We asked ChatGPT and Claude to recommend a local business 19 times. Neither ever named one.
Before launching Voxfound, we wanted real data, not a guess. So we took 19 real local service businesses — electricians, plumbers, HVAC companies — across the Nashville, TN metro area, and asked ChatGPT and Claude the exact question a customer would type: "best [category] in [city]." Eleven unique city/category combinations, tested against both models, with the full raw response saved every time.
The results were more surprising than we expected.
Finding 1: Neither model named a single real business
Across all 11 prompts, not once did ChatGPT or Claude respond with the name of an actual local business. Both models consistently hedged — explaining they don't have access to real-time local business listings and suggesting the user check Google or Yelp instead. If you're a business owner assuming "at least I'd show up if someone asked" — right now, you likely wouldn't. Neither would your competitors. Nobody is currently winning this channel, which also means nobody is watching it.
Finding 2: ChatGPT answered with businesses 2,000 miles away
Prompt: "best HVAC company in Antioch"
ChatGPT responded with real HVAC companies — located in Antioch, California.
The business we were checking is in Antioch, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. ChatGPT didn't hedge on this one — it confidently named real companies, just in the wrong Antioch entirely. A customer asking this question today would get a genuinely wrong answer with no indication anything was off.
Finding 3: Claude refused to answer at all
Prompt: "best plumber in Springfield"
Claude asked which Springfield we meant — offering Illinois, Missouri, or Massachusetts. Not Tennessee.
Springfield, TN has around 19,000 people. It's a real place with real plumbers who need real work. But it lost to three other, larger Springfields in the model's default assumptions — meaning a local customer asking this exact question gets stonewalled instead of a recommendation.
Why this matters now
None of this is permanent. ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are actively adding real-time business data to exactly these kinds of answers — the same shift that happened to traditional search over the last two decades is starting to happen here, just faster. When it does, whoever's business is already correctly represented has a head start. Whoever isn't being watched for it finds out only when it's already cost them customers.
We built Voxfound to track this automatically — the real questions customers would ask, checked against the real models, with an alert the moment something changes. Not a projection. The actual answer, saved in full every time.
See what AI says about your business