Research

How AI decides who to recommend. Measured, not guessed.

We run live panels across six engines and publish what we find, graded by how strong the evidence is. The vendors write listicles that rank themselves first. We write the independent version. If it's in here, we watched it happen.

Field study

How AI engines choose which local business to recommend

Six engines, six different source stacks. Why ChatGPT leans on directories, Gemini on your Google profile, and Perplexity on whatever it can quote.

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Field study

Field study: the ChatGPT API and the ChatGPT app recommend different businesses

We measured it: the ChatGPT app and the OpenAI API recommend different local businesses. Bare-API overlap with the app was ~8%; browsing doubled it and still missed most picks. The numbers, per vertical.

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Briefing

When people ask AI to hire a professional

The 'nobody asks a chatbot for a lawyer' objection, answered with the engines' own usage data — and why professional services are where AI hiring lands first.

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Tool teardown

Is a rank tracker enough to see your AI visibility?

The popular local tools added AI. We pulled one apart against primary sources: what it measures, what it can't see, and where a report tells you more.

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Briefing

The API is not the app: what that means for measuring AI visibility

Every engine ships two products under one name — a developer API and a consumer app — and they recommend different businesses. Why that quietly breaks most AI-visibility measurement, engine by engine, with the one exception.

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Briefing

Which websites AI engines cite most — and how to earn a citation

Mid-2026 analyses put Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, and the big directories at the top of every AI-citation list. The useful move isn't cracking that leaderboard — it's being the cited source for your category, in your city.

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Playbook

How can I make my business show up in AI?

The complete playbook: what decides whether an AI names you, and the fixes in order of leverage.

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More field notes publish as panels complete. Every claim carries its evidence grade; when a finding dies on re-measure, we strike it and say why.