Small or new, found by AI? What the data says, and what it does not.

A growing share say they do. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 asked 1,002 US adults. 45% said they use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before. 40% said they trust AI platforms to give business recommendations.

Two cautions. People reported their own habits, and BrightLocal sells local marketing tools.

On ChatGPT in general, a working paper by OpenAI and Harvard researchers found that about 10% of the world's adults used it by July 2025, and that practical guidance, seeking information and writing were the most common topics. The paper does not break out local questions.

Not in that survey. Google was still the most used source for reviews of local businesses, but its share fell from 83% to 71% in a year. Apple Maps rose from 14% to 27%, and local news sites fell from 48% to 29%.

People use several places at once. Our inference: this is a reason to keep the Google Business Profile and add a page assistants can read, not to choose one.

No vendor publishes how a business is picked, so nobody can promise it. What is documented favors being local. Google ranks local results by relevance, distance and how well known the business is, according to its local ranking page. A national chain is not closer to the customer than the shop on their street.

Business websites are a common source. In BrightLocal's 800 local ChatGPT searches from November 2024, 58% of the cited sources were business websites. That test is two years old.

1. Publish the page before you open. With the opening date, services, address and phone as text.
2. Claim the Google Business Profile.
3. Let the crawlers in. OpenAI says a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to apply (crawler overview). Google's AI guide says: "Indexing and serving aren't guaranteed."
4. Ask your first customers for reviews. Real ones only.

Being crawled is not being recommended. A new business has no reviews and few mentions yet. Those come with customers.

There is no fixed list to be late for. In the SparkToro and Gumshoe study, the same question returned a different list of brands almost every run. Gumshoe sells an AI tracking tool.

Nothing breaks. Customers who use Google Maps still find a business with a good profile. The cost is the customers who ask an assistant first and never hear the name. Nobody can put an honest number on that for one business. The first steps are free except for the page.

An OnMap page can go live before opening day. It cannot make an assistant name a business. See examples and pricing.