Letgro is a digital marketing agency that specializes in AI visibility, helping businesses in the GTA and across Ontario show up when people ask AI platforms for a recommendation.
Type "get recommended by ChatGPT" into Google's Keyword Planner and it comes back with no measurable search volume. That's not because nobody cares. It's because the people who care ask ChatGPT directly instead of Googling it first, which is exactly the shift this post is about.
The short version:
- ChatGPT recommended just 1.2% of the 350,000+ business locations SOCi tracked in its 2026 Local Visibility Index, against 35.9% that made Google's local map pack.
- The locations ChatGPT does recommend average a 4.3-star rating (SOCi, 2026).
- Branded mentions correlate with AI visibility at 0.664. Backlinks score 0.218, a third as strong (Ahrefs, 75,000 brands studied).
- There's no ad auction behind a ChatGPT answer. You cannot pay for the spot the way you can with Google Ads.
Does ChatGPT decide which businesses to recommend the same way Google ranks them?
No. Google ranks pages against a query. ChatGPT pulls from live web retrieval, review platforms, and whatever it already trusts about your business as an entity, then picks the name it's confident enough to say out loud.
Google's own guide to AI search, published 15 May 2026, is explicit that this is a different job from ranking: no requirement to rewrite content for AI, no mandatory structured data, plain accuracy and crawlability matter more than any AI-specific trick. A page can rank on Google page one and still never get named by ChatGPT. Letgro's earlier post walked through the data on that gap, including a live GTA test. This post picks up where that one left off: what to actually do about it.
Why does ChatGPT recommend so few businesses?
Because most businesses give it nothing solid to check against. SOCi scanned more than 350,000 locations across six platforms in its 2026 Local Visibility Index.
| Platform | % of locations recommended |
|---|---|
| Google local map pack | 35.9% |
| Gemini | 11% |
| Perplexity | 7.4% |
| ChatGPT | 1.2% |
Low as 1.2% is, it isn't a lottery. SOCi also found that data accuracy, meaning your name, category, and service area matching across Google Maps, Yelp, Facebook, and your own website, is the single biggest factor in whether an AI trusts a listing enough to say it out loud. Fix the boring stuff before you chase anything clever.
Do mentions matter more than backlinks for getting cited by ChatGPT?
Yes, by a wide margin. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found branded web mentions correlate with AI visibility at 0.664. Backlinks scored 0.218, roughly a third as strong. Muck Rack, looking at more than a million AI citations, found 82% came from earned media and 94% weren't paid for at all.
The strongest single signal in the data is even more specific: YouTube mentions correlate at 0.737, and YouTube shows up in about 16% of LLM answers (Semrush AI Visibility Index, 2026). A backlink tells a search engine you exist. A mention on a review site, in a local news piece, or in a YouTube video tells a language model what you actually do, in words it can quote back.
Do I need reviews, and how many?
Some, and they need to say something. A star rating alone gives a model nothing to repeat. What got a company named in Letgro's own GTA test wasn't a rating, it was a review or a licence number stating one specific fact, like a warranty term or exactly what got fixed.
Ask happy customers for a sentence about the job, not just a star. That's the part almost everyone skips.
Do I need schema markup or an llms.txt file to get cited?
No to both, and Google says so directly. Its 15 May 2026 guide states there's no requirement to break content into small pieces for AI, no need to rewrite for AI specifically, and structured data "helps but isn't mandatory." Zyppy's factor study, scoring 23 ranking factors across 54 experiments, put llms.txt dead last at 2.0 out of 10.
Skip both. Spend the time making the facts on your site plain and easy to find in ordinary text instead.
What should you actually do this week?
Four things, in the order that pays off fastest.
- Ask ChatGPT who does what you do in your city. Four minutes, no tools needed. If your name doesn't come up, you now know exactly where you stand instead of guessing.
- Make your business info match everywhere it appears. Google Business Profile, Yelp, your own website: same name, same category, same service area. SOCi found this is the single biggest factor in whether an AI trusts a listing at all.
- Ask for a review that says what you did, not just a star. "Fixed the finished basement wall in a day, five-year warranty" gives a model something to quote. Five stars alone doesn't.
- Earn one mention that isn't on your own site. A local news piece, a detailed HomeStars or Google review, a YouTube video. One specific mention outweighs a stack of links.
What isn't settled yet is how far this generalizes past ChatGPT specifically. The SOCi numbers above are the widest cross-platform look available, and Letgro's own prompt tracking has so far run one assistant at a time. That comparison is still in progress.
If you want to know exactly where your business stands right now, Letgro's AEO service runs the check.