The short version
ChatGPT searches the web, reads a handful of pages about local businesses, and names the ones those pages describe most clearly and most positively. It doesn’t pick at random, but it isn’t a fixed list either, and the answer can change from one day to the next.
Step by step
- A customer asks a question, like “best coffee near Newtown” or “who can fix my teeth today?”.
- The assistant searches. ChatGPT search uses web results, including Bing’s index. Claude can search the web too.
- It reads what comes back: your website, your listings, review sites, local guides and news.
- It writes a short answer and usually names only a few businesses, often with a reason.
What seems to count
Nobody outside the AI companies knows the exact recipe, so be careful of anyone who says they do. These are the things that are most plausible, and the ones we show in our reports:
- Clear information on your own website.
- The same details on every site that lists you.
- Positive, recent reviews.
- Mentions on other sites that the assistant treats as trustworthy.
- Being easy for the assistant’s crawler to read.
Inside our data
We keep every answer we collect. These numbers come from our own scan database: 10 areas (a trade in a suburb, like “hairdressers in Leichhardt”), asked of ChatGPT and Claude with three different questions each, for 60 stored answers. The answers were collected between 27 October 2026 and 27 October 2026.
- 60 answers across 10 areas. Each area has 6: three questions, asked of each of the two assistants.
- 4.5 businesses named per answer on average. The fewest was 1 and the most was 12.
- 139 different businesses named in total, counting a business once per area.
- The top pick came up again and again. In each area, the business recommended most often was recommended in 4.5 of the 6 answers on average. In 9 of 10 areas it was recommended in at least 4 of 6.
How we calculated these: for each area we took the latest stored answer for each assistant and question (six answers). “Named” counts the businesses listed in an answer. “Recommended” counts the answers where the assistant praised that business, not just mentioned it, as decided by a separate checking step. We name no businesses here. These are Inner West suburbs, so they may not describe your area.
What that tells you
A few businesses get named again and again, and most don’t get named at all. That is why being easy to find and trust matters early: the businesses that are recommended today are the ones the assistant keeps coming back to. It is not a promise about the future. The answers change.
Check your own business
Our free check shows how often ChatGPT and Claude recommended your business in the answers we have stored, and who they named instead. Want to know what to do about it? Start with how to get recommended by ChatGPT.