Original data
How ChatGPT chooses which businesses to recommend
ChatGPT recommends the businesses it finds on pages that already answer the question someone typed, and for a broad question those pages are almost always directories. We sorted 1,423 real citations by question type: a question like "best chiropractor in Denver" pulled directory sources 96% of the time, and a booking-style question pulled them only 11%.
The numbers come from the probe we run for clients, across ten local service categories in five cities. Every domain ChatGPT pointed to counts as one citation, and we grouped all 1,423 by the type of question behind them.
Of the 281 citations tied to broad questions, 271 came from directories and review sites, and the whole set fit inside 125 distinct domains. Once the question named a treatment, "where can I get botox in Denver", directories fell to 22% and the pool widened to 305 domains. A symptom question such as "I have acne scars, where can I get them treated" cut directories to 14% across 321 domains, and a booking-style question left them with 11%.
We think the mechanism is simple. Nobody publishes a page that ranks every chiropractor in Denver, so on a broad question ChatGPT leans on the sites that did that work, and those are directories you do not control. A narrow question points to a far smaller set of pages, and if one of them sits on a business's own site and answers that exact question, ChatGPT can take it directly. Those narrow questions are also the ones your customers ask, because nobody with a real problem types "the best business in town".
In one live test we asked ChatGPT three versions of the same question. "Best med spa in Miami" returned five businesses backed by two directory sources, Discover Med Spa and Medical Spa Locator, and no clinic website among them. "Best med spa in Brickell", a neighborhood in Miami, swapped in Tripadvisor and a local guide, and four of the five businesses changed with them. Only LUX MedSpa Brickell survived both answers. Then we asked "best botox in Brickell", and for the first time ChatGPT cited a clinic's own website, with the reason attached: the clinic had a page about Botox in Brickell that answered the exact question we typed.
One live test is a small sample, and we treat it as an illustration rather than proof, but it matches what the 1,423 citations show at scale.
So here is the practical part, and it takes about five minutes. Ask ChatGPT for the best business of your kind in your city and look at the sources it lists. You will see directories, and you compete for that layer through reviews and directory profiles. Then ask the narrow version, the one your actual customer would type with your service and your neighborhood in it. If your own site does not appear there, the fix is rarely a better homepage. Write a page for each service and one for each neighborhood you serve, detailed enough to be the obvious answer to that one question. Then give it a few weeks before you repeat the check, because ChatGPT has to find and read the new page first.
One question on one engine shows you half the picture. Our Quick Check runs your business name and city against ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity in about 30 seconds and tells you whether any of them know you exist.