Research
What we have measured about how AI assistants decide which local business to name, with the methods and the limits included.
- AI names local businesses more often in the nearby towns their website names We asked Google's Gemini who to call for the same trade in neighbouring towns, then read the named businesses' homepages and the web addresses of their pages to see which of those towns each one names. 1,507 comparisons. October 11, 2026 · 14 min read
- We check 17 things on a local business website. Eight of them go with AI naming you. We scanned 203 small local businesses. Then we asked AI assistants who they recommend in 11 towns and compared the results. The websites AI names score 16.5 to 26.5 points higher on eight of them. Once AI names you, none of the 17 clearly tracked where it put you. September 1, 2026 · 9 min read
- How AI Reads a Small Business Website Your website is two documents, and AI usually gets the thin one. Here is how to see which you have in thirty seconds, and what we measured about which parts of the thick one matter. August 14, 2026 · 18 min read
- AI is reading local businesses' own websites, not their Yelp pages We recorded the websites AI credited while answering 5363 questions about local trades. 85% were a business's own website. Yelp never came up once. August 3, 2026 · 8 min read
- AI names local businesses more often for the jobs their website names We did not ask AI for "a plumber". We asked who to call for one job at a time, like drain cleaning. We put 120 questions like that to AI across 10 local markets and checked whose website named that job. 1,164 comparisons. July 31, 2026 · 14 min read
Also published: the Weekly Spotlight, one market read closely every week.