On September 23, 2026 Suff Digital checked 139,294 Google Maps listings, covering 20 local services in 79 US cities, against ChatGPT and Gemini answers to "What are the best [service] in [city]?". ChatGPT recommended 12.3% of businesses that link a website from their listing and 3.2% of those that do not, a 3.9x gap. On Gemini the gap was 10.5x, and among chiropractors ChatGPT's gap was 8.8x, the widest of the 20 services.
The numbers
- 3.9x on ChatGPT. 12.3% of listings with a website were recommended, against 3.2% without one.
- 10.5x on Gemini. 3% with a website, 0.3% without. A business with no website was named about three times in a thousand.
- Ranking on Maps does not close the gap. Among the top 20 Maps results, businesses with a website were recommended 28.7% of the time and those without 9.3%.
- 18.7% of listings have no website. Coverage is lowest among auto repair shops, where 62.4% link one.
- The gap appears in all 20 services. It is widest for chiropractors (8.8x), HVAC companies (7.7x), moving companies (7.4x) and real estate agents (7.1x), and narrowest for locksmiths (2x).
| Service | With a website | Without | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chiropractor | 12.9% | 1.5% | 8.8x |
| HVAC company | 13.6% | 1.8% | 7.7x |
| Dentist | 12.6% | 2.2% | 5.7x |
| Personal injury lawyer | 12.1% | 2.4% | 5.1x |
| Emergency plumber | 12.9% | 4.2% | 3.1x |
| Accountant | 11.8% | 4.4% | 2.7x |
Share of Google Maps listings ChatGPT recommended, selected services. Source: Suff Digital, September 2026.
Read the table sideways
The with-website column barely moves. Chiropractors, dentists, plumbers and HVAC companies with a website all land between 12% and 14%. What changes from trade to trade is how badly the businesses without one do. In the services where customers compare credentials, treatments and prices before they call, an assistant with nothing to read leaves the business out almost entirely: 1.5% for chiropractors, 1.8% for HVAC.
The study shows a correlation, not a cause. Businesses that maintain a website probably also collect more reviews and keep their details more consistent, and those signals travel together. But the direction matches what other research has found. SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index, covering more than 350,000 locations of 2,751 multi-location brands, found ChatGPT recommended 1.2% of locations against a 35.9% appearance rate in Google's local 3-pack. Being findable on Google and being named by an assistant are two different tests.
And customers are taking the second test seriously. BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 US adults found 45% had used an AI tool for local business recommendations in the past year, up from 6% the year before.
Why it matters for your business
A website takes a local business from a 3.2% chance of being named by ChatGPT to 12.3%. It does not get the business named: 87.7% of businesses with a website were still left out of the answer. So treat the website as the entry ticket and then look at what it says.
An assistant recommends what it can confirm, and it confirms from text: a page for each service you offer, the towns you actually cover named one by one, your hours, one phone number used everywhere, and the credentials a customer would check, written out rather than shown as a badge. Link the site from your Google Business Profile, because that link is what ties the listing an assistant finds to the page it reads.
Then do what the study did. Ask ChatGPT and Gemini "What are the best [your service] in [your city]?" once a month, note who is named, and read the pages of the businesses that are. In a chiropractic or HVAC market, the difference between being named and not is often a page you have not written yet.
Sources
- Local Businesses With a Website Are 3.9x More Likely to Be Recommended by ChatGPT (Suff Digital, September 2026)
- SOCi's LVI Report Reveals How AI Is Rewriting Local Search Visibility (Localogy, January 2026)
- Half of consumers are asking AI for business recommendations (BrightLocal, March 2026)
