AI SEO Update: What 12,000 AI Checks Across 56 Local Businesses Show (Oct 2026)

0:00 What 12,000 AI Checks Revealed
Hey, I’m Jeremy Ashburn with PushLeads, helping small businesses get more leads without struggle and frustration. And have you ever wondered what AI is really doing? Well, this is a look into what AI is actually doing across our 56 local businesses. And what we looked at is 12,000 AI checks across our local client fleet. And this is real data from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and AI mode. We’re going to learn about the wins, the loss, and things we’re changing going forward.

0:34 Scaling Measurement Across 56 Clients
So in the last video, we talked about that we went from 72 to 336 AI mentions. And this was a small fixed panel, right? I mean, going from 72 to 336 is great, but since then we have scaled measurement across our whole client fleet. And so here is what the bigger picture showed.

This is part of our AI search visibility guide.

0:56 AI Referral Traffic Nearly Doubles
So what we’re measuring now is we’re asking AI the questions that your customers are asking you every week. So that’s just around 12,000 AI checks from September 1st to October 13th. This is for 56 businesses, including restoration business, different fitness businesses, rental, storage, VoIP, and more. And of course, we talked about the engines being ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode. And this, the total cost is around $135, about one cent per check. And each check records whether or not the business was named and whether a competitor was named instead and which businesses the AI actually cited. So, from measurements from Google Analytics 4, the visits from AI tools nearly doubled in three months. So, in June, we had around 548 visits, dropped down to 515 in July, up to 673 in August, and then up to 1,083 in September. So, we saw 98% more AI referral sessions from June through to September and 59% more organic growth sessions in the same period. So, that’s pretty strong, and this tells us we’re on the right track, right? So, being on the track, so being on the right track is super

2:20 Which AI Sends the Most Visits
important. So, ChatGPT sends, so which AI is actually sending us the, so So which AI is actually sending us the visits? So ChatGPT sends us the most of the traffic, but Gemini is going the fastest. So ChatGPT was sending around 416 sessions in June. And that’s up to 851, and that’s up to 851 September sessions, around 105% change in that time period. Gemini was from 38 to 141, so that’s another 271, and so that’s 271% improvement. Perplexity, which is only a tiny portion of the actual traffic, uhm, is, went from 26 to 39, a 50% improvement. Claude actually sort of went from 46 to 41 backwards and then Copilot went from 21 to 11, but Claude and Copilot and Perplexity really account for 2, 5 or 10 percent of the overall AI traffic, so I’m not super worried about that.

3:21 Mention Rates by AI Platform
Uhm, and, uhm, so that’s actually pretty strong, so yeah, I’ll take it. Uhm, now Perplexity is naming local businesses about twice as often as Google, and again, only about 2% of the equation, but everyone is using a different chatbot, right? So some people love Perplexity, uhm, and other people love ChatGPT, and other people love AI overviews. So Perplexity basically was giving us around a 34% chance of naming the local businesses. Chat was like 18%, AI Overviews was like 14% and Google’s AI Mode was 13.6%. So Google’s AI answers are the hardest to get into, and they’re the ones that most people see. So this Google AI overview, Google AI mode is super important, and of course we’re working on that.

4:11 Honest Look at Fixed-Panel Results
Uhm, so the honest part, if you ask the same questions for the same businesses, the gains are actually smaller than the total suggests. So Google’s AI Overviews, we really went from 53 to 61 in that time frame. Perplexity went from 32 down to 24 and ChatGPT went down from five to four. So the total mentions jumped because we’re asking more questions, not because every business is getting more visible. So AI answers, of course, are swinging from month to month. I mean, even from minute to minute, right? So it’s really important to judge the trend. Never one particular check and say, Oh, I’m suddenly showing up. So if you just check one day and you’re showing up in ChatGPT, check the next minute, that might be totally different, right? Check the next hour, check the next day, or have tools that do it or work with an agency that’s actually tracking it like we’re doing.

5:06 Question Types That Trigger Local Mentions
So, uhm, so another thing to look at here is specific questions. Generic questions don’t actually get a local business name. So, if you work on a specific problem in your niche, the odds of that being answered is like 39%. And if you cover a pricing and cost, so if you cover pricing and cost, that’s around 31%. If you cover your service in the city, that’s around 29%. And it drops down to 24%. If you’re covering ready to hire questions, comparisons, 22%. Anything that’s broad and generic is 14%. So always cover specific problems first and cover pricing and cost questions secondly. So I would definitely definitely do it that way.

5:53 YouTube as Top AI Citation Source
And of course, YouTube is the number And of course, YouTube is the number one website tool that Google’s AI cites for local questions. So if you’re not using YouTube, um, you’re not posting on YouTube, then you’re going to really be missing out. Um, one of the most interesting things I found recently is that, um, even though ChatGPT doesn’t even look at YouTube videos, it reads the transcript of videos. So whenever you post videos on YouTube, you need to also put the video on your site, embed the video on your site, along with the transcript in the video schema. I think we’re showing up for more ChatGPT searches is that we’re doing that. We’re posting the video, we’re posting the schema, the transcripts, the captions, all that stuff. So anyway, YouTube, um, basically was, um, earning around 1,200 citations. Reddit was earning about a thousand. Facebook around 797 and on goes down, it goes on

7:04 Four Moves for Local Businesses
down, etc. So four moves if you run a local business, you need to first answer specific questions, questions about problems, pricing, and your service in your city, and this is where um, this data shows up 30 to 39%. So answer these questions, make one video answering each question, one video covering each problem, how you solve the problem, one video covering different kinds of pricing, one video for the service that you offer in the city. Um, we’re an HVAC company in Asheville, North Carolina covering this or that. Um, and then get on YouTube because Google’s AI is citing YouTube. About half the equation really is YouTube. Um, And short videos do count, but if you can make long videos that are between 10 to 20 minutes, you’ll get cited more often, and then it’ll also be where people want people talk about you on Reddit, Facebook, Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack. Um, those all feed the answers as well. And then measure the same questions monthly, have a fixed track set of questions you’re asking. We actually made a video about how to do this manually. Of course, you can use tools like DataForSEO to do this naturally, um, and do it that way. So if you want to know what AI is recommending you, um, for your local business, we could run your business us through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI mode, all the AIs, and show where you stand. I’m Jeremy Ashburn with PushLeads, helping small businesses get more leads without struggle and frustration. Talk to you soon.