ACCESS Newswire·Nov 11, 2026, 11:20 AM ET

SOCi Research Finds a High Bar for Brand Visibility in Local AI Recommendations

Average brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude reached 36.1%, surpassing the 7% rate recorded in 2026 & approaching traditional local search performance.
52% of U.S. consumers now use AI-powered tools for local recommendations at least monthly, representing a nearly 6X increase from the previous year.
Retail brands showed the highest AI visibility (49.1% to 49.7%), while Property Management & Food & Beverage sectors lagged significantly behind.
Brands ranked 1 to 5 averaged 4.2 to 4.3 stars, whereas those ranked 6 to 10 averaged around 4.0 stars across all platforms.
Higher review volume can offset lower ratings, requiring 4% more reviews on ChatGPT, 14% on Claude, or 64% on Gemini to overcome a 0.2 star deficit.
Google Maps, Yelp, & business local landing pages serve as the primary sources for AI local answers, with websites acting as the second most cited source.
Inconsistent secondary listings on sites like Facebook, Yellowpages.com, & BBB.org create visibility gaps, as roughly half of U.S. brands lack complete location profiles on these platforms.
SOCi recommends brands audit Google Maps & Yelp, optimize local landing pages, drive high review volume, & secure citations on neglected secondary sites to improve AI visibility.
The 2027 Local Visibility Index analyzed 3 million local queries across 44 industries, capturing 1.4 million unique source URLs from the three major AI platforms.