Short answer
Make your own website the best answer to the questions customers ask, keep your Google reviews coming, and check ChatGPT and Google separately, more than once. In our test of 126 local home service questions in 21 U.S. markets, asked 3 times each through OpenAI’s API (gpt-5-mini with web search, standing in for ChatGPT) and Google’s Gemini API (Nov 13, 2026), when ChatGPT named a business with a known website, it cited that business’s own site 69% of the time.
There’s no switch to flip. The list changed from one ask to the next: only 16% of the businesses it named showed up in all 3 answers to the same question. And only 46% of its picks were also Google Gemini’s picks.
What to do
- Answer the side questions on your own site. Price ranges, what you take, how fast you can come, the towns you serve. Gemini ran 8.6 Google searches per answer on average in our test; 26% were about price and 63% checked a specific business by name. If your site doesn’t say it, it can’t be the source.
- Make your website the source, not just your listings. Business websites were the biggest single source ChatGPT cited (72.3% of its citations), and when it named a business with a known website it cited that site 69% of the time (Gemini 88%). Put each answer on the page that owns the topic, in plain text, not a PDF or an image.
- Keep your Google reviews coming. Among the businesses either engine named, ChatGPT named 62% of those with 200+ Google reviews at least once in their market, against 46% of those with under 50. That’s a correlation, not proof the reviews caused it, but reviews are worth getting anyway.
- Check both, a few times, from the right place. Ask ChatGPT and Google the questions your customers ask, three times each, from a private window, and from a town you serve away from your shop. One search from your office tells you almost nothing.
- Claim your business in ChatGPT. OpenAI opened Business Hub on Nov 10, 2026. It lets you fix your details and see how often ChatGPT shows you; OpenAI says placement can’t be bought. How to do it: you can now claim your business in ChatGPT.
What the data says
46% of the businesses ChatGPT named were also named by Gemini for the same question, so being in one doesn’t mean you’re in the other. Full tables, method and CSV: Does ChatGPT recommend the same businesses as Google?
ChatGPT named about 4.9 businesses per answer and Gemini about 10.1.
Of the businesses either engine named, ChatGPT named 72% of the chains (same name in 3+ of our markets) and 45% of the local ones.
What this doesn’t prove
It’s one day of answers in 21 markets, through the APIs rather than the ChatGPT app, with no location or account attached. A real customer’s answer can differ.
Among 21 client sites, bigger sites and sites with an llms.txt file weren’t named more often. The markets were mostly junk removal, plus a few other home services.
It doesn’t prove what causes a business to get named. Review counts and being a national chain lined up with it, but those travel with other things (age, size, ad budgets). We couldn’t measure Yelp ratings or Bing Places listings at all.
Sources
- Does ChatGPT recommend the same businesses as Google? (Adimize, Nov 13, 2026; method, tables and CSV)
- Which pages get cited by AI (Bing AI citations by page type)
- Google puts Gemini 4 Hydrogen into Search (Google, Nov 12, 2026)
- If you want us to do it: AI search SEO and junk removal marketing.
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