AI tools rarely agree on the best local business
Four AI engines picked four different winners in nearly half of local searches, and the ones they agreed on had their own site cited 91% of the time.
Four big AI engines almost never agree on which local business to recommend. A study by Yext looked at 491,972 local query-market cases across Gemini, OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic, using unbranded local searches like someone asking for a plumber. All four engines picked the same top business in just 4% of cases. In 48% of cases, all four picked four different businesses for the number one spot.
Alex Groberman walked through the numbers. The part that matters for your website is what happened in those rare unanimous cases. When all four engines agreed on the same top business, that winner's own website showed up among the cited sources 91% of the time.
Being the top choice in one AI system does not mean the others agree - at all.
If an AI system never identifies your company as a candidate, your review count is not going to save you.
Each engine starts from a different shortlist
The engines are not even looking at the same businesses. Across the four lists, the average query turned up 23 different businesses. Each single engine named about seven. So there are two problems to solve, getting considered at all, and then winning.
They also lean on different kinds of sources. Gemini pulled about 41.9% of its citations from first-party websites, meaning the business's own site. Anthropic was around 33.1%, Perplexity 31.6% and OpenAI 26.9%. OpenAI leaned much harder on directories and aggregators, roughly 40.9% of its cited sources. Anthropic pulled around 20.5% of its citations from review platforms, while Gemini was below 2%.
What the winners had
In Yext's matched-profile analysis, some basics were associated with being named by AI more often. Businesses with location pages were 2.9 times more likely to be named. A cover photo was 2.8 times. A clear business description, 2.3 times. A claimed profile, 2.3 times. Recent posts, 1.8 times. Ten or more profile attributes, 1.5 times. These are associations, not proof that one causes the other.
Groberman's example is two plumbing companies. One has a homepage, a contact page and a single generic Plumbing Services page. The other has separate pages for drain cleaning, water heater repair, leak detection, sewer repair, emergency plumbing, service areas, pricing, FAQs and customer examples. When an AI tool tries to answer a question about a leaking water heater in a specific city, the second company has given it far more to work with.
If you run a local business, the practical step is to stop treating one services page as enough. Write a real page for each service you sell and each area you serve, and make sure your address, what you do and your prices are stated plainly on your own site. Checking one AI tool will not tell you much either, since the four rarely agree.
Be the person who already knew
One email a day. Under three minutes. You will hear about a Google change before it shows up in your traffic.