Top sources and directories for local AI search: What 1.9million citations across 116,670 domains tells us

Where does AI get its information about local businesses?

In 2025 we did a study into where AI platforms were getting information for a number of localized queries. The results highlighted that local directories had seen a resurgence in relevance. Now, a year on, with AI search becoming more popular, and prioritized by Google, we wanted to see what sources were being used.

The standout? Google Business Profile is the source of choice for Google’s own AIs; AI Overviews (AIO) and AI Mode. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. But it does highlight the importance of claiming your Google Business Profile. Google used it for virtually every location.

Next up is Yelp. This is the second most-used source for AIO and AI Mode, but the most used source for ChatGPT. Which is no surprise given their partnership.

But where else matters beyond these two well-known information sources?

We identified 415 directories that were used as sources to one degree or another when an LLM is looking for information about a local business.

As long-time experts in local citation building, we wanted to dig further into the numbers to help you find out where to get listed in 2026, to help with your local AI visibility.

Top business directories for AI citations

This top 50 is based on all of the locations we viewed, without being split out into any form of category. Approximately 20% of the locations checked were restaurants, which may explain a slight skew in some of these directories.

For instance, OpenTable appears in the top 5, when the rest are all general directories. Although that’s purely for the number of citations, as only 274 locations actually used it. Mapquest, immediately below it in the list was actually used for more businesses, just less citations. This does, however highlight the importance of vertical directories.

There is a number of generic directories that you should make sure you’re listed on. Then you need to make sure you’re listed in specific industry directories, too.

If you want to find more lists of directories to add your business to, we have plenty of resources to help:

• List of business directories
• List of free US business directories

I’ll now break down how this looks across each individual AI platform. Domain Authority (DA) has been used to highlight the relative strength of the key directories, and that a lot of these are legacy respected sources.

Top 10 sites and directories for Google AI Overview citations

AI Overview used 8,541 unique third-party domains, and cited them 161,094 times.

Top 10 sites and directories for Google AI Mode

AI Mode checked by far the most sources. It looked at 81,817 unique third-party domains and cited them 861,263 times.

Top 10 sites and local directories for ChatGPT

ChatGPT looked at the least number of sites. It looked at 6,025 unique third-party domains for 162,966 citations.

Yelp is the most common source for ChatGPT in local search by some distance. It appeared as a source in 80% of all answers from ChatGPT. While Google Business Profile isn’t a top source, Apple’s version is. Although it only got cited 600 times.

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Other important sources for local information

These are sites that are not classified as directories, but regularly came up as sources. We’ve limited it to the top 20 for the sake of this list, as the drop-off is significant. But we wanted to highlight how information about your brand and location is being taken from a wide variety of sources. And, that you need to spend time promoting your business, outside of simply building citatons.

Which social platforms are used as sources the most?

Instagram and Reddit make up the bulk of the citations here. We included Facebook as a directory due to the nature of Facebook Business pages.

Top directories for specific industry categories and verticals

Below, you’ll find examples of the sources most frequently cited across a selection of key industry categories.

We analyzed far more categories than we could squeeze onto one page, so consider this a snapshot of what we found. We’ll be keeping an eye on this as we do more analysis in the coming months, and will share anything we find significant then.

Service businesses

For service businesses, there were 166,499 citations. For this large data-set some generalisations were made. Services is a category that covers a number of service type businesses. These could be service-area-business (SABs) or businesses with a physical location that offers a service, rather than goods.

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Plumber

Plumbers had 26,672 citations. There may be some crossover with ‘services’ as this was a catch-all primary category.

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Restaurants

For restaurants, four specific sources make up 80% of the 100,334 citations. These are GBP (45%), Yelp.com (21.8%), Tripadvisor (7%), and OpenTable (6.6%).

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Car repair

This was for 16.902 total citations.

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Lawyer

These are based on 13,354 citations.

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Dentist

Dentists had 25,005 citations for us to review.

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Veterinary care

For veterinary, we looked at 4,211 citations.

Get listed, or you won’t get found by AI platforms looking for local businesses

I want to reiterate what we said last year. For local search, whether that’s AI or traditional, citations are important. They’re a fundamental source of information on your business.

So your key actions:

• Claim your Google Business Profile and your Yelp profile, then keep them up-to-date
• Get listed on a selection of general directories for SEO
• Get listed on key industry directories for your vertical
• Make sure your own website provides clear information about your business, your location(s), and your services

Detailed methodology

We performed 60,970 checks by running 5 prompts at 9 different longitude and latitude points for 1,355 business locations using our Local AI Visibility Tracker. This tracker localizes when it runs a prompt using the longitude and latitude.

These business locations are in the US, UK, and Australia.

The platforms examined were Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and ChatGPT.

We then looked at the directories, websites, and apps that were being used as sources to provide information on local businesses.

We looked at:

• 1,355 locations
• 1,967,762 citations across 116,670 domains

These were based on running 5 prompts for each location on Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and ChatGPT.

We then identified what type of site each cited domain was, such as a directory, social site, editorial site, or business site.

The breakdown of location verticals is as follows: