Research

We asked AI about our customers 654 times. Three times in four, it did not mention them at all.

SurgeLab research · 9 September 2026 · 4 minute read

Every week we ask the AI assistants your customers use what they would recommend. Here is what came back in August, across every business we track. It is not a survey. It is what the machines actually said.

What we did

When someone wants a table, a plumber, a supplier or a pair of boots, more of them now ask an assistant instead of searching. So we ask on our customers' behalf, in the wording a real customer would use, and we record the answer.

In August that came to 654 answers about the businesses on our books. We counted three things: whether the business was named, whether a competitor was named, and where the assistant got its information from.

The question we asked “Where should I go for brunch near me that does gluten free?”

A few good options nearby. a competitor is the one most people mention for gluten free, and a competitor has a separate menu for it. You could also try our customer, though I have less detail on their current menu.

Three times in four, the business was not in the answer

Named the business itself25%

Named a competitor91%

Read those two bars together, because the gap is the point. The businesses were mentioned one time in four. Somebody else was mentioned nine times in ten.

That is not the assistant being unfair. It is the assistant answering with whatever it can find, and finding somebody else.

Your own website is almost never the source

This was the number that surprised us most. Assistants do cite sources. They just do not cite yours.

Your own website (3) Somebody else's page (370)

Each of those 370 is a directory, a review site, an old listing or a competitor's blog. Those pages are answering questions about your business, and you did not write any of them.

Why this happens

An assistant will not quote a page it cannot read. Most small business websites fail on the same few things:

• The price is a picture. A menu in a PDF, a rate card as an image on Instagram. Invisible.
• The facts are stale. Old hours, an old address, a service you dropped. The assistant repeats whatever it last read.
• Nothing answers a question. Pages describe the business. They do not answer "how much", "when are you open", "do you do X".

Directories do all three well. That is why they win.

What we would do about it

In order, because the first one is worth more than the rest combined:

1. Put your prices in text. Not an image, not a PDF. Text on a page.
2. Fix your facts everywhere at once. Hours, address, what you sell. Your site and your listings.
3. Answer the questions people ask. Write the answer to a real question, in plain words, on a page anyone can read.

None of that needs a marketing degree. It needs someone to do it, and to check it worked.

Want your own number? The free audit runs the same check on your business and gives you the score in about two minutes. No card, no account.