AI Now Recommends Local Businesses. Most Are Invisible. (opens in new tab)

Forty-five percent of consumers now use an AI assistant to find a local service, up from six percent a year ago. In the same window, ChatGPT was measured recommending just 1.2 percent of all local business locations. Put those two numbers next to each other and you have the local-search story of 2026 in a sentence: people are asking AI which plumber, which restaurant, which estate agent to use, and for almost every business the answer it gives does not include them. The old game was ranking o...