Catchouse Research

Someone asks AI for a recommendation.
What decides the answer?

Our research on how local professionals get found in search and named in AI answers. Published as we learn it.

Read the main findingSee the latest posts

What being found looks like now

“Who should I call about buying in Elk Grove?”

Three agents come up most for Elk Grove. One of them writes regularly about FHA limits and the Laguna corridor, which is why she is named here.

Source · Catchouse profileCited
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Start here: what changed

Three things, then the evidence

Hiring a professional used to start with a search box and end with a list of ten links. It now starts with a question asked in plain language and ends with two or three names.

  1. 01 · The consumer changed82%of homebuyers already research with an AI assistantPeople no longer scroll a feed to decide who to hire. They ask, in a sentence, and take the answer. 45% of consumers now use AI search for local services, up from 6% a year earlier.Sources · Realtor.com Research · BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 6% to 45% in one year
  2. 02 · The proof is in fragmentsScatteredacross the places a professional’s proof actually livesOwn siteDirectoriesSocial postsCRMReferralsWhat makes a professional credible was never written down in a form a machine can read. Star ratings carry no context, and the strongest signals of all live in referrals and past clients. A model can only recommend what it can read, so it names whoever it can read.Source · our audit of 940 professional sites, July 2026
  3. 03 · Answers carry names1.2%of local businesses ever surface in a ChatGPT answerRecommended by ChatGPT1.2%Recommended by Perplexity7.4%Shown in Google’s local 3-pack35.9%An assistant asked who to hire returns people, not pages. The same businesses show up in Google’s local 3-pack thirty times more often, so being named is a different and much harder outcome. There is no second page to climb onto.Source · SOCi 2026 Local Visibility Index, 2,751 brands and ~350,000 locations · Search Engine Land summary

What that leaves. Two channels now decide whether a professional is found: the one that ranks pages, and the one that names people. They are won differently. Our main finding is the full account of the second one.

How much we monitor

2,900

location + specialty combinations tracked across ChatGPT and Google AI, refreshed weekly.

Live from the AEO coverage rollup · this is how much we watch, not how well we place

How many of those searches surface a Catchouse agent

225 / 1,450

top 10 on Google

141 / 1,450

named by ChatGPT

of 1,450 tracked specialty + location searches surface a Catchouse agent. Each engine is counted on its own terms and never blended: a top-10 placement on Google, a named mention in a ChatGPT answer.

Live from Google Search Console and our own ChatGPT citation probes · updated weekly

Start hereMain finding · 8 min read

Why AI assistants name some local professionals and ignore others: what 3,209 cited pages have in common

Two channels decide whether you are found: the one that ranks pages, and the one that names people. They are won differently, and most professionals are only playing the first.

Updated

Research: How AI Picks Professionals

The evidence

What we found when we measured it, with the methodology attached.

  • ComingNew research in progress

Get found

The mechanics of being fetched, read and indexed.

  • ComingNew research in progress

Get cited

How generated answers choose the names they use.

  • ComingNew research in progress

Prove it

Our own workings, including the parts that did not hold up.

  • ComingNew research in progress

Definition

What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?

AEO is the practice of making a professional's expertise legible enough that an AI assistant will name them in a generated answer. Where SEO competes for a position on a results page, AEO competes to be one of the two or three names a model returns when someone asks it who to hire.

Definition

What is a citation, in this context?

A citation is a single instance of an assistant naming a professional, or linking a page, inside an answer to a real query. We count citations per query per engine, which is why a professional can hold a strong position in one assistant and appear nowhere in another.

From the field

newest Oct 11

newest Oct 11

Posts are shorter and more often. The articles are where things get written up properly.

5 days agoAsk an AI assistant who the best agent is in your market. It will give a real answer, with real names in it. Most agents have never checked whether they are one of them. One month in, half of one agent’s tracked searches were already earning AI citations. Six of them ranked first. Her report said three things: claim your specialties, publish on a rhythm instead of in bursts, and write the answer to the question you already rank for. Create your profile and get your own digital health report. Free to use. 🔗 comment GUIDE to get your Guide to AI Visibility! — Catchouse | Get cited.Get found. Get chosen. Build your free profile: https://catchouse.com/for-agents5 days agoLook back at your last 10 posts. Odds are 8 do the same job. Every post does one of three things: helps new people find you, shows who you are, or keeps you top of mind with people who already know you. Agents who grow do all three on purpose. Save this and check your mix. Catchouse | Get cited. Get found. Get chosen Create your free profile: https://catchouse.com/for-agents5 days agoOur co-founder and CRO Andrew Callejo is spoke at the NHORA National Conference on September 11. His session is called The Shift, and it is about the thing quietly reordering this business: buyers no longer start by scrolling listings. They ask Al for a name, and they get three. What Andrew will cover: how those three names get chosen, why production volume is invisible to the models, and what an agent can do this quarter to be one of them. Catchouse | Get Cited. Get Found. Get Chosen Setup your free profile: https://catchouse.com/for-agents5 days agoSOCi studied more than 350,000 local business locations. ChatGPT recommended 1.2% of them. Getting picked by AI is up to 30× harder than ranking in Google's local 3-pack, and old wins do not carry over — only about 45% of Google's local winners show up in AI answers at all. The businesses that do get picked have three things in common:the same details everywhere they appear, real reviews at 4.2 stars and up, and specific local content instead of more ads. The other 98.8% are invisible. Find out which side you are on. — Catchouse · Get cited. Get Found. Get Chosen Build your free profile today: https://catchouse.com/for-agents
5 days agoAsk an AI assistant who the best agent is in your market. It will give a real answer, with real names in it. Most agents have never checked whether they are one of them. One month in, half of one agent’s tracked searches were already earning AI citations. Six of them ranked first. Her report said three things: claim your specialties, publish on a rhythm instead of in bursts, and write the answer to the question you already rank for. Create your profile and get your own digital health report. Free to use. 🔗 comment GUIDE to get your Guide to AI Visibility! — Catchouse | Get cited.Get found. Get chosen. Build your free profile: https://catchouse.com/for-agents5 days agoLook back at your last 10 posts. Odds are 8 do the same job. Every post does one of three things: helps new people find you, shows who you are, or keeps you top of mind with people who already know you. Agents who grow do all three on purpose. Save this and check your mix. Catchouse | Get cited. Get found. Get chosen Create your free profile: https://catchouse.com/for-agents5 days agoOur co-founder and CRO Andrew Callejo is spoke at the NHORA National Conference on September 11. His session is called The Shift, and it is about the thing quietly reordering this business: buyers no longer start by scrolling listings. They ask Al for a name, and they get three. What Andrew will cover: how those three names get chosen, why production volume is invisible to the models, and what an agent can do this quarter to be one of them. Catchouse | Get Cited. Get Found. Get Chosen Setup your free profile: https://catchouse.com/for-agents5 days agoSOCi studied more than 350,000 local business locations. ChatGPT recommended 1.2% of them. Getting picked by AI is up to 30× harder than ranking in Google's local 3-pack, and old wins do not carry over — only about 45% of Google's local winners show up in AI answers at all. The businesses that do get picked have three things in common:the same details everywhere they appear, real reviews at 4.2 stars and up, and specific local content instead of more ads. The other 98.8% are invisible. Find out which side you are on. — Catchouse · Get cited. Get Found. Get Chosen Build your free profile today: https://catchouse.com/for-agents

Every figure in this program comes from probes run on residential real estate professionals. The mechanics apply to any local profession; the numbers do not transfer until we have run the same audit there, and we say so where that is the case.