The Local AI Visibility Index
General Surgery across 6 US markets
We measured every General Surgery practice Google Maps returns in 6 markets — 119 businesses in total — then asked 5 AI answer engines the same 10 patient questions in each one and recorded who got named.
- Practices
- 119
- Markets
- 6
- Questions
- 10 per market
- Engines
- 5
- Measured
- July 2026
42 of 60
of the best-reviewed General Surgery practices across 6 markets were named by no AI answer engine at all — out of the 119 practices these markets hold.
Finding 01
How often do the best-ranked local businesses show up in AI answers?
The 11 best-ranked businesses on Google Maps still showed up in only 27.0% of AI answers. Measured across 119 general surgeons in 6 markets — every one Google Maps returned: across the 11 best-ranked by map position, an AI engine named them in 27.0% of the answers about their own category.
Ranking well clearly helps. It is also clearly not the thing that decides it — most of the best-ranked businesses across these 6 markets still never came up. And this is an average of markets that do not agree with each other: rank counted for more in the smaller markets we measured than in the larger ones.
| Where they rank on Google Maps | Named by AI | Share |
|---|---|---|
| The 1st third — best ranked on Maps | 19 of 39 | 48.7% |
| The middle third | 5 of 39 | 12.8% |
| The bottom third | 0 of 41 | 0% |
Finding 02
Are the best-reviewed local businesses named by AI answer engines?
42 of the 60 best-reviewed businesses in this category were named by no AI answer engine. Measured across 119 general surgeons in 6 markets — every one Google Maps returned: among the top half by Google rank, star rating and review count combined, 42 of 60 show up in Google Maps but were named in none of the AI answers about their own category.
Finding 03
Do different AI answer engines recommend the same businesses?
No two AI answer engines recommended the same businesses in this category. Measured across 119 general surgeons in 6 markets — every one Google Maps returned: asked the same questions, the closest any two engines came to agreeing was 23 of the 31 businesses either of them named — so being named by one is no guarantee of being named by the others.
Across every market combined, each engine named a different share of the businesses measured: Perplexity named 34, Gemini named 30, Google AI Overview named 24, ChatGPT named 17, Claude named 12.
| Engine pair | Agreed on |
|---|---|
| Gemini & Google AI Overview | 74.2% |
| Gemini & Perplexity | 73.0% |
| Perplexity & Google AI Overview | 65.7% |
| ChatGPT & Google AI Overview | 57.7% |
| ChatGPT & Gemini | 56.7% |
| ChatGPT & Claude | 52.6% |
| Claude & Google AI Overview | 50.0% |
| ChatGPT & Perplexity | 45.7% |
| Claude & Gemini | 40.0% |
| Claude & Perplexity | 31.4% |
How much does this vary between markets?
Substantially. The share of practices no engine named ranged from 68.4% to 87.5% across the 6 markets measured. Every market’s own figures are published on its own page, computed from that market alone.
| Market | Practices | Never named | Top 3 took |
|---|---|---|---|
| Huntsville, AL | 32 | 84.4% | 89.8% |
| Bend, OR | 23 | 73.9% | 66.4% |
| Morgantown, WV | 20 | 85% | 100% |
| Idaho Falls, ID | 19 | 68.4% | 83% |
| Poughkeepsie, NY | 16 | 87.5% | 100% |
| El Centro, CA | 9 | 77.8% | 100% |
How we measured it
In each of 6 markets we pulled every General Surgery practice Google Maps returns, then asked 5 AI answer engines the same 10 patient questions and recorded which ones each engine named.
- Sample
- 119 practices across 6 markets: Bend, OR; El Centro, CA; Huntsville, AL; Idaho Falls, ID; Morgantown, WV; Poughkeepsie, NY. A practice with more than one listing is counted once per market. 189 listings that share the websites of 25 organizations are counted as those organizations, because AI engines cite an organization's site rather than any individual listing.
- Market selection
- The 6 markets were picked before any measuring started — deliberately spread across large, medium and small cities and across the country — and every market we opened is reported here, including the ones that came back less interesting.
- Collection
- 10 patient questions per market, held identical across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overview. 50 answers per market, July 2026.
- Visibility
- Share of answers naming or citing a practice, weighted by the reach of the engine that named it.
- What we will and will not publish
- This is a small category: the 6 markets measured hold 119 practices between them, and that is every one Google Maps returned. Findings on this page are stated as counts of that universe rather than percentage-led claims, because at this size one practice moves a percentage by several points. Top-three concentration and review-correlation findings are not reported below 150 practices; a combined page still requires at least 3 markets, 30 practices, and a usable reading for at least half of them.
- Scope
- One category, 6 US markets. Practices are never named. Answer engines change over time; these figures describe July 2026.
For anyone who wants the statistics
The findings above are counts, which is how most people want to read them. Here are the same relationships as correlations, across all 119 businesses.
| What we measured | How closely it tracked | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Google Maps rank | −0.43 | A clear connection |
| Review count | −0.055 | No connection |
| Star rating | −0.231 | A slight connection |
Reading the middle column: 0.0 means the two things had nothing to do with each other. 1.0 would mean they moved together perfectly. A minus sign means they moved in opposite directions. Anything under about 0.2 either way is noise.