How Gemini recommends local businesses: a study of 1,926 answers

How did we run the study?

On 15 October 2026 we asked Gemini the questions a customer types when they don't yet know which business to choose. Nine trades: dentists, aesthetic clinics, physiotherapists, plumbers, hair salons, personal trainers, estate agents, electricians and restaurants. Nine cities: London, Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami in English, and Paris, Lyon and Marseille in French.

For each trade and city we wrote 8 questions, one per buyer intent: a direct "best in" question, a specific problem, a place near a landmark, a top-5 shortlist, the most trusted, a specialty, value for money and same-day urgency. Each question went to Gemini 3 times, word for word, as separate requests. That is 1,944 requests; 1,926 came back with an answer. Behind those answers Gemini ran 5,874 Google searches; what is answer engine optimization breaks down what it searched for.

The model was Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, generally available on Vertex AI since 7 May 2026, with Google's default settings (we did not change the temperature) and Grounding with Google Search switched on, so every answer was built from a fresh web search. Google's documentation says the model writes its own search queries and can run several per question (read on 15 October 2026); here it ran 3.05 on average and cited 7.6 web pages per answer. The 18 missing answers timed out or hit Google's rate limit after four attempts.

Two limits matter when you read the numbers. The API does not know where the person asking is, so every question names its city; in a test run, a question about "Kensington" without "London" came back about Kensington, Maryland. And businesses were counted from the answer text: a second Gemini model listed the businesses each answer recommended, we kept a name only if it appears in the answer itself, left out directories and booking platforms, and merged spellings with the same matcher our checks use. Names were not checked by hand and we have not measured how often this step misses or adds one, so a few duplicates or gaps may remain. All answers come from one day, so this measures how answers vary from one ask to the next, not over weeks.

Peekl's own pages were cited in 13 answers (0.7%), because our city pages list who AI names; we left them in. Peekl sells AI visibility checks, so we have an interest in this topic, which is why the questions and the results for every trade and city are published below for anyone to check.

Does Gemini recommend the same businesses every time?

No. Of all the businesses Gemini named for a question across its three answers, 24% showed up in all three. Take a business named in one answer: the chance it was also named in another answer to the identical question was 56%, close to a coin flip. Two answers to the same question shared 44% of their businesses on average, and 40% of the web pages they cited.

Here is one question from the data, "Who is the best electrician in Silver Lake, Los Angeles?", asked three times. The Electric Connection was named every time. RF Electrician and Los Angeles Electric Pro were named twice. B.K. Electric Services, Ready Electric, Morff Electric and Shaffer Construction each appeared once. The third answer kept only one name from the first.

Sometimes the whole answer changes shape. "What are the top 5 dentists in New York?" got two lists of five that shared four practices, then a third answer that named no dentist at all and explained how to choose one.

Restaurants were the steadiest trade, with 31% of named places in all three answers; personal trainers the least steady, at 19%. English-speaking cities were steadier than the French ones (26% against 20%).

How many businesses does Gemini name for one trade in one city?

Far more than a top 5. Across the 24 answers for one trade in one city, Gemini named 40 different businesses at the median, and anywhere from 10 to 84. When it named businesses, it named 4.8 per answer.

Most of that list is a long tail. 45% of the businesses were named in a single answer and never again. Even the business named most often appeared in about a third of the answers for its trade and city, roughly 8 of 24. The three most-named businesses together held 22% of all mentions.

Restaurants had the widest field, 75 different places per city at the median, with the top three holding only 10% of mentions. Paris had the narrowest, 28, partly because Gemini named nobody more often there.

How often does Gemini name no business at all?

In 13% of answers Gemini named no business. It explained how to choose instead: check registrations, compare reviews, use a booking platform, call around. In the English-speaking cities that happened in 10% of answers; in the French cities, 21%, and in Paris 25%.

The trade matters more than the city. Restaurants and hair salons almost always got names (2% and 3% of answers without one). Dentists and physiotherapists got none in 22% of answers. In France the gap widened: 54% of physiotherapy answers and 32% of plumbing answers named nobody, against 6% for both in the English-speaking cities. Estate agents went the other way, 25% without a name in English and 7% in French.

Which websites does Gemini read for each trade?

Each trade has its own small set of sites that Gemini quotes, and they change with the country. The table shows the sites cited in the most answers for each trade, as a share of that trade's answers in English-speaking and in French cities. The English-speaking column mixes London, Dubai and four US cities, so some sites only apply to some of them; the dataset lists the top sites city by city.

French markets are the most concentrated. Doctolib appeared in 85% of physiotherapy answers and 61% of dentist answers in Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Superprof appeared in 83% of personal-trainer answers, Treatwell and Planity in about two thirds of hair-salon answers, and travaux.com in close to 60% of plumber and electrician answers. If your trade has a site like that in your country, check that you are listed there with a complete profile. We measured which sites Gemini cites, not whether a listing changes who it names.

In the English-speaking cities the picture is spread wider, and Reddit is the most-cited site overall, in 14% of answers and 30% of restaurant answers; what Reddit means for a local business has the subreddits behind those citations. Our study of the sites ChatGPT and Gemini cite compares the two assistants on the same sources.

Does Gemini use your Google Business Profile?

Not as a page it quotes. Out of 1,926 answers, 12 cited a Google page of any kind. With Grounding with Google Search, Gemini reads the open web: directories, booking platforms, forums, press and business websites. Typed into Google Maps, the same questions surfaced just over a third of Gemini's picks in the top 20 results (AI search vs Google).

That is not the whole story for the Gemini app. Google documents a separate tool, Grounding with Google Maps, that connects Gemini to Maps place data and is off unless switched on. In the consumer app, Google's help page says Gemini "uses public information from Google Maps" to help people find places, with details such as addresses, ratings and opening hours; the feature is rolling out to adults on personal accounts asking in English (both read on 15 October 2026). So a complete profile still matters, and our Google Business Profile guide covers what to fill in.

One feature to keep apart: since June 2026, owners can connect their Business Profile to Gemini to update it, summarise reviews and draft replies. Google presents it as a tool for running the profile; nothing in its announcement says it changes who Gemini recommends to customers.

What does this mean for your business?

Three things follow from the data. First, one check is not a result. With a 56% chance of being named again, a single yes or no from Gemini tells you little; count how often you are named across several questions and several asks, and track that rate over time, as our guide to AI visibility metrics explains.

Second, find the gatekeeper site for your trade and country in the table above, and make sure you are listed and reviewed there. In France that can mean a single platform carries most of the answers.

Third, watch the questions where Gemini names nobody. Value-for-money and specific-problem questions went without names a fifth of the time or more, so pages that state your prices and the problems you fix give it something concrete to quote. To see how Gemini answers for your own trade and town, the step-by-step Gemini check walks through it by hand, and our free Gemini visibility checker runs the questions for you.

Download the dataset

The data behind this page is free to download: peekl-gemini-local-recommendations-2026-10.csv (75 KB, 81 rows). Each row is one trade in one city. Columns: the number of answers, answers naming no business, different businesses named, businesses named only once, the share named in all three asks, the chance of being named again, the five businesses and five sites that appeared in the most answers, and the 8 questions asked word for word.

It is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: you can reuse it, including commercially, as long as you credit Peekl with a link to this page. Cite it as: Peekl, Gemini local recommendations study, October 2026, https://peekl.io/ai-visibility/guides/gemini-local-recommendations-study.