AI assistants rarely recommend the same business
We compared the businesses ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini named in more than 100,000 answers to the questions buyers ask, in September 2026 and October 2026: the same question for each assistant, with and without web search.
Published by Guglielmo Paesano, founder of AIGROW · data under CC BY 4.0
- Pages compared
- 472
- Cities
- 20
- Trades
- 25
- Same business first
- 50
AI assistants rarely name the same business. In October 2026, ChatGPT and Claude, both searching the web, named no business in common on 64.4% of 472 local pages. In the September 2026 AIGROW Index, asked without search, any two assistants shared 20.2% of the businesses they named on a page.
Findings
Answered questions only. A failed call counts nowhere.
Asked the same question with web search, ChatGPT and Claude named no business in common on 64.4% of local pages.
304 of 472 pages: 25 trades in 20 cities, each question asked once of each assistant in the language of the place. They named the same business first on 50 pages. An answer that named someone listed 2.6 businesses on average from ChatGPT and 5.3 from Claude.
Of the local businesses the three assistants named, 80.1% were named by only one of them and 6.8% by all three. For software products, 29.4% were named by all three.
Every business named on 2,200 city pages of the September 2026 Index, without web search, each question asked three times of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini: 84,212 businesses, each counted once on a page however many answers named it. 54.3% were named in one answer only, which a ranking leaves out. On 200 software pages, a product was more than four times as likely as a local business to be named by all three.
Without web search, any two assistants shared 20.2% of the businesses they named on a page.
The average over the ranked pages of the September 2026 Index, every question asked three times of each assistant. A ranking lists the businesses named in at least two answers; of those, 55.9% were named by only one assistant, on average per page.
How far they agreed depended on the kind of business: from 5.5% of names shared to 60.8%.
Least: Wedding photographers. Most: Email marketing software. Software agreed more than local trades: 22 of the 25 local trades shared fewer names than the least agreed kind of software, Restaurant POS systems.
Asked the same question three times, an assistant changed the business it named first in 55.8% of questions.
13,536 of 24,269 questions in the September 2026 Index where ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini named someone in all three answers. Across the Index, 48.9% of the businesses an assistant named came back when the question was asked again.
The three assistants had the same favourite business on 17.5% of pages, and three different favourites on 39.3%.
A favourite is the business an assistant named first most often on a page. 361 of 2,064 pages had one favourite for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini; on 811, each had its own.
With web search, the business ChatGPT named first appeared in none of its answers without search on 62.7% of pages.
876 of 1,398 pages, each asked once with web search and up to 12 times without. On 667 pages (47.7%), none of the businesses ChatGPT found on the web was among those it named without search.
For consumer brands such as banks and supermarkets, ChatGPT and Claude named a different brand first on 54.5% of pages.
97 of 178 pages in 20 countries, with web search. For banks in Italy, ChatGPT named ING first and Claude BBVA; in Spain, ChatGPT named BBVA and Claude ING. One company written two ways, such as ALDI and Aldi Australia, counts as the same (3 pages).
With web search, ChatGPT read reddit.com in 89.4% of its 2,580 answers, and Claude in none of its 676.
Quoted from the AI search statistics, which list the sites each assistant read before it answered.
Two pages up close
From the September 2026 Index: ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini without web search, every question three times.
- Dentists in Paris
- 36 answers named 59 different businesses: 37 only once, 4 by all three assistants. The favourites: Centre Dentaire et Médical Paris 13 for ChatGPT, Parisloft for Claude and Centre Dentaire Opéra for Gemini. The most named, Dentego, appeared in 10 answers.
- Gyms in New York
- 36 answers named 20 different businesses: 8 only once, 9 by all three assistants. Equinox was the favourite of all three and appeared in 30 of the 36 answers.
By kind of business
September 2026 Index, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini without web search. Least agreement first. Names shared is the average share of names any two of them had in common on a page.
| Kind of business | Pages | Names shared | First business changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wedding photographers | 88 | 5.5% | 70.4% |
| Web design agencies | 88 | 7.0% | 67.7% |
| Roofers | 84 | 8.0% | 61.7% |
| Hair salons | 88 | 8.2% | 65.2% |
| Digital marketing agencies | 88 | 9.3% | 64.4% |
| Electricians | 88 | 9.4% | 62.6% |
| Interior designers | 88 | 11.1% | 66.7% |
| Moving companies | 88 | 11.8% | 63.1% |
| Physiotherapists | 88 | 12.9% | 61.9% |
| Driving schools | 88 | 13.6% | 52.8% |
| Car repair shops | 88 | 15.1% | 69.9% |
| Cleaning services | 88 | 15.4% | 54.1% |
| Veterinarians | 88 | 16.3% | 51.0% |
| Plumbers | 88 | 16.9% | 65.8% |
| Dermatologists | 88 | 17.4% | 56.8% |
| Insurance brokers | 88 | 18.8% | 65.2% |
| Dentists | 88 | 19.9% | 60.9% |
| Architects | 88 | 20.0% | 57.1% |
| Lawyers | 88 | 20.2% | 67.8% |
| Accountants | 88 | 20.8% | 66.7% |
| Financial advisors | 88 | 22.4% | 53.0% |
| Restaurants | 88 | 30.4% | 42.0% |
| Real estate agencies | 88 | 31.5% | 50.6% |
| Restaurant POS systems | 20 | 31.5% | 44.2% |
| Appointment booking software | 20 | 35.2% | 39.6% |
| Gyms | 88 | 35.6% | 42.8% |
| Payroll software | 20 | 42.9% | 30.8% |
| Hotels | 88 | 43.6% | 38.7% |
| Website builders | 20 | 44.4% | 14.2% |
| CRM software | 20 | 51.6% | 27.1% |
| Help desk software | 20 | 55.3% | 37.9% |
| Accounting software | 20 | 55.6% | 26.3% |
| E-commerce platforms | 20 | 58.0% | 15.0% |
| Project management software | 20 | 60.5% | 27.9% |
| Email marketing software | 20 | 60.8% | 31.3% |
By city
October 2026, ChatGPT and Claude with web search, local trades only. Most pages with nothing in common first.
| City | Country | Pages | No business in common | Same business first |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam | Netherlands | 24 | 79.2% | 1 |
| Warsaw | Poland | 24 | 79.2% | 1 |
| Milan | Italy | 21 | 76.2% | 1 |
| Berlin | Germany | 25 | 76.0% | 2 |
| Madrid | Spain | 24 | 75.0% | 2 |
| Lisbon | Portugal | 23 | 73.9% | 2 |
| Paris | France | 24 | 70.8% | 3 |
| Mexico City | Mexico | 20 | 70.0% | 3 |
| Brussels | Belgium | 22 | 68.2% | 2 |
| Sydney | Australia | 24 | 66.7% | 2 |
| Stockholm | Sweden | 25 | 64.0% | 1 |
| Copenhagen | Denmark | 25 | 60.0% | 3 |
| São Paulo | Brazil | 22 | 59.1% | 2 |
| Vienna | Austria | 24 | 58.3% | 1 |
| Zurich | Switzerland | 24 | 58.3% | 2 |
| Oslo | Norway | 23 | 56.5% | 4 |
| Dublin | Ireland | 25 | 56.0% | 7 |
| London | United Kingdom | 25 | 56.0% | 4 |
| New York | United States | 24 | 54.2% | 2 |
| Toronto | Canada | 24 | 33.3% | 5 |
How the study was made
- The answers
- 87,618 answers in the September 2026 Index, of which the 86,370 from ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are compared. In October 2026, 2,580 ChatGPT and 680 Claude answers with web search and 16,767 ChatGPT answers without, collected on 4 and 5 October.
- A generous match
- September names are merged as in the Index. October names were not merged by hand, so a name counts as the same business as a longer name that contains it, such as Equinox and Equinox Hudson Yards. That can only overstate agreement, never disagreement.
- Asked once
- In October each question was asked once of each assistant, with web search on, in the language of the place. Asked again, an assistant can name other businesses, as the September repeats show.
- September without web search
- The September answers came from what each model already holds: no web search, no location, no chat history, every question three times. Grok is left out of the comparisons because it was asked on part of the pages only.
- Answers, not a ranking
- The figures describe what the assistants answered on these dates. They do not rank the businesses or say which answer is right.
- Quoted figures
- Agreement between any two assistants, the share of a ranking named by one assistant only and how often names came back are quoted from the September 2026 report; the reddit.com figures from the AI Source Map. The rest is computed from the raw answers, page by page in the CSV.
Data and citation
AIGROW Team, AI assistants and the businesses they recommend, October 2026, aigrow.gg/research/ai-recommendations-2026. The figures and the data are published under CC BY 4.0: reuse them with a link to this page.
Download the data as CSV · Download the data as JSON
The September 2026 answers are archived for citation on Zenodo: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23082267.
Which business do they name instead of yours?
The free scan asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok your own customers' questions and shows who they name instead of you.
Edition October 2026 · data under CC BY 4.0