Where does ChatGPT get its information about local companies?

You run an electrical company in Columbus. Between service calls, you ask ChatGPT who to call for a panel upgrade, the way a homeowner would.

The answer names three companies, and yours isn't one of them. Next to a competitor's name sits a link, and it opens that company's own panel upgrade page.

That link is the clue. It shows where ChatGPT read about the company, and often that's a page the company wrote itself. What else AI assistants read about local companies is in our guide to AI search for home service companies.

Does ChatGPT get its information from a web search?

Often, yes. OpenAI says ChatGPT may search the web on its own when a question would benefit from current information.^[1] Answers that use search may include citations you can click to open the source.^[1]

OpenAI also says ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers. When it does, it typically rewrites your question into one or more targeted searches and sends them to those providers.^[1]

ChatGPT may share a general location, based on your IP address, with those providers.^[1] If memory is on, it may use saved memories when it rewrites the search.^[1] If local results show the wrong area, OpenAI suggests putting the city, neighborhood or ZIP code in the question.^[1]

Our own count shows the same habit. In October 2026 we asked ChatGPT nine buyer questions about six home service trades in four US metros. We asked each question twice in each city and trade, outside the ChatGPT app, for 432 answers.

Across those 432 answers, ChatGPT ran 2.13 web searches per answer and cited 2.66 pages per answer. Our ChatGPT research page sets those figures next to Claude's answers to the same questions.

Try it on your own trade. Ask the question your buyers ask, with your town in it, and open each link under the answer. Note whose page each one is.

Which pages does ChatGPT link when it names a local company?

Most often, the websites of the companies it names. In our 432 answers, nearly half of ChatGPT's links led to a website of a company it named.

The rest of ChatGPT's links in those 432 answers split up like this:

• Directories and platforms such as BBB, Angi and Houzz: about one in six.
• List pages that name several local companies: fewer than one in ten, by a quick rule we didn't check by hand.
• Manufacturers' sites: a few.
• Social, government and association sites: a few.
• News and media sites: none.
• Google: none. Not one of the 432 answers linked a Google page.
• Sites our list of known domains didn't cover: more than a fifth.

Claude, asked the same questions, leaned the other way. In 432 of its answers, more than a third of its links went to directories and platforms. Under a third went to the named companies' own sites.

A much larger study of local AI answers points the same way on websites:

That count includes Google's own AI answers. BrightLocal says the Business Profile is important there and hardly used by ChatGPT.^[2]

And those links are how AI answers send people to websites:

When a buyer taps through from ChatGPT to your site, make sure the page answers the question they asked.

Does ChatGPT use Bing or Google?

OpenAI's own page answers that only in part. It says ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers, and it links the privacy statements of Microsoft and Shopify as search providers.^[1] For Bing itself, see what Bing asks of a contractor website.

Our data can't show which search engine sits behind an answer. It can show where the links went. In October 2026, 0 of 432 ChatGPT answers linked a Google page, Maps listings and Business Profiles included.

Google still came up in the text. In 84 of the 432 answers, ChatGPT gave a company's Google rating or number of Google reviews. Our post on whether ChatGPT uses Google reviews shows where it read them.

And buyers who search on Google or Maps still see your Business Profile. Keep it complete, and put the same facts on your own site, where ChatGPT's links went most often.

What should your own website say?

Say what you do, where you work, and your current Google rating and number of reviews, in plain words, on your homepage. Add the month you checked the rating, and update it when it changes.

Write those facts as text, not only inside an image or a badge. Then give each big job its own page, so a question about panel upgrades has a page to land on. Our guide on how to write a service page shows what goes on one.

Electricians can see what else we look at on our page for electrical contractors.

ChatGPT's search crawler also has to be able to read the page. OpenAI says a site that opts out of OAI-SearchBot, its search crawler, isn't shown in ChatGPT search answers.^[3] It can still appear as a navigational link.^[3]

To be eligible, OpenAI's help page says, a site should allow OAI-SearchBot and let OpenAI's published IP addresses through its host or content delivery network.^[1] GPTBot is a separate crawler, for training, and OpenAI says each setting is independent.^[3] Run our two-minute crawler check to see where a block can hide.

Which outside profiles does ChatGPT name?

In our test, BBB, more often than Google, Yelp, Angi, Houzz or Thumbtack. ChatGPT named BBB in 146 of its 432 answers and linked a BBB page in 94.

It named Angi or HomeAdvisor in 43 of the answers and Houzz in 22. Yelp came up in 1 of the 432, while Claude named it in 262 of its 432.

A few of ChatGPT's links went to manufacturers' sites. If you're a certified installer for a maker, of generators or EV chargers for example, check that its installer finder shows your current details.

Here's what I'd do this week:

1. Look up your company on BBB's site. Check the name, phone, address and website against your own homepage.
2. Do the same on the directories your trade uses, such as Angi or Houzz.
3. Fix your own site first, then copy the same details to each profile, word for word.

Skip the packages that list you on a hundred directories at once. Our guide to which listings matter covers the few worth an hour.

The companies ChatGPT named were mostly ones Claude named too, so check what both assistants say for your trade and town.

On our AI search optimization plans, every month we run the same buyer questions across the AI assistants we test (currently ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity). Then we fix the pages and profiles those answers draw on.

Our AI search visibility audit checks whether AI crawlers can reach your site and how clearly it names your services and area. The Expert Action Plan ($149) is the full report plus a 30-minute consultation.

What our link count can't sort

In the 432 answers, more than a fifth of ChatGPT's links went to sites our list of known domains didn't cover. So the other shares above are floors, and the real ones could be higher.

We sorted list pages by a quick rule and didn't check ChatGPT's by hand. And we counted where the links went, not why ChatGPT chose them or whether the companies it named do good work.

We asked outside the ChatGPT app. The app can answer differently: it may know where you are, remember earlier chats and use other settings.

It's one month, October 2026, in six home service trades and four metros, so other towns, trades and wordings can give other answers. OpenAI itself says search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or incorrect.^[1]

So open a link before you trust an answer. If one gets your details wrong, trace it back to the page it came from. Our counting rules are in how we ran the study.