Ask ChatGPT for the best plumber in your city. It'll give you a name. Maybe two. Now ask yourself: is your business one of them?
BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey just dropped, and the headline number is hard to ignore: 45% of consumers have used AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity to find local business recommendations in the past year.
That number was 6% in 2025.
Not 6% growth. It went from 6% to 45% in twelve months. AI is now the third most-used discovery channel for local businesses, behind only Google and Facebook. It already passed Yelp and TripAdvisor.
Your customers are already asking AI
The age group leading adoption is 30-44 year olds, at 64%. If you run a home services company, these are your buyers. Homeowners looking for HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical, pest control, garage doors, and restoration. They are typing "who's the best HVAC company near me?" into ChatGPT instead of Google, and ChatGPT is giving them one answer. The operating implications are covered in How Home Services Brands Get Recommended by AI.
Here's how standalone AI search market share breaks down right now, per First Page Sage (May 2026):
- ChatGPT: 60.6% market share
- Google Gemini: 15.1% (growing 12% quarter over quarter)
- Microsoft Copilot: 12.5%
- Perplexity: 5.4%
- Claude: 5.0%
ChatGPT hit 800 million weekly active users by October 2025, up from around 400 million in early 2025.
Google also announced at I/O 2026 that AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly users and that AI Overviews can now move directly into AI Mode conversations. Google review usage dropped from 83% to 71% year over year. The traffic is shifting. For the broader discovery forecast, read What Is the Future of Local Search?.
The Google reviews problem
Here's where it gets uncomfortable for most businesses.
ChatGPT does not appear to have direct access to your Google reviews.
Google's review ecosystem is a controlled data layer. When ChatGPT needs to evaluate your business, reporting indicates it searches Bing-indexed web results, pulls from Foursquare, checks Yelp, scans the BBB, reads industry directories, and crawls your website. It may reference Google ratings when another crawled page cites them, but it is not the same as Gemini using Google's own local data.
LocalFalcon analyzed 189,905 ChatGPT search results and compared them to over 16 million Google results. The finding: 83% of restaurants were not visible on ChatGPT, versus just 14% absent from Google results.
If your reputation strategy is "get more Google reviews," you have a strong Google strategy and an incomplete AI visibility strategy.
This doesn't mean Google reviews don't matter. They do, for Google. But AI visibility requires a broader approach.
What AI assistants actually look for
Each AI tool pulls from different sources, but they all evaluate the same types of signals when deciding who to recommend. For the source-by-source breakdown, read Each AI Search Engine Trusts Different Sources.
Review presence across multiple platforms. AI systems read the actual text of reviews rather than star ratings alone. They look for patterns in language, consistency across platforms, and volume. A business with 500 Google reviews and nothing on Yelp, BBB, or Foursquare looks one-dimensional to an AI engine that depends on broader web retrieval. A business with 200 reviews spread across four platforms looks easier to verify.
Citation consistency. Your business name, address, and phone number need to match everywhere. AI cross-references multiple sources. When it finds "Smith Plumbing" on your website, "Smith's Plumbing LLC" on Yelp, and "Smith Plumbing Co" in the BBB, it loses confidence. Inconsistencies signal unreliable data, and AI systems avoid recommending businesses they aren't confident about.
Structured data. JSON-LD schema on your website gives AI systems a clean version of what your business does, where you operate, your hours, your services, and your service areas. Without it, the model has to infer more from messy page content.
Content depth. A website with a homepage and a contact page gives AI nothing to work with. Detailed service pages, location pages, and FAQ content give the model raw material to understand your business and present it accurately.
Third-party validation. This is the one most businesses miss. While Yext's research shows 86% of AI citations come from brand-managed sources (your website, directories, review profiles), AI still cross-references independent sources like Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, and industry publications. If nobody is talking about you outside your own properties, the model has less reason to trust you.
The trust factor
BrightLocal's data shows something that might surprise you: 63% of active AI users already trust AI recommendations for local businesses. And 42% of all consumers trust AI recommendations as much as traditional online reviews.
But they're not blindly trusting. 88% of AI users fact-check the recommendations, either by verifying the source (37%) or checking if the review is legitimate (51%). 97% double-check AI recommendations against real reviews at least sometimes.
This means AI is becoming the first step in the decision process, not the last one. The AI recommends you, and then the consumer goes and verifies. If they find a strong review profile when they check, you win the customer. If they find a thin profile with outdated reviews, they move on.
Both layers matter. You need to show up in the AI recommendation AND have a credible review presence when the consumer fact-checks.
What to do about it
Build reviews beyond Google. This is the most practical first move. If your entire review strategy is Google-only, you are giving AI systems fewer sources to compare. Get reviews on Yelp, BBB, Foursquare, Facebook, and industry-specific platforms for your vertical.
Audit your citations. Search for your business name across Bing, Foursquare, Yelp, BBB, and your key directories. Are the name, address, and phone number identical everywhere? Fix any inconsistencies. This is tedious but foundational.
Add structured data to your website. Implement LocalBusiness schema with your services, service areas, hours, contact information, and sameAs links to verified profiles. Use review-related markup only when the page and source fit current Google guidelines.
Check your AI visibility right now. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Ask each one to recommend businesses in your category in your market. See if you show up. See who does. That is your actual competitive set in 2026, and it probably looks different from your Google rankings.
Invest in content depth. Every service you offer should have its own page with real detail about what you do and where you do it. FAQ pages that answer the questions your customers actually ask give AI systems the material they need to recommend you accurately.
The window is open
Most local businesses haven't figured any of this out yet. The ones that move now are building an advantage that compounds. AI systems learn patterns over time, and early movers in each market are setting the baseline that competitors will have to beat.
Consumer behavior already moved from 6% AI adoption in 2025 to 45% in 2026. The platforms are still learning category winners market by market.
That gives local operators a short period where execution speed can reset competitive position.
Check where your business appears today with the free Cheers AI Visibility Score.
Sources
- BrightLocal: Local Consumer Review Survey 2026
- BrightLocal: AI Trust in Local Search
- First Page Sage: Top Generative AI Chatbots (May 2026)
- LocalFalcon: The AI Visibility Crisis
- Search Engine Land: SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index Coverage
- TechCrunch: ChatGPT at 800M Weekly Active Users
- Google: A New Era for AI Search (I/O 2026)
- Hook Agency: Brand Authority and AI Search
Dylan Allen-Arnegård is the CEO of Cheers, the local search platform for service businesses.