Field notes and plain answers on how AI answer engines recommend businesses. By Cited (Whitley Row LLC).https://cited.whitleyrow.com/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/research/how-ai-engines-choose-local-businesses/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/research/how-ai-engines-choose-local-businesses/ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI each build recommendations from a different source stack. Here's what feeds each one, drawn from live panels, and why winning one engine says nothing about the others.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/research/is-local-falcon-enough/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/research/is-local-falcon-enough/Local rank trackers like Local Falcon added AI scans. A fair teardown against primary sources: what they measure well, what they can't see (Perplexity, Claude, consumer-surface truth), and where a repeated-run report tells you more.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/aeo-vs-geo-vs-seo/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/aeo-vs-geo-vs-seo/SEO ranks your links. AEO and GEO earn your business a citation inside the AI answer. Here's what each term means, how they overlap, and why the old playbook only gets you halfway to being recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/best-ai-visibility-tools-for-small-business/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/best-ai-visibility-tools-for-small-business/An honest guide to AI visibility tools for small businesses, grouped by the job you're hiring for: monitoring, content automation, and done-for-you. Real tools, real strengths, and when each is the wrong call — including ours.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/does-ai-search-matter-for-small-business/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/does-ai-search-matter-for-small-business/Yes, and most for high-consideration businesses — law, medical, financial, home improvement — where customers research before they buy. For emergency and transactional needs, the map pack still rules. Here's how to tell if it matters for you, and what to do.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-much-does-geo-cost/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-much-does-geo-cost/AI visibility pricing in 2026, by tier: automated tools ($19–199/mo), monitoring dashboards ($29–700/mo), and agencies ($1,500–30,000/mo). What each buys, what to avoid, and where a done-for-you service fits.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-check-what-ai-says-about-your-business/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-check-what-ai-says-about-your-business/Open ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity in a clean session, ask the questions your customers ask before they hire someone, and note whether you're named. Do it three times per engine, because answers change run to run. Here's the exact method.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-get-recommended-by-chatgpt/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-get-recommended-by-chatgpt/A practical playbook for getting named in ChatGPT's recommendations, ranked by leverage: directory depth, a page that publishes real numbers, reviews, and answer-first content. Based on live panels, not theory.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-get-recommended-by-claude/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-get-recommended-by-claude/Claude ranks by two things it trusts: your Google reviews — score, volume, and what they actually say — and your verifiable credentials. It reads review text, checks qualifications against authoritative registries, and is openly skeptical of paid directory listings. Here's how to win it.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-get-recommended-by-gemini/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-get-recommended-by-gemini/Gemini often answers from what it already knows, not from a page it just read — so you win it at the knowledge layer: a strong, consistent Google Business Profile plus third-party corroboration of who you are. It's an entity problem, not a single-page problem.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-get-recommended-by-perplexity/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-get-recommended-by-perplexity/Perplexity cites more sources than any other engine, but it only names businesses whose pages have a quotable answer. The lever is extractability: get into the vertical directories it cites, and make your own pages say something it can lift verbatim.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-show-up-in-ai/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-show-up-in-ai/To show up in AI, improve the public sources engines build answers from — directories, reviews, your Google profile, and pages that answer questions with concrete facts — then measure each engine separately and fix the weakest first. The complete playbook, in order of leverage.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-show-up-in-google-ai-overviews/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/how-to-show-up-in-google-ai-overviews/Google's AI grounds its answers in your Google Business Profile, review sites, the directories it trusts, and — crucially — your own educational and pricing pages. AI Mode goes further, crawling many sites per answer and mapping your content semantically. Here's how to be one of the sources.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/why-isnt-my-business-showing-up-in-ai/https://cited.whitleyrow.com/answers/why-isnt-my-business-showing-up-in-ai/If AI engines aren't recommending your business, it's usually one of five fixable causes: thin directory profiles, no quotable page, weak reviews, inconsistent business info, or you're winning one engine and blind to the others. Here's how to tell which.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT