InsightsOriginal research
How ChatGPT picks local businesses
We ran 42 searches like "best gutter cleaning in Naperville" through ChatGPT and Gemini and recorded every business they named. The review bar is lower than most owners think, review count alone does not decide it, and the two assistants rarely agree.
Key findings
Median review count of the least-reviewed business ChatGPT named in home-service searches. In 11 of 19 searches it named someone with under 30.
Reviews held by a window cleaner ChatGPT left out of a nearby-town search while naming a competitor with 77. Volume alone does not get you in.
Average overlap between ChatGPT's and Gemini's picks for the same search. They fully agreed once in 12 tries.
Share of ChatGPT's picks on October 12 that came from Angi or HomeAdvisor listings instead of Google profiles.
How we ran it
Between October 7 and 12, 2026 we asked ChatGPT and Gemini, logged out, for the best providers of a local service in a named town, for example "best fence companies in Oswego, IL." We recorded the five businesses each assistant named and looked up each one's Google rating and review count.
The sample covers 30 ChatGPT answers and 12 Gemini answers across 10 towns in DuPage, Kane and Will counties: Naperville, Aurora, Wheaton, St. Charles, Plainfield, Downers Grove, Elmhurst, Glen Ellyn, Oswego and Batavia. Trades include fencing, gutters, window cleaning, pavers, epoxy floors, garage doors, decks, concrete and pressure washing, plus med spas and law firms. Review counts below cover the 19 ChatGPT searches where we logged a count for every pick. Individual businesses are not named.
The review bar is low
Most owners assume an AI assistant only recommends the biggest names. In trades, it does not. Of 81 recommended businesses with a Google profile, 24 had fewer than 50 reviews and 10 had fewer than 25.
Review counts of businesses ChatGPT recommended
81 recommendations with a Google profile, 19 searches
Look at the least-reviewed business in each answer and the bar drops further. In gutters and window cleaning, ChatGPT named businesses with 5, 8 and 10 reviews. Med spas were the exception: in Plainfield the least-reviewed pick had 123.
Fewest reviews among businesses ChatGPT named
One bar per search. Amber: med spas.
Reviews are not enough
If reviews decided everything, the best-reviewed local business would always make the list. It often did not. In at least five searches, a well-reviewed business in or next to the searched town was left out while a business with a fraction of its reviews was named.
Left out vs. named
Red: a business ChatGPT did not name. Blue: the least-reviewed business it did name in the same search.
What the left-out businesses had in common was their websites. Homepages ran 200 to 650 words, several had no structured business data, one titled its homepage "About Us," and others never stated the towns or services they cover. Distance matters too: ChatGPT favored businesses located in the searched town, and a strong company one town over was easy to skip.
The pattern: reviews get you considered; a website that clearly states what you do, where, and for whom gets you picked.
ChatGPT and Gemini disagree
Being visible in one assistant says little about the other. In 12 matched searches, Gemini named on average 2.4 of the five businesses ChatGPT named. In Wheaton real estate law they shared one name. Gemini named all five law firms ChatGPT skipped in our first round.
Overlap between ChatGPT and Gemini
How many of ChatGPT's five picks Gemini also named
Directories now feed the answers
By October 12, logged-out ChatGPT had started pulling some picks from Angi and HomeAdvisor, showing those sites' review counts instead of Google's. It happened most in window cleaning, gutters and pavers.
Where ChatGPT's picks came from
50 recommendations, October 12, 2026
A business with no Angi profile is competing for fewer slots in those trades.
What to do about it
- Test your own town. Ask ChatGPT and Gemini, logged out, for your service in your town and the two next to it. Write down who they name.
- Close the review gap. In trades, getting past 25 to 30 Google reviews puts you in range of most lists we saw.
- Say it plainly on your site. Service and town in the page title, a real description, a services page per service, and the towns you cover.
- Label your business for machines. LocalBusiness structured data, a crawlable site, and an llms.txt file.
- Claim the directories that feed AI. A complete Google Business Profile, plus Angi or Yelp where your trade lives.
The full list is in the AI visibility checklist. To see where your business stands, see the AI visibility audit.
Limits
This is a small, local sample collected over six days. AI answers change between sessions and over time, and logged-in or personalized results can differ. We report what the assistants showed, not how their systems work internally. Review counts are as displayed on Google at the time of each search.
Questions
Does ChatGPT use Google reviews to pick local businesses?
In our logged-out tests ChatGPT showed Google ratings and review counts next to most picks, and businesses with more reviews were named more often. But review count was not enough on its own: several businesses with far more reviews than the ones named were left out of their own town's search.
How many reviews does a business need to show up in ChatGPT?
There is no fixed number. In home-service trades the least-reviewed business ChatGPT named had a median of 21 reviews across 17 searches. Med spas faced a higher bar; in one town every pick had more than 120.
Do ChatGPT and Gemini recommend the same businesses?
Usually not. Across 12 matched searches, Gemini named on average 2.4 of ChatGPT's 5 picks. A business can be visible in one assistant and invisible in the other.
Can a business pay to appear in ChatGPT's local recommendations?
Not directly in the answers we saw. What a business controls is its Google Business Profile, its review volume, and how clearly its website states what it does and where.