I measured whether AI assistants actually recommend local businesses. 27–66% never came up.

Customers increasingly ask ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity for "the best dentist near me" instead of Googling. Those answers name only a handful of businesses. I wanted hard data on how many local businesses actually make that shortlist — so I built a tool that asks the three big AI engines 30 real customer-style questions per market and counts every recommendation.

I ran it on 265 businesses across 3 US cities (Dallas, Miami, Phoenix) and 3 industries (dental, medspa, plastic surgery) — 690 AI answers total, all stored so the numbers can be rechecked.

What I found:

- 27% to 66% of tracked businesses never appeared in a single AI answer, depending on city and industry.

- In Dallas, 66% of dentists were invisible; in Phoenix, "only" 27%. Same profession — your city changes your odds.

- Even the most-visible business in each market was far from dominant. Nobody owns AI recommendations yet — the shelf is wide open.

Full breakdown by city + industry, plus which sources (Yelp, Healthgrades…) the engines actually cite: https://recosignal.com/benchmarks

Happy to answer questions about the method (we measure frequency, not "rank" — and why that distinction matters).