Do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommend the same businesses?

No. Asked the same questions about General Surgery in Poughkeepsie, the closest any two engines came to agreeing was 100% of the practices they named (ChatGPT & Google AI Overview), and the furthest apart agreed on just 33.3% (Claude & Perplexity). Gemini named 3, Perplexity named 3, ChatGPT named 2, Google AI Overview named 2, Claude named 1.

The Local AI Visibility Index

Poughkeepsie General Surgery

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

It helps, and it is not enough. Of the 5 best-ranked General Surgery practices in Poughkeepsie, 2 were named by an AI answer engine — 40%. Of the 6 ranked lowest, 0 were. The single most-named practice ranked 1st on Maps, coming up in 66% of the 50 answers collected.

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

Very few. Of 16 General Surgery practices measured in Poughkeepsie, 2 were named at least once and 14 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 4 strongest practices in Poughkeepsie — the top 25% once you combine Google rank, star rating and number of reviews — and 3 of them (75%) 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 16 practices got named. 14 of them never came up once.

Market: Poughkeepsie, NY
Practices: 16
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 — 2 practicesNever named — 14 practices

87.5%

of General Surgery practices in Poughkeepsie 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 Poughkeepsie, 2 got named by an AI engine — 40%. Of the 6 ranked lowest, 0 did. The single most-named practice in this market ranked 1st on Maps, coming up in 66% 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 — Poughkeepsie
Where they rank on Google Maps	Named by AI	Share
The 1st third — best ranked on Maps	2 of 5	40%
The middle third	0 of 5	0%
The bottom third	0 of 6	0%

Finding 02

How many local businesses actually appear in AI answers?

Very few, and the ones that do take most of it. Of 16 practices measured, 2 were named at least once and 14 were never named. The three most-named practices took 100% of every mention in the market.

Practice A66%

Practice B23%

14 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 — 27 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 — 10 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?

Often, yes. Take the 4 strongest practices in Poughkeepsie — the top 25% once you combine Google rank, star rating and number of reviews — and 3 were never named by any engine. That is 75% of the best practices in town, missing from every answer.

One of them ranks 5th on Maps with 4.8 stars, and was named zero times across all 50 answers. One of them ranks 18th on Maps with 5.0 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 practices with the most to gain are the 3 practices that earned a top-25% reputation and get none of the benefit of it in AI answers.

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 100% of thepractices they named — and the furthest apart pair agreed on just 33.3%.

Each engine surfaced a different slice of the market: Gemini named 3, Perplexity named 3, ChatGPT named 2, Google AI Overview 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 3 practices named by any of the three, all three agreed on 2.

How often two engines named the same business
Engine pair	Agreed on
ChatGPT & Google AI Overview	100.0%
Gemini & Perplexity	100.0%
ChatGPT & Gemini	66.7%
ChatGPT & Perplexity	66.7%
Gemini & Google AI Overview	66.7%
Perplexity & Google AI Overview	66.7%
ChatGPT & Claude	50.0%
Claude & Google AI Overview	50.0%
Claude & Gemini	33.3%
Claude & Perplexity	33.3%

How we measured it

We pulled every General Surgery practice Google Maps returns for Poughkeepsie — 16 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: 16 practices, from everything Google Maps returns for "general surgeon" in Poughkeepsie, NY. A practice with more than one listing is counted once. 44 listings that share the websites of 4 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 Poughkeepsie 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 — 16 practices
What we measured	How closely it tracked	What that means
Google Maps rank	−0.523	A clear connection
Review count	−0.227	A slight connection
Star rating	−0.66	A strong 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.