ChatGPT Recommends Just 1.2% of Local Businesses — Your Reviews Decide If You Make the Cut
What happened
SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index, published in January, analysed nearly 350,000 business locations across 2,751 multi-location brands to measure how often AI assistants recommend local businesses compared to traditional Google search.
The numbers are stark. ChatGPT recommended just 1.2% of businesses. Perplexity recommended 7.4%. Gemini recommended 11%. By comparison, Google's local 3-pack surfaced businesses 35.9% of the time.
Put simply: getting recommended by an AI assistant is 3 to 30 times harder than ranking in traditional local search.
The report also found that AI systems heavily favour higher-rated businesses. ChatGPT-recommended locations averaged 4.3 stars, while Google search results averaged 3.9. Only 45% of brands that perform well in Google local search also appeared in AI recommendations — proving that traditional SEO success doesn't automatically translate to AI visibility.
What this means for tradespeople
If a homeowner asks ChatGPT or Google's Gemini "find me a good plumber near Manchester," the AI picks from a tiny pool of businesses. The businesses that get recommended share three things: high star ratings, recent reviews, and complete, accurate profile data.
For tradespeople, this makes your Google Business Profile and review velocity even more important. Your profile data feeds both Google Maps and AI systems simultaneously — a strong profile with fresh reviews works double duty.
The days of scraping by with a 3.8-star average and a few reviews from 2023 are numbered. AI systems are pickier than Google search ever was, and they're becoming a bigger part of how homeowners find local services.
What to do about it
Keep your Google Business Profile fully completed and up to date — services, hours, photos, and description. AI systems pull from this data directly.
Focus on getting recent reviews consistently. A steady flow of 2-3 reviews per month matters more than a one-off push to 50.
TapReview is a £9/month tool that helps UK tradespeople get more Google reviews by sending automated review requests via WhatsApp and SMS after every job — building exactly the kind of consistent review velocity that AI systems reward.
Source: Search Engine Land / SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index