By Danny Goodwin
Publication Date: 2026-01-28 20:27:00
Most brands performing well in traditional local search fail to appear in results from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, according to SOCi’s newly released 2026 local visibility index.
- Also of note: business profile information was only about 68% accurate on ChatGPT and Perplexity, compared with 100% accuracy on Gemini, which is grounded in Google Maps.
AI limits local visibility. Performance data from nearly 350,000 locations across 2,751 multi-location brands was analyzed to measure how often locations are surfaced or recommended by AI assistants. Turns out, AI platforms are far more selective than Google’s local results:
- 1.2% of locations were recommended by ChatGPT, 11% by Gemini, and 7.4% by Perplexity.
- By comparison, brands appeared in Google’s local 3-pack 35.9% of the time.
- AI visibility is three to 30 times harder to achieve than ranking well in traditional local search, SOCi estimated.
AI and Google visibility differ. Across…
