Nearly 60% of Citations Go to Businesses' Own Websites: A Counterintuitive Truth Hiding in Gemini's Local Search

A few days ago, a friend who runs a local business asked me: "Run, customers aren't searching on Google anymore — they're asking AI. So where should I be putting my effort? Grinding away on review platforms, or hanging out in forums?"

I couldn't just answer off the top of my head. As it happened, Steady Demand had recently published a study with a seriously solid dataset: 14,472 AI citations, drawn from 1,487 local search queries, covering 50 major US metro areas and 10 service industries. They fed those questions to Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT, then pulled apart every single citation source the AIs gave, one by one.

When I finished reading the conclusions, it stopped me in my tracks.

The Most Trusted Source Is the Business's Own Website

Guess who Gemini loves to cite most when recommending local businesses?

Review platforms? Directory listings? Forums?

None of the above. Nearly 60% of citations point to the businesses' own official websites. That's more than directories, review sites, and forums combined.

And the second-place finisher is even more interesting. Reddit, at 13.7%. A forum beat out the entire local-service directory camp — including platforms built specifically for local business, like Angi, Thumbtack, and HomeAdvisor.

What does that tell us?

When AI answers "which plumber near me is reliable," it's more willing to trust how businesses describe themselves, and how everyday users talk about them. If your strategy was counting on third-party platform pages for traffic, the AI era may force you to redo the math.

Ask the Same Question Twice, Get Different Answers

The finding in this study that genuinely sent a chill down my spine was something else entirely. Steady Demand's co-founder Ben Fisher gave it a name: "Grounding Drift."

What does "drift" mean? It means instability.

Ask the same question twice in Gemini, and the chance the two answers' citations overlap is only about 40%. And the chance it recommends the same "number one" business both times?

7%.

Seven percent! Think about what that means. Today the AI ranks you first, you screenshot it and celebrate on your social feed. Tomorrow a customer asks the same question — and you might not be on the list at all.

The control group was Google's traditional local search — the business listings that sit next to the map. Under the same test, it returned the same top business 90% of the time.

Ninety percent on one side. Seven on the other.

So Fisher said something refreshingly honest: treat a single AI search result as a snapshot, never as a long-term ranking. A snapshot is for looking at, not for living by.

Don't Put All Your Eggs in One AI's Basket

The study did one more thing: it fed the same 1,487 queries, unchanged, to ChatGPT, then compared the two sets of answers.

The result was even more extreme. The probability that the two AIs cited a substantial set of the same sources: 8%. The probability they recommended the same top business: 4.2%.

And their tastes are completely different. Gemini loves official websites; ChatGPT leans much harder on Reddit and business directories. For the same "find a plumber near me" query, the two AIs are pulling from two entirely different rolodexes.

Winning inside Gemini doesn't mean you exist inside ChatGPT. If you're monitoring your "AI visibility" on just one platform, what you're seeing is very likely a badly distorted map.

Back to My Friend's Question

So where should he put his effort? This study actually offers three hints.

Your website isn't decoration — it's the first doorway through which AI gets to know you. Write it like it matters. Real conversations in communities like Reddit carry more weight than you'd think — pay real attention. And look at every platform before you trust the picture; don't let a single snapshot fool you.

As for my friend, I sent him the pair of numbers: 90% versus 7%.

He replied: "Then what exactly am I supposed to celebrate?"

I said, exactly. In the age of AI search, rankings are rented, never bought outright. Here today, possibly gone tomorrow. Staying consistently present matters far more than celebrating a moment at the top.