Study finds AI search engines lean on Google Business Profiles and directories, not business websites

A researcher asked Google AI Mode and Perplexity 232 local-service questions across 8 Houston-area cities and 15 industries, then traced every cited source. Google AI Mode relied mostly on Google Business Profiles, while Perplexity cited business websites in 38% of its picks and directories like Yelp and Zocdoc for most of the rest. The two engines named the same top business for only 9 of 108 questions and rarely cited the same sites. Businesses whose websites passed four basic readability checks were cited at a higher rate, though the author cautions this is an association rather than proof of cause. The study data is published free under a CC BY 4.0 license.