Winning in Google search does not mean winning in AI search.

43.6% of Google's top-ranked practices were never cited in AI answers

Google's map results and organic results carried over at nearly the same rate. On provider discovery searches, 46% of practices in the top-3 map results and 45% of practices in the top-3 organic results were not cited in AI answers when the same question was asked. The gap is even larger on any single engine, because the engines disagree about whom to name. ChatGPT alone never mentioned 72% of Google's top-ranked practices, Perplexity 65%, and Gemini 54%.

Most of what AI cites comes from outside Google's winners

In the average AI recommendation, at least 58% of the practices named hold no top-3 Google position for that search. By engine, ChatGPT reaches furthest past Google's rankings: 90% of the practices it names hold no top Google position, with Perplexity and Gemini each at 78%. In ChatGPT's typical answer to a provider discovery question, not one named provider holds a top Google position. A share of named practices could not be matched to any listing, so these are conservative figures, and the study-wide floor is 58%. It is clear that AI engines do not follow Google's rankings.

The gap varies by market

The share of Google's top practices missing from AI answers ranged from 32% in suburban Houston to 60% in Tampa-St. Petersburg. One hypothesis is geography. The study anchored each market at one suburb, and where the anchor sits far from the metro's population center, Google's map results stay local to the anchor while AI draws practices from the wider metro, widening the gap. The market variation warrants further analysis and will be tracked in future editions.

Terms: Google map results are the map with business listings shown for local searches (the 'local pack'). Google organic results are the standard unpaid web links below it. Google AI Overview is the AI-written answer Google sometimes shows above its results.