Barometer · October 2026
AI Recommendation Barometer: do AI assistants name the same businesses?
Every month, we ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the same question (“best {trade} in {city}”) for the same 68 trade and city pairs, and we count how many of the businesses they recommend are the same. Measured figures only, each with its date.
81.4%
of the businesses recommended were named by only one of the three AI assistants.
October 2026 · Measured 2 October 2026 · 68 trade × city pairs · 204 answers · 769 businesses named
One AI, two, or all three?
- Named by one AI only626 of 769 businesses
- 81.4%
- Named by two AIs113 of 769 businesses
- 14.7%
- Named by all three30 of 769 businesses
- 3.9%
By trade: in how many cities do all three AIs name a same business?
October 2026, same question in every city. A trade is shown when it was measured in at least 8 cities.
| Trade | Cities where all three AIs agreed | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Pizzeria67% of businesses named by one AI only | 7 of 10 cities | |
| Coffee shop72% of businesses named by one AI only | 6 of 10 cities | |
| Hair salon79% of businesses named by one AI only | 5 of 10 cities | |
| Plumber80% of businesses named by one AI only | 2 of 9 cities | |
| Dentist90% of businesses named by one AI only | 0 of 10 cities | |
| Car repair garage91% of businesses named by one AI only | 0 of 10 cities |
Month by month
October 2026 is the first measurement. The next one comes in November 2026: from then on, this section shows how the figures move from one month to the next.
Download the monthly figures (CSV)
Method
- Question: “What are the best places in {city} for: {trade}? Give me up to 5 names.”, asked in English with the instruction “You are a consumer assistant. Answer in English, concisely, naming specific businesses when relevant.”. It is the first question of a PickableAI check.
- Assistants: ChatGPT (OpenAI model with OpenAI web search, through OpenRouter), Gemini (with Google Search) and Perplexity (Sonar), all three with live web search. Each question is asked once to each assistant, at the start of the month. Models in October 2026: gpt-4.1-mini, gemini-3.1-flash-lite, Sonar.
- Panel: the same 68 trade × city pairs every month, 8 trades (plumber, dentist, hair salon, car repair garage, pizzeria, coffee shop, electrician, real estate agency) in 10 cities (Auckland, Berlin, Dublin, London, Manchester, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Sydney, Toronto). A pair counts for a month when each of the three assistants named at least one business; the number of pairs counted is given for every month.
- Matching names: an AI model (Gemini, without web search) lists the businesses in each answer and groups the mentions of a same business across the three answers (“Joe's Pizza” and “Joe's Pizza Broadway” count as one).
- Measures: for each pair, the distinct businesses named, and how many assistants named each one. “All three AIs agreed” means that at least one business was named by all three. A figure per trade is given for trades measured in at least 8 cities. These are the definitions of our study of October 2026, which is the first month of the barometer.
- From one month to the next: a change is the difference between two measurements, in percentage points. Stability per assistant (the share of the businesses an assistant named one month that it names again the next month, for the same question) needs the list of each assistant for two months in a row; the October 2026 file keeps counts only, so stability starts with the second and third months.
- Names: business names are never published. The answers name real businesses that did not ask to be part of a barometer. The figures are in the CSV file.
Limits
- One run per assistant and per month. AI answers vary from day to day, even for the same assistant: part of the change between two months is this ordinary variation, not a trend.
- Name matching is done by an AI model (and by comparing the words of the names when comparing one month with the next): a few mentions of a same business may be counted as different, or the reverse.
- 68 pairs, 8 trades, 10 large cities: not representative of every trade, every town or every country. Questions in English only.
- Up to 5 names per answer: a longer list would give more chances to overlap.
- The assistants change. Their models and their web search are updated without notice: a change in the figures can come from there.
- A month can be missing. If a measurement fails, the month is left out, never estimated.
How to cite
PickableAI (2026). AI Recommendation Barometer: do AI assistants name the same businesses? (October 2026). https://pickableai.com/en/barometer
The figures are free to reuse with attribution to PickableAI (CC BY 4.0 licence).
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