How many people use ChatGPT vs Google for local search?

Searchable's 2026 numbers put Google at roughly 191 billion search referrals per month against about 1.1 billion across all AI tools combined (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, plus Google's own AI Overview). Google is still 170 times the volume. AI's growth rate is faster, but the absolute share is small enough that no service business should swap one for the other this year. Treat AI as the second shelf, not the only shelf.

Are older buyers actually using AI to find services?

More than most owners expect. Pew's 2024 data showed about 23% of US adults had tried ChatGPT, with the 30 to 49 bracket the heaviest users (exactly the homeowner demographic that pays for plumbing, HVAC, and dental work). The 50-plus bracket is lower at around 10%, but climbing year over year. The pattern I see from owner ride-alongs is that the homeowner who asks ChatGPT also checks Google Maps and Yelp before calling. AI-only buyers are still rare; cross-surface buyers are not.

If AI search is only 1% of local search, why does it matter?

Because the buyer journey isn't linear. A homeowner who asks ChatGPT for a plumber doesn't stop there. They check Google Maps next, then Yelp, then maybe NextDoor. If your name shows up on Google but not on the AI surface, the homeowner who is using both reads that absence as a confidence drop. They call the company whose name appeared on both. The 1% of search volume isn't the prize — the consistency signal across surfaces is.

How do I tell if a customer used ChatGPT to find a competitor?

You can't, not directly. Most analytics tools attribute the visit to whichever link the buyer eventually clicked, not to the AI conversation that named the company first. The proxy is to run the prompts yourself. Open ChatGPT with web search on, ask 'best plumber in {your city}', and write down the three names it cites. If you're not one of them, run our 5-minute audit at localpicks.ai to see which directories are pointing the AI at competitors instead of you.

Do buyers actually find local businesses through ChatGPT?

Q: Do buyers actually find local businesses through ChatGPT?

Yes. AI tools handle about 1.1 billion local-intent queries monthly — small versus Google's 191 billion (Searchable 2026), but growing. The bigger risk for a service business isn't the lost AI volume today. It's that a buyer who checks three surfaces and finds you on none assumes you don't exist.

Why this is the question I get most often

Every week I get a version of this email from a small-business owner. "Lior, I keep hearing about ChatGPT and Perplexity and AI Overview. Should I actually care, or is this another consultant trying to sell me something?"

Fair question. The honest answer has two parts. First, the volume of AI search is small. Second, the volume of AI search is not the point.

The volume number, honestly

Searchable's 2026 industry report tracks referral traffic across the major search surfaces. Google search sends about 191 billion referrals a month. All AI tools combined (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overview, Gemini) send about 1.1 billion. That's 0.6%. The growth rate is steep, but the share today is small.

If I told a plumber to drop a Google Maps optimization in favor of an AI-citation push because "AI is the future," I'd be a fool, and the plumber would lose money. Map Pack still drives the volume. Don't trade one for the other.

Why I still tell them to care

The buyer who calls you doesn't search once. I've sat with HVAC and plumbing owners during ride-alongs and watched homeowners do this:

Faucet leaks at 9pm. Mom googles "plumber near me" on her phone. Three names come back in the Map Pack. She doesn't recognize any of them. She opens a second tab. She asks Perplexity. It recommends two more names with a sentence about each. One of them is also in the Map Pack result. That match, the same business name appearing on both surfaces, is the call.

I've watched this pattern in maybe two dozen real homeowner sessions over the last year. The buyer doesn't articulate it as "I'm cross-checking AI against Google." It's instinct. The brain treats the business that appears on both surfaces as the safer call.

That's the real cost of being missing from AI search. It's not the lost AI-only buyer. It's the Google buyer who saw your name once, didn't trust it, asked ChatGPT, didn't see it again, and called someone else.

What ChatGPT actually reads to name businesses

ChatGPT doesn't have a local-business database. When it answers "best plumber in Austin," it runs a web search through Bing and pulls 6-15 source pages. It picks 3-6 to cite. The consistent sources for service businesses are:

Google Business Profile (reached through Bing's index of Google)
Yelp Business pages. BrightLocal's 2025 AI search study found Yelp appears in roughly one in three local-intent AI queries. The single most-cited directory.
BBB, Angi, HomeAdvisor for trades. Angi and HomeAdvisor share a parent company but are separate listings with separate weight.
City-specific listicles, "best plumbers in Phoenix 2026"-style posts on Expertise.com, ThreeBestRated, local magazines.
Reddit threads in the target city's subreddit, especially questions like "who's a good plumber here."
Your own website if it has consistent NAP, schema, and service-area pages.

The model isn't ranking these sources. It's checking them for agreement. Three sources saying the same phone number is a high-confidence signal. One source disagreeing flips it to low confidence, and the AI quietly recommends the business whose data agrees with itself.

What this looks like when a business is invisible

We run our own audits at localpicks.ai. I'll show you our own numbers because they're honest. We shipped this product six weeks ago and we're still building authority. The site has 2,399 search impressions over the past 28 days across 500 queries and 90 pages. Total clicks from those impressions: one.

Why so few? Zero inbound links per Bing's webmaster data. Without external authority, ChatGPT and Perplexity have nothing to cross-check against, and Bing's index ranks every page deep enough that nobody clicks. We're the cobbler with the broken shoes. We know the fix; we're doing it.

The point is, the impressions number is real demand. The buyers are there. The visibility gap stops them from ever getting to us. Same mechanic applies to any local business that's missing from one or two surfaces.

Three things to check this week

If you only have an hour:

Open ChatGPT with web search turned on. Ask "best {your trade} in {your city}." Write down the three names it cites.
Open Google Maps. Search the same query. Write down the Map Pack three.
If your name isn't on either list, find the business that's on both. Look at their Yelp, BBB, and Google profiles. The pattern of what they have that you don't is your roadmap.

If your name is on Google but not ChatGPT, the gap is almost always one of three things: Yelp not claimed or stale, BBB unclaimed, or no schema on your homepage. We check all three in our free 5-minute audit.

The buyer who can't find you on one surface usually calls someone else. The buyer who can't find you on two surfaces decides you don't exist. That's the math we're really talking about.