Where the AI looks before it recommends a business: 25 questions, 163 sources, one day
Sixty-seven percent. On the evening of September 8, 2026, three AI assistants answered 25 buying questions about local trades around Sacramento, the kind a customer types when they need somebody today. Between them they cited 163 sources. 110 of those citations, 67 percent, were businesses’ own websites, spread across 89 different sites. The remaining 53 were platforms and directories, and 20 of those 53 were Google Maps links inside a single answer.
What this is, and what it is not
This is one evening, one region, three assistants and twenty-five questions. It is a sample and a small one. Nothing here is a trend, because one evening cannot show a trend.
The three did not do the same amount of work. ChatGPT answered all 25 questions. Google AI Overviews appeared on 13 of them and showed nothing at all on the other 12. Perplexity answered 2 and failed on the other 23, and both of its answers are counted here.
AI assistants do not answer the same question the same way twice. Ask any of the twenty-five questions below again tomorrow, or from a different address, and the answer can name different businesses and cite different sources. The same question can get no AI Overview one day and one the next.
The answers were collected remotely by a tracking tool called ZipTie, not typed into a browser sitting in Sacramento. That is a real limit on a local question, because location changes local answers.
What the three assistants cited
| Source | Citations | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Businesses’ own websites, across 89 different sites | 110 | 67% |
| Google pages, all twenty inside one answer | 20 | 12% |
| Yelp | 10 | 6% |
| Expertise.com | 3 | 2% |
| 3 | 2% | |
| Roseville Chamber directory | 2 | 1% |
| QuickBooks ProAdvisor directory | 2 | 1% |
| 13 other platforms and directories, one citation each | 13 | 8% |
| Total | 163 |
Shares are rounded to the nearest whole number, so the column does not add to 100.
The Google row is one answer, not a pattern. All 20 google.com citations sit inside a single AI Overview, the one for “My AC stopped working in Sacramento, who should I call?”, which linked to Google Maps listings twenty times. Across the other 24 questions, Google’s own pages were cited zero times.
By assistant
The three read differently, and by more than the headline suggests.
Perplexity cited 33 sources across its two answers, and 28 of them, 85 percent, were businesses’ own websites. ChatGPT cited 33 across its 25 answers, of which 24 were own websites, 73 percent. Google AI Overviews cited 97 across its 13 answers, of which 58 were own websites, 60 percent, and 75 percent with that one answer’s twenty Maps links set aside.
Counting citations is not the same as counting recommendations, and the second is what a customer acts on. ChatGPT named 124 businesses across its 25 answers, about five per answer, and told the customer which one to start with in 22 of the 25. Google AI Overviews named 52 businesses across its 13 answers and stated a preference in 2 of them.
By trade
| Trade | Questions | Overview shown | Citations | Own sites | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dental | 4 | 2 | 38 | 30 | 79% |
| Electrical | 4 | 1 | 27 | 20 | 74% |
| Bookkeeping | 4 | 3 | 29 | 21 | 72% |
| Plumbing | 4 | 3 | 19 | 13 | 68% |
| Roofing | 2 | 1 | 8 | 7 | 88% |
| HVAC | 5 | 3 | 41 | 19 | 46% |
| Landscaping | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| Auto repair | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | none captured |
HVAC is the low row because the Maps answer is in it. Take those 20 links out and the other four HVAC questions give 19 own websites out of 21 citations, 90 percent. The one landscaping citation was a directory, so no landscaper’s own website was cited at all. The auto repair question produced no captured sources on either side, although ChatGPT answered it and named four shops.
For 12 of the 25 questions Google showed no AI Overview at all. For those twelve, ChatGPT and Perplexity were the only assistants doing any recommending.
The twenty-five questions
- Who should I call for a burst pipe in Sacramento tonight?
- Best plumber in Elk Grove for a water heater replacement
- Recommend a drain cleaning company in Sacramento
- Who is a reliable plumber in Roseville CA?
- My AC stopped working in Sacramento, who should I call?
- Best HVAC repair company in Roseville CA
- Who installs heat pumps in Folsom CA?
- Recommend an air conditioning company in Elk Grove
- Who is a good electrician in Sacramento for a panel upgrade?
- Recommend an electrician in Citrus Heights
- Best electrician in Folsom for EV charger installation
- I need an electrician in Rancho Cordova today, who should I call?
- Dentist in Roseville taking new patients
- Best family dentist in Elk Grove
- Who is a good dentist in Sacramento for a dental implant?
- Recommend a pediatric dentist in Folsom
- Recommend a bookkeeper for a small contractor in Sacramento
- Best bookkeeping service for a small business in Roseville CA
- Who does bookkeeping for dental practices in Sacramento?
- QuickBooks bookkeeper near Elk Grove for a plumbing company
- Best roofing company in Sacramento for a roof replacement
- Who should I call for a roof leak in Roseville CA?
- Recommend a landscaping company in Elk Grove
- Best auto repair shop in Sacramento for a Toyota
- Recommend an HVAC company in Citrus Heights for a furnace replacement
What an owner can take from this
Across those twenty-five answers, all three assistants read businesses’ own websites more than everything else put together, and the one that read them least was Google’s. Yelp came next at 10 citations, across two of its hosts. Angi, HomeAdvisor and HomeGuide were cited once each, as were ten other platforms and directories.
Twenty-five questions on one evening cannot tell you what to do about your website. They can tell you that when an AI assistant went looking for a business to recommend, the business’s own site was, by a wide margin, the thing it read.
Method
The tool was ZipTie, on a trial account, in a project called Sacramento AI Referral Report.
The engines were ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. ChatGPT answered all 25 questions. Google AI Overviews appeared on 13 and showed nothing on the other 12. Perplexity answered 2, the Rancho Cordova electrician question and the Elk Grove family dentist question, and failed on the other 23. Its two answers are included in every count on this page.
The date was September 8, 2026, Pacific time. Two checks ran that evening: the first twenty questions at 7:16 PM, and the five that were added to the set afterward at 8:32 PM. One evening, not a daily average.
The questions were the twenty-five listed above, covering plumbing, HVAC, electrical, dental, bookkeeping, roofing, landscaping and auto repair across Sacramento, Elk Grove, Roseville, Folsom, Citrus Heights and Rancho Cordova.
Sources are counted one at a time. Every URL an assistant cited under an answer counts once, each time it is cited, so a domain cited in four answers counts four times. That gives 163 citations across 109 domains: 97 from Google AI Overviews, 33 from ChatGPT and 33 from Perplexity. The per-assistant and per-trade figures are read from the tracker’s per-check records for all 25 questions.
The ChatGPT count leaves something out. The tracker captured source links on only 14 of ChatGPT’s 25 answers, because ChatGPT often answers a question like these with a card of businesses and their ratings rather than with links. Its 33 citations understate what it read, and its share of own websites, 73 percent, is a share of what was captured.
All 20 google.com citations came from one AI Overview, which linked to Google Maps listings twenty times. That answer cited 27 sources in all, the other seven being businesses’ own sites. It is why the HVAC row reads 46 percent.
We sorted the sources by hand into two groups: a business’s own website, or a platform or
directory. Twenty domains went into the second group, and here is the full list so anyone can
check our sorting: google.com, m.yelp.com, www.yelp.com, expertise.com, reddit.com,
the Roseville Chamber’s business directory, the QuickBooks ProAdvisor directory, Angi,
HomeAdvisor, Checkatrade, HomeGuide, Clutch, Opencare, a dental plan’s find-a-dentist tool, a
county dental society’s member list, dentistrydirectories.com, californialocal.com, a
neighborhood association’s site, a water district’s site and a heating manufacturer’s dealer
locator. Everything else, 89 domains and 110 citations, is a business’s own website.
Yelp is two of those twenty because the assistants cited two of its hosts, the mobile one seven times and the main one three.
No business is named in this post, and the list of the 89 business websites is not published. The point is the shape of the count, not who was in it.
If we got something wrong
If your business appeared in one of these answers, or you think we put one of the twenty sites above in the wrong group, tell us through the contact form. We will correct it and note the correction here.
We will run the same questions again and publish what changes. If you want to know what the answers look like for your area or your trade, ask.