Local AI visibility | Paigent research, October 2026

    Cited isn't recommended.

    How ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode decide which businesses they name, and how multi-location brands can plan their websites for it.

    14-page PDF October 2026 4 AI engines
    ChatGPTPerplexityGeminiGoogle AI Mode
    Why this matters now

    An AI engine takes one sentence from your site.

    When someone asks an AI engine for a dentist, a lender or a painter nearby, the engine reads a handful of pages, lifts a sentence from each and writes a short answer. Some businesses are named in that answer. Many more are only listed as sources underneath it.

    We tracked which pages the engines cited, what they took from them, and which businesses made it into the answer itself. The gap between cited and recommended is where local visibility is won or lost.

    2,628

    AI citations tracked across four engines

    ~133

    characters in a typical AI Mode source snippet: one sentence

    83%

    of AI Mode snippets from business sites don't contain the business's name

    65–100%

    of cited pages carry the topic in their title or URL

    What's inside

    The full report shows you

    • How a question's intent (buying, location, informational, support) decides whether an engine names a business or just uses it as a source
    • Why blogs earn citations, but service and location pages earn recommendations
    • What each of the four engines seems to reward, from search fan-out to review text in snippets
    • How engines stitch answers across your pages, and where they stretch vague statements into claims you never made
    • A six-step plan for multi-location brands, with before-and-after sentence rewrites
    A preview of the findings

    Engines cite many sources. They recommend only a few.

    01

    The question's intent decides who gets named

    A buying question builds a shortlist of businesses. An informational question uses business pages as anonymous sources.

    02

    Service and location pages earn the recommendation

    For buying questions, service and product pages made up 45–60% of the citations taken from a business's own site; blog posts 9–24%.

    03

    Engines stitch answers across your pages

    Most cited sentences covered a single part of the question. The engine joins the rest itself, and sometimes turns a vague line into a specific claim.

    Share of cited business sites also named in the answer

    Buying questions Informational questions
    ChatGPT73% · 36%
    Perplexity55% · 1%
    Gemini49% · 0%
    Google AI Mode39% · n/a*

    *Too few informational Google AI Mode citations to report.

    From the playbook

    One fact per sentence, in your own voice.

    Before

    “We accept most insurances.”

    After

    “Our Albany office accepts Delta Dental PPO, Cigna and Aetna for Invisalign and braces.”

    Example sentences are illustrative.

    Get the data behind every finding

    The full 14-page report covers what each engine seems to reward, how answers get stitched across pages, and a six-step plan for multi-location brands.

    Method: Live AI answers captured in October 2026 from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode across US local markets in dental, mortgage and home services: 2,628 citations, each tagged by page type, plus a hand-checked study of multi-part local questions.

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