Do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommend the same businesses?

No. Asked the same questions about Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery in Manchester, the closest any two engines came to agreeing was 66.7% of the practices they named (Gemini & Google AI Overview), and the furthest apart agreed on just 0% (Claude & Perplexity). Gemini named 6, Perplexity named 5, Google AI Overview named 4, ChatGPT named 2, Claude named 1.

The Local AI Visibility Index

Manchester Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery

Q: Does ranking well on Google mean AI recommends you?

It helps, and it is not enough. Of the 5 best-ranked Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery practices in Manchester, 3 were named by an AI answer engine — 60%. Of the 5 ranked lowest, 0 were. The single most-named practice ranked 1st on Maps, coming up in 23% of the 50 answers collected.

Q: How many local businesses actually appear in AI answers?

Very few. Of 15 Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery practices measured in Manchester, 3 were named at least once and 12 were never named. The three most-named practices took 100% of every mention in the market.

Q: Are the best-reviewed local businesses visible in AI answers?

Often not. Take the 3 strongest practices in Manchester — the top 25% once you combine Google rank, star rating and number of reviews — and 1 of them (33.3%) were named by no AI engine at all.

We asked 5 AI answer engines 10 questions a prospective patient would actually ask, then measured which of the market’s 15 practices got named. 12 of them never came up once.

Market: Manchester, NH
Practices: 15
Questions: 10
Engines: 5
Measured: July 2026

Every practice in the market · one dot each · ordered by Google Maps rank · lit = named by at least one engine

Named by AI — 3 practicesNever named — 12 practices

80%

of Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery practices in Manchester were named in none of the 50 AI answers we collected.

Finding 01

Does ranking well on Google mean AI recommends you?

It helps, and it is nowhere near enough. Of the 5 best-ranked practices in Manchester, 3 got named by an AI engine — 60%. Of the 5 ranked lowest, 0 did. The single most-named practice in this market ranked 1st on Maps, coming up in 23% of answers.

Google rank and AI answers are decided by two different systems looking at different things. Your map position comes from how close you are, what category you are in, and how people engage with your listing. Whether an AI names you depends on whether it can find, read and trust a description of your practice in the sources it pulls from. Ranking first buys you better odds. It does not buy you the answer.

Google Maps rank vs getting named — Manchester
Where they rank on Google Maps	Named by AI	Share
The 1st third — best ranked on Maps	3 of 5	60%
The middle third	0 of 5	0%
The bottom third	0 of 5	0%

Finding 02

How many local businesses actually appear in AI answers?

Very few, and the ones that do take most of it. Of 15 practices measured, 3 were named at least once and 12 were never named. The three most-named practices took 100% of every mention in the market.

Practice A23%

Practice B22%

Practice C1%

12 practices0%

Bar length is the share of all 50 answers, so a full bar would mean every answer named them.

Practice A is one organization — 9 Google Maps listings that share its website, counted once because AI engines cite the organization’s site rather than any individual listing.

Practice B is one organization — 2 Google Maps listings that share its website, counted once because AI engines cite the organization’s site rather than any individual listing.

Finding 03

Are the best-reviewed practices invisible to AI?

Some are. Take the 3 strongest practices in Manchester — the top 25% once you combine Google rank, star rating and number of reviews — and 1 was never named by any engine. That is 33.3% of the best practices in town, missing from every answer.

One of them ranks 9th on Maps with 4.9 stars, and was named zero times across all 50 answers. Their patients rate them highly and Google ranks them well. The AI engines do not know they exist.

Why this matters more than who came first. The practices at the top of this market are already competitive. The practice with the most to gain is the 1 practice that earned a top-25% reputation and gets none of the benefit of it in AI answers.

Finding 04

Do Google reviews affect whether AI recommends you?

Not the way you would expect. In Manchester the practices AI named average 4.57 stars, and the ones it never named average 4.77 stars. The better-rated practices are the ones getting left out.

3 practices here were named by at least one engine, rating between 4.1 and 4.8 stars. 7 were named by none, rating between 4.1 and 5.0. The two groups overlap, and the better-rated group is the one being left out.

Reviews do real work in the map pack and in how patients choose. This measures something narrower: whether they are what makes an AI say your name. In Manchester the answer is what the numbers above say it is, and it is not the same answer in every market we measured.

Finding 05

Do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommend the same practices?

No. Asked the same questions about the same market, the closest any two engines came to agreeing was 66.7% of thepractices they named — and the furthest apart pair agreed on just 0%.

Each engine surfaced a different slice of the market: Gemini named 6, Perplexity named 5, Google AI Overview named 4, ChatGPT named 2, Claude named 1. Showing up in one does not mean showing up in the others, so checking yourself against a single assistant tells you very little.

Of the 7 practices named by any of the three, all three agreed on 1.

How often two engines named the same business
Engine pair	Agreed on
Gemini & Google AI Overview	66.7%
Gemini & Perplexity	57.1%
ChatGPT & Claude	50.0%
ChatGPT & Google AI Overview	50.0%
Perplexity & Google AI Overview	50.0%
ChatGPT & Gemini	33.3%
Claude & Google AI Overview	25.0%
ChatGPT & Perplexity	16.7%
Claude & Gemini	16.7%
Claude & Perplexity	0.0%

How we measured it

We pulled every Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery practice Google Maps returns for Manchester — 15 of them, after combining duplicate listings of the same practice — then asked 5 AI answer engines the same 10 patient questions and recorded which ones each engine named.

Who is in it: 15 practices, from everything Google Maps returns for "plastic surgeon" in Manchester, NH. A practice with more than one listing is counted once. 18 listings that share the websites of 5 organizations are counted as those organizations, because AI engines cite the organization's site rather than any individual listing.
What we asked: 10 questions a patient would actually ask, kept identical across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overview. 50 answers in total, July 2026.
How we scored it: The share of answers that named or cited a practice, weighted by how many people use the engine that named it.
How we ranked reputation: Google Maps position, star rating adjusted for how many reviews back it up, and review count on a sliding scale that levels off around a thousand.
Scope: One market, one category. Every number on this page describes Manchester and comes from that market alone — results differ between markets and we do not carry them across. We never name individual practices. AI engines change over time; this describes 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, for readers who prefer them.

Reputation signals vs getting named — 15 practices
What we measured	How closely it tracked	What that means
Google Maps rank	−0.598	A clear connection
Review count	−0.04	No connection
Star rating	+0.121	No real 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.