comparable public data on ChatGPT recommendation rates for independent, single-location businesses was not available as of October 2026.
ChatGPT Recommendation Rate by Industry
ChatGPT’s recommendation rate ranged from 3.1% for financial services locations to 10.2% for retail locations in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index. SOCi published AI breakdowns for three of the index’s five industries.
ChatGPT Local Business Recommendation Rate by Industry, 2026
| Industry | ChatGPT | Gemini | Perplexity | Google 3-Pack appearance | ChatGPT profile accuracy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retail | 10.2% | 18.3% | 16.2% | 49.5% | 68.6% |
| Restaurants | 5.3% | 7.1% | 7.6% | 24.3% | 69.0% |
| Financial services | 3.1% | 16.4% | 9.9% | 44.0% | 70.1% |
| All industries | 1.2% | 11.0% | 7.4% | 35.9% | 68.3% |
Source: SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index statistics. Rates are the share of brand locations recommended (top five of 10) per platform. SOCi did not publish AI rates for local services or property management, the index’s other two industries. All three published ChatGPT rates sit above the 1.2% all-industry figure, so read the industry rates and the overall rate as separate benchmarks.
Retail was the most AI-visible industry on every platform, and it also had the highest Google 3-Pack rate at 49.5%. Restaurants show the narrowest gap between assistants, with all three between 5.3% and 7.6%, but the lowest 3-Pack rate at 24.3%, which SOCi attributes to density and competition.
Financial services shows the widest spread between assistants. ChatGPT recommended 3.1% of locations while Gemini recommended 16.4%, a gap of 13.3 percentage points. ChatGPT’s profile accuracy, in contrast, barely moves by industry, staying between 68.6% and 70.1%.
Individual brands can sit far from these averages. Culver’s was recommended by ChatGPT 30.0% of the time against a 5.3% restaurant benchmark, according to SOCi’s 2026 index. Batteries Plus Bulbs, the top retail brand in traditional local search, was recommended by ChatGPT only 3.4% of the time but by Gemini 38.4% of the time. In retail, only 9 of the top 20 brands in traditional local search (45%) were also in the top 20 for AI recommendations.
Why Do Studies Report Different ChatGPT Recommendation Rates?
Published ChatGPT visibility figures range from 1.2% to 17% because the studies measure different things: different denominators, prompt designs, business populations, and time periods. The table lines up the main public benchmarks.
Published ChatGPT Local Visibility Benchmarks Compared, 2026
| Study | Date | Population and sample | What counts as visible | ChatGPT result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index | Released Jan. 28, 2026 | ~350,000 U.S. locations, 2,751 multi-location brands | Location in top 5 of a 10-business list | 1.2% of locations recommended |
| Local Falcon, The AI Visibility Crisis | Data Feb. 2026; published Mar. 3, 2026 | 189,905 ChatGPT results, restaurant queries, businesses tracked in Local Falcon | Restaurant appears in at least one result | 17% ever appeared; 83% never did (Google: 86% appeared, 14% never) |
| Uberall, via sponsored Search Engine Journal post | Published Sept. 10, 2026 | 120,000+ AI mentions, 3,793 U.S. locations, 5 verticals | Unique businesses mentioned | Gemini surfaced 8x more unique restaurants than ChatGPT |
Each row uses a different denominator. A location-level rate (SOCi) cannot be compared directly with a business-ever-appeared rate (Local Falcon).
The biggest driver is the denominator. SOCi counts the share of individual brand locations that land in the top five, so a chain with hundreds of locations needs each one to be recommended in its own market. Local Falcon counts a restaurant as visible if it showed up in even one of many scans, which produces a higher number (17%) from a stricter-looking headline (83% invisible).
Two figures in circulation do not match their sources. A 12.3% ChatGPT recommendation rate is sometimes attributed to SOCi, but it does not appear in the SOCi study it is credited to; SOCi’s 2026 index reports 1.2%. Uberall’s finding that Gemini surfaced 8 times more unique businesses than ChatGPT is also often repeated as covering all local businesses, while the original analysis limits it to restaurants.
How Consistent Are ChatGPT’s Local Recommendations?
ChatGPT rarely returns the same list twice. SparkToro and Gumshoe found less than a 1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT gives the same list of brands in any two of 100 responses to the same prompt. That is why researchers now report visibility as a percentage across many runs rather than a single rank.
ChatGPT Recommendation Consistency Benchmarks, 2025 to 2026
| Measure | Result | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Chance ChatGPT returns the same list of brands in two of 100 runs | Less than 1 in 100 | SparkToro and Gumshoe, 2,961 runs across ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI, Nov. to Dec. 2025 |
| Chance of the same list in the same order | About 1 in 1,000 | SparkToro and Gumshoe, Nov. to Dec. 2025 |
| City of Hope (Los Angeles) named in ChatGPT answers for top West Coast cancer hospitals | 69 of 71 answers (97%) | SparkToro and Gumshoe, Nov. to Dec. 2025 |
| City of Hope named first in those answers | 25 of 71 answers (35%) | SparkToro and Gumshoe, Nov. to Dec. 2025 |
| Highly rated restaurant (4.8 stars, 1,005 Google reviews) missing from ChatGPT queries in its own area | Over 50% of queries | Local Falcon, Feb. 2026 |
The 35% first-mention figure is calculated from SparkToro’s published counts (25 / 71). The SparkToro prompts were mostly not local; the cancer hospital and Los Angeles Volvo dealer prompts are the local examples.
Inconsistency is not total randomness. In SparkToro’s data, the businesses that appear most often in a narrow category keep appearing even as their position changes, as City of Hope’s 97% appearance rate and 35% first-mention rate show.
For a local business, the practical metric is the share of repeated prompts that include it, measured across many runs, prompts, and locations. Rank position in a single ChatGPT answer says little. The SparkToro study was run with Gumshoe, an AI-visibility tracking company, and reflects model behavior in November and December 2025.
Where Does ChatGPT Get Local Business Data?
Yelp was the dominant structured data source in ChatGPT local answers in August 2026, appearing in the business-card grounding of 95.83% of runs in Steady Demand’s 2,880-prompt test. Foursquare, often cited as ChatGPT’s main local source, measured 0.00% on the same surface.
Sources Behind ChatGPT Local Answers, August 2026
| Provider | Visibly cited | Retrieved | Business-card grounding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yelp | 1.04% | 2.08% | 95.83% |
| TripAdvisor | 13.55% | 20.70% | 28.90% |
| OpenTable | 1.70% | 3.58% | 16.88% |
| Resy | 0.00% | 0.00% | 8.96% |
| 0.07% | 0.17% | 4.62% | |
| Apple Maps | 0.14% | 0.97% | 0.00% |
| Foursquare | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
Source: Steady Demand (Ben Fisher), August 21, 2026. Sample: 2,879 successful runs on ChatGPT’s primary surface, 12 U.S. metros, 12 verticals, collected over 72 hours in August 2026. Shares overlap because one answer can draw on several providers, so columns do not sum to 100%.
The Yelp result follows a data deal. Axios reported on July 23, 2026 that Yelp is licensing reviews, photos, and business information to OpenAI, and that ChatGPT will show Yelp content in its answers. The deal is non-exclusive, and Steady Demand describes its findings as a snapshot taken four weeks after the announcement.
The widely repeated claim that 60% to 70% of ChatGPT local results come from Foursquare traces to a May 2025 study of 50 prompts in five Spanish cities that looked only at the first-ranked result, according to Steady Demand’s provenance trace. In Steady Demand’s U.S. test, ChatGPT’s named businesses overlapped 7.5% with Google’s ranked set and 5.7% with Foursquare’s.
Across all three assistants combined, SOCi’s 2026 index found Google Maps was the largest cited source for local queries at 32.5% of citations, followed by niche sites (26.3%), brand websites (23.1%), Yelp (10.5%), and Facebook (7.6%). These shares cover the three assistants combined, not ChatGPT alone.
What Star Rating Do ChatGPT-Recommended Businesses Have?
Locations recommended by ChatGPT averaged 4.3 stars in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, only 0.1 stars above the 4.2 average Google rating for all brand locations in the study. Rating looks like an entry filter rather than a deciding factor on its own.
Ratings and Review Benchmarks for AI-Recommended Local Businesses, 2026
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average rating of locations recommended by ChatGPT | 4.3 stars | SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index |
| Average rating of locations recommended by Perplexity | 4.2 stars | SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index |
| Average rating of locations recommended by Gemini | 3.9 stars | SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index |
| Average Google rating, all multi-location brand locations | 4.2 stars | SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index |
| Average Yelp rating, all multi-location brand locations | 3.2 stars | SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index |
| Average Google reviews per brand location | 137.1 | SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index |
| Average reviews, dentists mentioned by AI vs. not mentioned | 643 vs. 253 | Uberall, 2026, five AI models combined |
| Consumers who will only use a business rated 4.0+ stars | 68% (up from 55% in 2025) | BrightLocal LCRS 2026 |
SOCi figures: SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index statistics. Uberall figures cover ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok together and come from a sponsored post written by Uberall staff.
Gemini’s recommended locations averaged 3.9 stars, lower than ChatGPT’s 4.3, even though Gemini recommended nine times as many locations. A broader recommendation set pulls the average rating down, so ChatGPT’s higher average partly reflects how few locations it names.
Review volume may matter more than rating. Uberall’s analysis found volume predicted AI mentions in all five verticals it studied, while star rating was a weaker signal in four of them. Dentists that AI models mentioned averaged 643 reviews, about 2.5 times the 253 for practices that were not mentioned.
How Many Consumers Use ChatGPT to Find Local Businesses?
52% of U.S. consumers used an AI tool to find or research a local business in the past 30 days in SOCi’s 2026 Local Discovery Index, up from 9% in 2025. ChatGPT was the most-used assistant, named by 57% of consumers who use AI assistants for local information.
Consumer Use of ChatGPT and AI Tools for Local Business Discovery, 2024 to 2026
| Metric (U.S. consumers) | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Use AI tools at least monthly | 0% | 19% | 60% | SOCi Local Discovery Index |
| Used an AI tool to find a local business in the last 30 days | Not reported | 9% | 52% | SOCi Local Discovery Index |
| Use ChatGPT or other generative AI for local recommendations | Not reported | 6% | 45% | BrightLocal LCRS |
| AI assistant users who use ChatGPT for local information | Not reported | Not reported | 57% | SOCi Local Discovery Index |
| AI users given wrong local business information at least once | Not reported | Not reported | 67% | SOCi Local Discovery Index |
| AI users who verify elsewhere after an AI recommendation | Not reported | Not reported | 81% | SOCi Local Discovery Index |
| Consumers who trust AI platforms for business recommendations | Not reported | Not reported | 40% | BrightLocal LCRS |
Sources: SOCi 2026 Local Discovery Index statistics (more than 1,000 U.S. consumers, weighted to the U.S. population) and BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 U.S. adults via SurveyMonkey, published February 11, 2026). Questions differ between the two surveys, so 52% and 45% are not the same measure. The ChatGPT 57% figure is multi-select.
Users also do not treat a ChatGPT answer as final. In Sagapixel’s observational study of 177 ChatGPT sessions, users examined an average of 3.7 businesses, only 27% looked at a single business, 45% of sessions were a single prompt, and 20.5% of the time users switched to Google to verify. Being one of the three to five businesses ChatGPT names appears to be enough to enter consideration. The study covered searches for healthcare and aesthetics services only.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of local businesses does ChatGPT recommend?
ChatGPT recommended 1.2% of U.S. multi-location brand locations in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, which tested about 350,000 locations. A location counted as recommended if it appeared in the top five of a 10-business list. No comparable public figure exists yet for independent single-location businesses.
Is ChatGPT’s recommendation rate lower than Google’s?
Yes. The same brand locations appeared in Google’s local 3-Pack 35.9% of the time in SOCi’s 2026 index, about 30 times ChatGPT’s 1.2% rate. Gemini (11.0%) and Perplexity (7.4%) also recommended more locations than ChatGPT.
Does ChatGPT use Foursquare for local recommendations?
Not visibly, as of August 2026. Steady Demand’s test of 2,880 ChatGPT prompts found Foursquare in 0.00% of citations and business cards, while Yelp appeared in the business-card data of 95.83% of runs. The popular 60% to 70% Foursquare figure comes from a small May 2025 study of five Spanish cities.
Why does ChatGPT recommend different businesses each time?
ChatGPT generates answers probabilistically, so lists change between runs. SparkToro and Gumshoe found less than a 1 in 100 chance of getting the same list of brands twice in 100 runs, and about a 1 in 1,000 chance of the same order. Visibility is best measured as the share of many repeated prompts that include a business.
What star rating do businesses recommended by ChatGPT have?
Locations recommended by ChatGPT averaged 4.3 stars in SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index. That is only 0.1 stars above the 4.2 average Google rating for all brand locations in the study, and Uberall’s 2026 analysis found review volume predicted AI mentions better than rating did.
How many people use ChatGPT to find local businesses?
45% of U.S. consumers said they use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for local recommendations in BrightLocal’s 2026 survey, up from 6% in 2025. In SOCi’s 2026 Local Discovery Index, 52% of U.S. consumers used an AI tool to find a local business in the past 30 days, and 57% of AI assistant users named ChatGPT.
How We Compiled This Data
This report compiles publicly available research published by SOCi, Local Falcon, Steady Demand, SparkToro, Uberall, BrightLocal, Sagapixel, and Axios between January and September 2026, plus SparkToro data collected in November and December 2025. Each figure was checked on the original publisher’s page in October 2026, and secondary statistics roundups were not used as citations. Where studies use different populations or definitions, the table notes say so. SOCi and BrightLocal do not publish field dates for their 2026 studies on their public pages, so those figures are dated by publication. Driven Metrics did not conduct its own survey or prompt testing for this report.
To share data or request the full source log behind this report, contact Driven Metrics.
Sources
- 310 Digital Marketing Facts & Statistics: Consumer Behavior and Digital Ecosystem Statistics (2026 Local Discovery Index and 2026 Local Visibility Index), SOCi, Kaci McBride, September 29, 2026. https://www.soci.ai/blog/marketing-statistics/
- In AI-Driven Discovery, Few Brands Are Chosen, Most Disappear (2026 Local Visibility Index press release), SOCi, Jamie Gramling, January 28, 2026. https://www.soci.ai/news/in-ai-driven-discovery-few-brands-are-chosen-most-disappear/
- AI Visibility: How Brands Get Recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, SOCi, Cora McKenzie, March 6, 2026. https://www.soci.ai/blog/the-challenge-of-ai-visibility-for-brands-part-1/
- The AI Visibility Crisis: Why 83% of Restaurants Don’t Exist in ChatGPT, Local Falcon, March 3, 2026. https://www.localfalcon.com/blog/the-ai-visibility-crisis-why-83-percent-of-restaurants-dont-exist-in-chatgpt
- ChatGPT’s Local Results Aren’t Coming From Foursquare (And Probably Never Really Were), Steady Demand, Ben Fisher, August 21, 2026. https://www.steadydemand.com/chatgpts-local-results-arent-coming-from-foursquare-and-probably-never-really-were/
- NEW Research: AIs Are Highly Inconsistent When Recommending Brands or Products, SparkToro, Rand Fishkin (with Patrick O’Donnell, Gumshoe), January 27, 2026. https://sparktoro.com/blog/new-research-ais-are-highly-inconsistent-when-recommending-brands-or-products-marketers-should-take-care-when-tracking-ai-visibility/
- 5 AI Models, 4 Signals: What 120K Mentions Reveal About Multi-Location SEO (sponsored by Uberall), Search Engine Journal, Sara Vordermeier, September 10, 2026. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-signals-multi-location-uberall-spa/587988/
- Exclusive: Yelp Partners With ChatGPT to Surface Reviews, Axios, Madison Mills, July 23, 2026. https://www.axios.com/2026/07/23/yelp-reviews-chatgpt-geo-partnership
- Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, BrightLocal, Rosie Murphy, February 11, 2026. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
- Study: How Users Find & Choose Local Services Using ChatGPT, Sagapixel, Frank Olivo, January 7, 2026 (updated March 30, 2026). https://sagapixel.com/seo/chatgpt-local-services/
