Original Research — July 2026 Edition
The AI Visibility Index: 88% of Local Businesses Are Invisible in AI's Top Recommendations
We ran 120 live AI queries across 6 industries and 10 major US metroson a single day. The result: even when AI knows a business exists, it almost never recommends it. Here is the full data — every prompt, every number, fully reproducible.
88%
of local businesses never appear in AI's top-5 recommendations for their own market
70.9%
never appear anywhere in the recommendation answer — even though AI listed them as existing
#1 Reddit
the most-cited source in AI local recommendations (81 of 1,128 citations), ahead of Yelp (75)
120
live queries across 60 industry-city markets, run July 6, 2026 — full methodology below
Cite this study as: Avante Visibility, “The AI Visibility Index,” July 2026 — avantevisibility.com/ai-visibility-index
The Finding: AI Knows You Exist. It Still Won't Recommend You.
For each of the 60 markets, we asked the AI two separate questions. First: list real businesses operating in this city (it averaged ~15 names per market). Then, in a fresh query: which would you actually recommend?
If AI recommendations simply reflected who exists, most of those known businesses would show up in the recommendation answer. They don't. Across all 60 markets, only 29.1% of the businesses AI itself listed as existing appeared anywhere in its recommendation answer — and the median recommendation answer had more name slots than the enumeration list, so this is not a list-length artifact.
Narrow it to the top 5 recommendations — the part of the answer a customer actually reads — and visibility drops to 12.0%. AI recommendations are not drawn from “all businesses that exist.” They are drawn from the much smaller set of businesses with a strong footprint on the sources AI reads: review platforms, community threads, directories, and social profiles.
Invisibility by Industry
Share of known businesses that never appear in AI's top-5 recommendations, by industry (10 metros each).
| Industry | Invisible in top 5 | Visible anywhere in answer | Median names in AI answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurantsqueried as “restaurants” | 96.7% | 28.0% | 118 |
| Dentistsqueried as “dentists” | 94.7% | 24.0% | 20 |
| Real Estate Agentsqueried as “real estate agents” | 92.0% | 25.3% | 40 |
| Personal Injury Law Firmsqueried as “personal injury lawyers” | 86.1% | 30.5% | 15 |
| Med Spasqueried as “med spas” | 80.0% | 28.8% | 10 |
| Home Services (HVAC)queried as “HVAC companies” | 78.7% | 38.0% | 20 |
Reading it: a dental practice in our sample had a 94.7% chance of not appearing in the top 5 when a patient asks AI for the best dentists in its own city.
What AI Actually Cites: All 1,128 Sources, Ranked
Every recommendation answer came with citations. Here are the most-cited domains across the study — this list is effectively the reading list AI uses to decide who gets recommended.
| # | Domain | Citations | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reddit.com | 81 | Community threads — the single most-cited source |
| 2 | yelp.com | 75 | Review profiles |
| 3 | instagram.com | 28 | Business social profiles |
| 4 | facebook.com | 22 | Business social profiles |
| 5 | attorneys.superlawyers.com | 20 | Legal directory |
| 6 | zillow.com | 20 | Real-estate portal |
| 7 | deltadental.com | 19 | Insurance provider directory |
| 8 | realestate.usnews.com | 19 | Best-of roundup |
| 9 | justia.com | 14 | Legal directory |
| 10 | youtube.com | 12 | Video |
| 11 | guide.michelin.com | 11 | Food media |
| 12 | realtor.com | 11 | Real-estate portal |
| 13 | zocdoc.com | 10 | Medical directory |
| 14 | tripadvisor.com | 10 | Review platform |
The takeaway: community and review platforms (Reddit, Yelp, TripAdvisor), industry directories, and even Instagram and Facebook profiles are AI's raw material. A business website alone — without a footprint on these sources — rarely earns a recommendation.
Visibility by Metro
Share of known businesses appearing anywhere in the recommendation answer, averaged across all 6 industries.
| Metro | Visible in AI answer |
|---|---|
| Atlanta | 38.9% |
| Denver | 38.6% |
| Tampa | 36.7% |
| Las Vegas | 33.3% |
| Dallas | 33.3% |
| San Diego | 32.2% |
| Phoenix | 26.8% |
| Houston | 20.0% |
| Miami | 16.7% |
| Charlotte | 14.4% |
Methodology (Reproduce It Yourself)
Engine: Perplexity API, sonar model, temperature 0.1, live web search enabled. All 120 queries were run on July 6, 2026.
Markets:6 industries (dentists, med spas, personal injury lawyers, HVAC companies, restaurants, real estate agents) × 10 metros (Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Tampa, Charlotte, Denver, San Diego) = 60 industry-city pairs.
Prompt 1 (enumeration): “List 15 real [industry] currently operating in [city]. Respond with ONLY a numbered list of the business names, nothing else.”
Prompt 2 (recommendation): “What are the best [industry] in [city]? Respond with ONLY a numbered list of the business names you would actually recommend, nothing else.”
Matching:business names were normalized (case, punctuation, common suffixes like LLC/DDS) and matched conservatively — exact or whole-name containment. Conservative matching means the true visibility numbers may be slightly higher than reported; it cannot inflate the headline finding.
Limitations, stated plainly:this edition measures one engine (Perplexity, whose sonar model is also widely used to power AI-search features) on one day. AI answers vary between sessions, so individual businesses' results will differ run to run — which is itself part of the finding. Enumeration lists are AI-generated and averaged ~15 names per market; they are a sample of each market, not a census. Future editions will add engines and trend data.
Questions About the Index
What is the AI Visibility Index?
A recurring study by Avante Visibility that measures how visible local businesses actually are inside AI search answers. The July 2026 edition ran 120 live queries against Perplexity (sonar model) on a single day — July 6, 2026 — covering 6 industries across 10 major US metros, and compared which businesses AI says exist in a market against which businesses it actually recommends.
What does “invisible to AI” mean in this study?
For each of the 60 industry-city pairs, we first asked the AI to list real businesses operating in that market (an average of ~15 names). We then asked it, separately, to recommend the best businesses in the same market. A business is counted as visible if it appears in the recommendation answer, and invisible if it does not. 70.9% of businesses the AI itself listed as existing never appeared anywhere in its recommendation answer — and 88% never appeared in the top 5, which is the part of the answer customers actually read.
Why does Reddit matter for AI visibility?
Across the 1,128 source citations in our study, reddit.com was the single most-cited domain (81 citations), ahead of Yelp (75). When AI engines assemble a local recommendation, they lean heavily on community threads, review platforms, directories, and social profiles — not just business websites. If your business has no footprint on the sources AI actually reads, you are unlikely to be recommended.
How can I check whether AI recommends my business?
Run the free AI Visibility Score at avantevisibility.com/ai-score. It runs live queries about your specific business and shows you the verbatim AI responses, the sources cited, and a 0-100 score. It uses the same evidence-based approach as this study.
Press and researchers: the underlying query set and results are available on request — contact us.
Is Your Business in the Invisible 88%?
Run the free AI Visibility Score to see exactly what AI says about your business — verbatim responses, sources cited, and a 0-100 score. Then the full GEO Audit shows you precisely how to get onto AI's short list.
Questions? Email jolyn@avantevisibility.com or call (702) 525-5958.