Which engine actually sends local traffic in 2026?

We probed 4,000 local prompts across seven assistants and tracked which ones named a business, cited a source, and drove a click.

The short version

ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews together account for the majority of local answer impressions we measured, but Perplexity punches far above its user share because it cites sources aggressively — which means a thin citation footprint hurts you there first.

The pattern held across verticals. Businesses named in AI answers were not the ones with the best websites — they were the ones described consistently across Yelp, Angi, BBB and their own service pages. Consistency beat polish every time.

What this means for a local business

Treat directories as your API to the answer engines. When your hours are wrong on Yelp, the assistant repeats it confidently to a customer who will never see your correction. That is a revenue problem disguised as a data-hygiene problem.