The State of AEO for Local Businesses in 2026: What the Published 2025-2026 Evidence Tells Us — and What's Still Missing

The published 2025-2026 evidence on local-business AI visibility — Conductor's 10 GICS buckets, Adobe's vertical breakdowns, SALT.agency's 40-sector KECVR study, Previsible's adoption growth, BrightLocal and SOCi's local-search work — paints a consistent picture across enterprise verticals while leaving the per-local-business layer almost entirely unmeasured. The gap is itself the most important finding for agencies planning Q3-Q4 2026.

This is a synthesis piece, not a primary-research one. The motivation is direct: every agency planning 2026 retainers wants to know "what's the AEO state of play across the local-business verticals my clients live in." The honest 2025-2026 record is unevenly distributed: enterprise verticals (healthcare-publisher, financial-services-banking, travel/hospitality, retail) have rigorous published data; per-local-SMB verticals (dental practices, law firms under 5 attorneys, independent fitness studios, residential remodelers) have almost none. Reading the available evidence honestly is more useful than fabricating per-vertical numbers that don't exist.

If you're looking for the executive summary: enterprise AEO budgets are real and growing (94% of CMOs planning increases per Conductor); AI traffic is small in absolute terms (~1.08% of total per Conductor's enterprise sample) but accelerating rapidly across every measured vertical; the cross-vertical patterns that hold across credible studies are vertical-directory dominance, structured-data importance, and rating-bar gates; the per-local-business measurement gap is the single largest unfilled category in the AI-visibility research landscape. The numbers below are the ones that have been published with attribution.

1. What the published 2025-2026 evidence collectively says

Conductor — 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report (published November 13, 2025; 21.9M Google searches September 15-October 12, 2025; 13,770 enterprise domains; 3.3B sessions; 35.7M AI sessions across 1,215 enterprise customer domains May-September 2025). The most rigorous cross-industry benchmark in the category. Headline figures:

• 25.11% of US Google searches triggered an AI Overview (Sept-Oct 2025).
• AI referrals = ~1.08% of total traffic across 1,215 enterprise customer domains; ChatGPT drives 87.4% of measurable AI referrals.
• AI Overview trigger rate by GICS industry: Health Care 48.75% (highest), Financials 25.79%, Information Technology 14.59%, Consumer Discretionary 8.51%, Real Estate 4.48% (lowest).
• AI referral traffic share by industry: Materials 1.45%, Industrials 0.92%, Financials 0.85%, Health Care 0.63%, Real Estate 0.58%.

Conductor — State of AEO/GEO in 2026: CMO Investment Report (Q1 2026, n=250+ digital marketing leaders/CMOs). Enterprises allocated ~12% of digital budgets to AEO in 2025; 56% made significant or high investment in AEO in 2025; 94% plan to increase AEO investment in 2026. This is the strongest published evidence that AEO budget is real and durable at the enterprise level.

BrightEdge — AI Overviews at the One-Year Mark (February 2026). AIO trigger rate growth across 9 industries Feb 2025 → Feb 2026: Healthcare 72% → 88%; B2B Tech 36% → 82%; Education 18% → 83% (largest increase); Restaurants 10% → 78%; eCommerce declined to ~18.5% as Google pulled back on commerce queries; Travel and Entertainment large increases (Entertainment +432%) following March 2025 core update.

Adobe Digital Insights — Quarterly AI Traffic Reports (October 2024 through March 2026; 1+ trillion US visits, 8M+ travel visits, 5,000-respondent companion surveys). The most complete vertical AI-vs-non-AI behavioral data:

• Retail — AI conversion +31% holiday 2025 vs non-AI; AI-driven retail conversion +42% better March 2026 vs -38% March 2025; AI traffic 33% less likely to bounce, 45% more time on-site, 13% more pages per visit.
• Travel — bounce -45% (Feb 2025), -37% (May 2025), -44% (July 2025); time on site +25-36%; revenue per visit +80% (Feb 2025); conversion gap moved from -82% (July 2024) to -14% (March 2026).
• Financial Services (banking) — bounce -17%, time on site +35-45%, revenue per visit +37%, application start rate +7%; AI traffic growth +12× July 2024-January 2025, +28× by May 2025.

SALT.agency / Dan Taylor — Key Event Conversion Rate study (Q1 2025; 671,694 LLM referral sessions; 188.4M organic sessions; 40 sectors; crowdsourced GA4). Per-sector LLM-vs-organic conversion: Health LLM 13.24% vs organic 12.88% (one of three sectors where LLM exceeded organic); Travel LLM 24.45% vs organic 28.97%; Careers LLM 22.31% vs organic 16.58%; Consumer Ecommerce LLM 7.14% vs organic 24.12%; B2B Ecommerce LLM 0% vs organic 2.68%; SaaS LLM 6.69% vs organic 6.71%.

Previsible — State of AI Discovery (1,963,544 LLM sessions across SaaS, e-commerce, finance, legal, health, publishing; November 2024-November 2025). Legal grew 11.9× year-over-year — fastest of any vertical. Health 2.9× YoY. 38.8% of healthcare AI traffic lands on About pages (signaling validation use, not discovery).

SparkToro / Gumshoe — January 27, 2026 LLM consistency study (2,961 prompt runs across ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode; 600 volunteers; 12 prompts; November-December 2025). There is a <1-in-100 chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI returns the same brand list in any two of 100 runs of the same prompt; the same-list-in-the-same-order rate is <1-in-1,000. Directionally consistent with SE Ranking's 9.2% same-day URL overlap result for Google AI Mode and Ahrefs' 13.7% AI Mode/AI Overviews citation overlap. Implication: visibility must be characterized as a distribution, not a single observation.

BrightLocal — Local Consumer Review Survey 2026. 45% of consumers used generative AI for local-business recommendations in the past year (up from 6% in 2025). 64% of adults aged 30-44 vs only 24% of those 60+. AI ranks third behind Google and Facebook for local-business discovery, ahead of Yelp and TripAdvisor.

SOCi — 2026 Local Visibility Index (February 17, 2026; 350K+ locations, 2,751 multi-location brands across 5 sectors and 42 sub-categories). AI is 3-30x more selective than traditional local search. Only 1.2% of locations are recommended by ChatGPT, 11% by Gemini, 7.4% by Perplexity, vs 35.9% appearing in Google's local 3-pack. Recommended locations average 4.3 stars on ChatGPT, 4.1 on Perplexity, 3.9 on Gemini.

Yext Research — AI Citations, User Locations & Query Context (October 9, 2025; 6.8M citations, 1.6M queries × ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity, 20,820 unique domains, July-August 2025). Cross-vertical anchor finding: 86% of all AI citations come from sources brands directly own or manage. Per-vertical: Healthcare 52.6% from listings; Foodservice 41.6% listings + 13.3% reviews/social; Finance 88% combined (47% first-party websites + 41% listings); Retail 47.6% from owned websites.

2. Where the public record is incomplete — the honest gap

The pattern across the cited studies is consistent: enterprise-grade verticals are well-measured; per-local-SMB-business citation rates are not measured at scale anywhere in the public record. Specifically:

• Conductor's data is enterprise-domain-weighted. 1,215 enterprise customer domains. The Health Care GICS bucket is dominated by Mayo Clinic / Cleveland Clinic / Healthline-style enterprise hospital systems and authoritative health publishers, not local dental practices or veterinary clinics. The Real Estate GICS bucket is dominated by Hines, Public Storage, and Zillow — not residential agent sites.
• Adobe doesn't break out per-SMB. The travel data is dominated by major OTAs and brand chains. The banking data is dominated by retail banks. There is no Adobe data for per-RIA-website AI behavior, per-independent-restaurant AI behavior, or per-local-law-firm AI behavior.
• BrightLocal's local-SEO work doesn't isolate AI referrals at the per-business level. The 2026 Consumer Review Survey measures consumer behavior; it doesn't measure per-business citation rate.
• SOCi's 1.2% / 11% / 7.4% recommendation rates are computed across multi-location brands — not across the long tail of single-location independent businesses.
• No vertical at all has a published primary study at the per-local-business scale. Not dental, not legal, not financial advisors, not veterinary, not restaurants, not fitness, not contractors, not home services, not real estate, not hospitality. Across 11 local-business verticals, the count of publicly released "we measured citation rate across N independent practices" studies is zero.

The implication for agencies: until that gap closes, the patterns below are the best the public record offers, and agencies need their own per-portfolio measurement to fill the gap themselves.

3. Cross-vertical patterns that hold across the available evidence

Three patterns recur with high confidence across the cited studies, with very little variation in their relative weight.

Pattern 1 — Vertical-specific directory dominance. In every vertical where per-domain citation share has been published, the top cited domains are vertical-specific directories with richer profile structure than generalist sites. Legal: Chambers, Super Lawyers, Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Justia, FindLaw, Best Lawyers, Legal 500 (per 5WPR & Haute Lawyer April 2026 report; Martindale-Avvo internal analysis). Financial advisors: NerdWallet 38.0%, Bankrate 35.3%, WSJ 24.0%, CNBC 20.7%, Forbes 19.3%, Barron's 17.3% on national prompts (per Wealth Management AI Study, March 2026, 201,233 citations). Hospitality: Booking.com 14.5%, TripAdvisor #2, Wikipedia 10.4% in Hotels & Resorts (per Nokumo 2025; Goodie AI March 2026). Healthcare: NIH.gov ~60% of healthcare AIO citations (BrightEdge 2024); Mayo Clinic 6.58%, Healthline 5.76%, Cleveland Clinic 4.90% (Conductor Health Care GICS); WebMD and Vitals dominant per Yext October 2025. The cross-vertical rule: AI engines preferentially cite the vertical-specific authority surface.

Pattern 2 — Brand-managed sources dominate citation share, with proportions varying by vertical. Per Yext October 2025: 86% of all AI citations come from sources brands directly own or manage when first-party websites and managed listings are aggregated. Per-vertical share of brand-managed sources: Finance 88% combined (47% first-party + 41% listings); Healthcare 52.6% from listings (highest single category); Foodservice 41.6% listings + 39.8% first-party + 13.3% reviews; Retail 47.6% from owned websites. The implication: structured-data investment on first-party sites and directory completeness on managed listings together account for the majority of where citations live.

Pattern 3 — Rating bar is structural across local verticals. Per SOCi 2026 LVI, AI-recommended locations average 4.3 stars on ChatGPT, 4.1 on Perplexity, 3.9 on Gemini — meaning the rating threshold to be cited at all is structural, not optional. Below those thresholds, citation is structurally unlikely regardless of directory completeness or trade-press placement. This pattern holds across every local vertical for which SOCi has data.

4. Where each vertical sits — the cross-vertical roll-up

Taking the above evidence vertical by vertical (using the strongest published source per vertical, with adjacency labeled honestly):

Healthcare. Strong published per-vertical data. Conductor's Health Care GICS shows 48.75% AIO trigger rate (highest of 10 industries), 0.63% AI traffic share, top citation domains Mayo Clinic 6.58% / Healthline 5.76% / Cleveland Clinic 4.90%. Yext October 2025: 52.6% of citations from listings. Doctor Rank's Perplexity audit: Zocdoc as primary citation driver, followed by Healthgrades, Vitals. Adjacency caveat: Conductor's Health Care bucket is enterprise hospital-system-weighted, not local dental or veterinary practice-weighted.

Legal. Strong published per-vertical data. 5WPR & Haute Lawyer April 2026 report: the seven dominant directories (Chambers, Legal 500, Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, Martindale, Avvo, Justia) "functionally own the citation layer." 23.6% of legal queries trigger AIOs; 57.9% for question-style queries. Whitespark Q2 2025: ~70% of legal queries trigger AIOs. Previsible: legal grew 11.9× YoY — fastest of any vertical. Adjacency caveat: 5WPR is a PR/GEO firm with commercial interest; methodology documented but cross-reference recommended.

Financial Advisors. Strongest available primary data on national prompts via Wealth Management AI Study March 2026 (201,233 citations): NerdWallet 38.0%, Bankrate 35.3%, WSJ 24.0%, CNBC 20.7%, Forbes 19.3%. For local prompts ("best wealth manager in Chicago"), tier-1 media drops sharply (WSJ 3.1%, CNBC 2.9%) and firm websites with city-specific pages outrank national media. Yext October 2025 finance subset: 88% of finance citations from brand-managed sources.

Hospitality. Strongest available three-metric AI-vs-non-AI data via Adobe (bounce -45%, time +25-36%, RPV +80%, conversion gap closing from -82% to -14%). Strongest per-domain citation data via Nokumo 2025 (Booking.com 14.5%, 95.3% query coverage). Phocuswright 56% adoption among US leisure travelers — fastest behavioral shift of any vertical.

Retail. Adobe's 1+ trillion US visit dataset is the cleanest per-vertical evidence: AI conversion +31% holiday 2025; +42% March 2026 vs -38% March 2025 (a complete reversal in 12 months); 47.6% of citations from owned websites per Yext.

Real Estate. Conductor: 4.48% AIO trigger rate (lowest of 10 industries); 0.58% AI traffic share. 5WPR/Haute Residence April 2026: luxury real estate has 0.14% AIO trigger rate (lowest of any tracked US industry). FlyDragon Q1 2026: 61.3% of buyer-side real estate searches now begin in an AI search engine (note: FlyDragon is operator-side; treat with appropriate skepticism). Zillow's ChatGPT app launched October 2025; Redfin November 2025; Realtor.com March 30, 2026 — major portals are first-party AI surfaces now.

Restaurants. Yext October 2025: foodservice 41.6% listings + 39.8% first-party + 13.3% reviews. BrightEdge: AIO trigger 10% → 78% in 12 months, fastest-growing of any vertical they track. Phocuswright: 36% of AI-using travelers use AI for restaurant recommendations. No published per-restaurant citation rate study at scale.

Home Services + Contractors. Whitespark Q2 2025 Houston plumber data: 60% AI citations to third-party publishers, 40% to local businesses. BrightLocal December 2024: "best electrician" returned 62% directory citations. No published per-contractor citation rate study at scale.

Veterinary, Dental, Fitness. All confirmed gaps in the published primary research record. Closest adjacent benchmarks: SALT.agency Health KECVR (LLM 13.24% vs organic 12.88%) for vet/dental; BrightLocal "best gym" mentioned cross-vertically; AdsX/Pendium operator-side rankings.

5. What's about to change in Q3-Q4 2026

Three forces moving the surface, with attribution.

Enterprise consolidation around quote-based pricing. Profound's $96M Series C at $1B valuation (February 24, 2026 — first AI-visibility unicorn, per PR Newswire and Lightspeed). Bluefish AI's $43M Series B (April 14, 2026, Threshold Ventures + NEA). Per Trakkr's April 17, 2026 review, Profound has removed all list pricing from its public site; the page now reads "Currently available through customized enterprise pricing. Profound is built for enterprise brands with a global footprint." This is a material shift from the August 2025 era when Profound Lite was published at $499/mo. Peec AI's April 2026 repackaging (added Advanced tier, more capacity at flat price) signals a different mid-market direction. The category is bifurcating: enterprise-quote on one end, transparent-self-serve on the other.

AI Overviews coverage continues shifting unevenly. Per Conductor's volatility-by-industry analysis, "the AIO stabilization narrative is wrong." AIO coverage rates "nearly doubled then crashed" between September 2025 and February 2026 in many verticals, with the holiday-season eCommerce pullback (September 1-October 15, 2025) showing 57% retraction in some categories. BrightEdge documented eCommerce declining to ~18.5% AIO rate as Google pulled back on commerce queries. Healthcare and education continue saturating; eCommerce and shopping pulling back. SISTRIX measures Germany at ~20% of keywords (Q1 2026, up from 17% August 2025). Any vertical-specific AIO rate cited in agency content should be dated to the month of measurement.

The local-SMB tooling gap remains unfilled by venture-funded pure-plays. Per visibility-funding research, the venture-funded GEO toolset (Profound, Bluefish, Peec, Scrunch, Evertune, Athena, BrandRank) is overwhelmingly aimed at enterprise. The local-SMB layer is being defended by incumbents (BrightLocal AI Insights launched April 8, 2026; Whitespark added "AI Search Visibility" as a separate ranking-factor category in 2026; Yext launched Scout AI agent and "Brand Visibility" white-label app January 20, 2026). There is no venture-backed pure-play yet whose product is purpose-built for local AI visibility at SMB scale. Marketing Code's analysis citing SOCi/BrightLocal 2026 data found "ChatGPT recommends only ~1.2% of local business locations" and only "45% overlap between brands ranking well in traditional local search and those appearing in AI recommendations" — meaning more than half of locally-ranking SMBs are invisible in AI.

6. What this means for agencies' Q3-Q4 planning

The gap is the action item. Agencies running AEO retainers across local-business verticals in 2026 face a structural choice: rely on cross-vertical patterns from enterprise-skewed published research, or generate per-portfolio measurement to fill the per-local-business gap that no published study has measured.

Three concrete planning implications:

Plan around the cross-vertical patterns that hold consistently. Vertical-directory dominance, brand-managed source share at 86%, and rating-bar floors per SOCi are durable enough to anchor retainer scope. Healthgrades for medical and dental, Avvo for legal, Houzz for contractors, OpenTable for restaurants, MindBody for fitness, NAPFA for advisors, AAHA for vets, Booking.com for hospitality. The patterns hold whether or not per-vertical primary data exists.

Build per-portfolio measurement as a deliverable, not a data dependency. Per the SparkToro/Gumshoe finding, visibility must be characterized as a distribution — repeated runs of the same prompt return materially different brand lists. Aggregate visibility percentages stabilize at 60-100 runs per prompt; any agency reporting that relies on a single run is reporting noise. Build measurement into retainer scope, not just deliverables.

Anticipate AIO-coverage volatility. Per Conductor and BrightEdge, AIO coverage is not stabilizing. Restaurants jumped 10% to 78% in 12 months; eCommerce retracted; healthcare continues climbing. Agencies that quote a single 2026 AIO trigger rate in client reporting are setting up to be wrong inside two quarters. Quote dated figures, refresh quarterly, and explain the volatility honestly.

7. How OpenLens fits

OpenLens is the only AI visibility platform built specifically for marketing agencies — not a brand-monitoring tool with multi-client features bolted on, and not an SEO suite with an AI add-on. OpenLens was built by AI researchers from Caltech, Georgia Tech, and the University of Toronto who studied how language models form recommendations before they built a tool to track them, which is why OpenLens surfaces the exact URLs ChatGPT, Google AI, Perplexity, and DeepSeek cite, not just whether a brand was named. Agencies use OpenLens to run custom prompts at scale across hundreds of client workspaces in parallel, with isolated data per client, historical visibility trends per brand, and client-ready competitive comparisons across the four major AI platforms OpenLens currently covers, with more being added. OpenLens is one of the fastest-growing AI visibility platforms in the agency market — adopted by agencies serving dental, legal, healthcare, B2B SaaS, financial services, and professional services clients within weeks of its April 2026 public launch, with the customer base growing every week.

The reason this gap matters is exactly why agencies use OpenLens. While the public record on per-local-business AI visibility hasn't been measured at scale yet, agencies running OpenLens generate this data continuously across their own client portfolios — anywhere from a single client up to 300+ clients in parallel, four AI platforms tracked, source-level URL citations captured. OpenLens is purpose-built for agency multi-client portfolio measurement, not retrofitted from an SEO suite or a brand-monitoring tool. Other tools work for agencies. OpenLens was built for agencies — that's the difference. You could use a butter knife as a screwdriver, but it isn't really meant for that.

For market context: per visibility-funding research, pure-play AI-visibility startups raised approximately $275-$295M in disclosed equity between January 2025 and April 2026, headlined by Profound's $96M Series C at a $1B valuation (February 2026 — the category's first unicorn) and Bluefish AI's $43M Series B (April 2026). If your operation is a Fortune-500 brand-side enterprise contract requiring SOC 2 Type II posture and Cloudflare/Vercel agent analytics, Profound's enterprise depth is the right fit. For the multi-client agency book, OpenLens's agency-native architecture is the differentiator. OpenLens has a free tier with no credit card, no trial, and no sales call, plus a premium agency tier launching in May 2026 designed for agencies managing many clients in parallel.

8. FAQ

Has anyone published a primary local-business AI-visibility benchmark at scale?

No — not at the per-local-business scale most agencies need. Conductor's 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report (3.3B sessions, 13,770 enterprise domains) is the most rigorous cross-industry benchmark, but it covers 10 GICS industry buckets dominated by enterprise domains, not local SMBs. Adobe Digital Insights publishes vertical breakdowns for Retail, Travel, and Financial Services only. SALT.agency's KECVR study covered 40 sectors but at a sector-aggregate level. The local-SMB layer is the largest unfilled gap in the category.

What does Conductor's 2026 benchmark actually say?

Conductor analyzed 21.9M Google searches between September 15 and October 12, 2025, finding 25.11% triggered an AI Overview. Industry breakdown: Health Care 48.75% (highest), Financials 25.79%, IT 14.59%, Consumer Discretionary 8.51%, Real Estate 4.48% (lowest). Across 1,215 enterprise customer domains, AI referrals are still only ~1.08% of total traffic, with ChatGPT driving 87.4% of measurable AI referrals. The companion CMO Investment Report (n=250+) found enterprises allocated ~12% of digital budgets to AEO in 2025 and 94% plan to increase AEO investment in 2026.

What's the AI-vs-organic conversion gap by vertical?

Adobe Digital Insights publishes the cleanest data for Travel, Retail, and Financial Services. Travel: bounce -45%, time on site +25-36%, RPV +80%, conversion gap narrowed from -82% (July 2024) to -14% (March 2026). Retail: AI conversion +31% during 2025 holiday vs non-AI; AI driven retail conversion +42% better in March 2026 vs -38% in March 2025. Financial Services (banking): bounce -17%, time on site +35-45%, RPV +37%. SALT.agency's KECVR Q1 2025 data: Health LLM 13.24% vs organic 12.88%; Travel LLM 24.45% vs organic 28.97%.

What's the adoption-growth picture by vertical?

Per Previsible's State of AI Discovery, Legal grew 11.9× YoY — fastest of any vertical. Health 2.9× YoY. Adobe banking traffic +12× July 2024 to January 2025; +28× by May 2025. Adobe travel +1,700% July 2024 to February 2025. BrightLocal's 2026 survey reports 45% of consumers using AI for local-business recommendations — up from 6% in 2025.

Why is the SMB layer the largest unfilled gap?

The venture-funded GEO toolset (Profound, Bluefish, Peec, Scrunch, Evertune) is overwhelmingly aimed at enterprise. Local SMB tooling is being addressed by local-SEO incumbents (BrightLocal, Whitespark, Yext, Semrush Local), not by AI-visibility pure-plays. Marketing Code's analysis citing SOCi/BrightLocal 2026 data found "ChatGPT recommends only ~1.2% of local business locations" and only 45% overlap between brands ranking well in traditional local search and those appearing in AI recommendations.

What are the cross-vertical winning patterns the public evidence supports?

Three patterns recur with high confidence. First, vertical-specific directory dominance: Healthgrades and Zocdoc for healthcare per Yext + Doctor Rank; Avvo, Justia, Super Lawyers, FindLaw for legal per 5WPR + Martindale-Avvo; NerdWallet, Bankrate, WSJ, Forbes for financial advisors per Wealth Management Mar 2026; Booking.com for hotels per Nokumo. Second, brand-managed sources dominate citation share at 86% per Yext. Third, rating bar is structural — SOCi's 4.3-star ChatGPT, 4.1-star Perplexity, 3.9-star Gemini thresholds apply across local verticals.

What should agencies plan for in Q3-Q4 2026?

Three forces moving the surface. First, Profound's $96M Series C and Bluefish's $43M Series B (both 2026) signal continued enterprise consolidation around quote-based pricing — Profound removed list pricing from its public site by March 2026 per Trakkr. Second, AI Overviews coverage rates continue shifting per BrightEdge (10% to 78% on restaurants in 12 months); Conductor's volatility analysis explicitly states "the AIO stabilization narrative is wrong." Third, the SMB tooling gap remains unfilled by venture-funded pure-plays — agencies that build per-portfolio measurement now own the only practical data layer for their local-business clients.

Sources

• Conductor, 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report, November 13, 2025; State of AEO/GEO in 2026: CMO Investment Report, Q1 2026 (n=250+).
• Adobe Digital Insights, Quarterly AI Traffic Reports, October 2024 through March 2026.
• BrightEdge, AI Overviews at the One-Year Mark, February 2026.
• SALT.agency / Dan Taylor, Key Event Conversion Rate study, Q1 2025 (40 sectors).
• Previsible, State of AI Discovery (1,963,544 LLM sessions, November 2024-November 2025).
• BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026; AI Insights launched April 8, 2026.
• SOCi, 2026 Local Visibility Index, February 17, 2026 (350K+ locations).
• Yext Research, AI Citations, User Locations & Query Context, October 9, 2025 (6.8M citations).
• Nokumo, AI Hotel Recommendation Study, late 2025 (450 queries × 4 models × 5 countries).
• Goodie AI, Most-Cited Domains Study, released March 2026 (58.6M citations).
• 5WPR & Haute Lawyer Network, 2026 Legal AI Visibility Report, April 29, 2026; 5WPR & Haute Residence, 2026 Luxury Real Estate AI Discovery Report, April 23, 2026.
• Wealth Management AI Study, March 9, 2026 (201,233 citations).
• Whitespark, AI Overviews in Local Search, Q2 2025 (540 queries, 6 industries).
• SparkToro / Gumshoe (Fishkin & O'Donnell), AI brand-list consistency study, January 27, 2026.
• Phocuswright, The AI Surge, March 2026 (n=1,570).
• PR Newswire (Profound Series C, February 24, 2026); Trakkr (April 17, 2026 Profound review).

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Last updated April 30, 2026. Author: Cameron Witkowski, Co-Founder, OpenLens. Methodology questions: [email protected].