How Does ChatGPT Decide Which Businesses to Cite?

ChatGPT mostly decides from memory. According to Ahrefs, only 14.4% of the 66.6 million responses it studied triggered a web search. When ChatGPT does search, it leans toward official brand sites. So your business gets cited when ChatGPT already knows you, or when your own site and profiles are the clear official source.

That is a different game from ranking on page one. Let me walk through what the study found, what it does not tell us, and what I would do about it if I ran a roofing, plumbing or HVAC company.

How often does ChatGPT actually search the web?

ChatGPT searched the web for only 14.4% of the 66.6 million free, logged-out responses Ahrefs tracked in August and September. The rest were answered without a search. For most prompts, then, ChatGPT never goes looking for your website at all.

The study was written by Louise Linehan at Ahrefs and reviewed by Ryan Law. Linehan's explanation is practical. Every web search costs OpenAI money, so it makes sense for ChatGPT to skip one when it can answer well enough from what it already knows. She also points to WordLift research suggesting free-tier style models may lean more on training data to keep costs down.

Her conclusion is the line I would pin to the wall: "your chances of appearing depend on what ChatGPT already knows about your brand."

My take: that is bad news if you have been hoping to fix this with one blog post next week. Being known is slow. It comes from what has been published about your business, consistently, over time. But it is also good news. Most of your competitors are not thinking about this yet.

What is query fan-out in plain English?

Query fan-out is when ChatGPT turns one question into one or more narrower web searches and combines the results into a single answer. Ahrefs found that when ChatGPT searched, it ran about 1.6 fan-out queries per response on average. So the search is usually short: one or two targeted lookups, not a deep crawl of the web.

Think of a homeowner asking a question, and ChatGPT quietly asking the web a couple of smaller questions on their behalf. You never see those smaller questions. But Ahrefs logged 15 million of them, and that is what makes this study useful. It shows what ChatGPT actually types when it goes looking.

Which sites does ChatGPT look at when it does search?

When ChatGPT searches a single site, it mostly picks a brand's own site. Ahrefs found 6.8% of fan-out queries used the site: operator, and among the roughly 160 most-searched sites, 75.9% of those searches targeted a brand site. Retailers made up 11.9%. Reddit and Facebook together made up 1.9%.

The site: operator is a search trick that limits a search to one website. When ChatGPT uses it, it has already decided which site it wants to check. Those searches were spread across about 116,000 different domains, so this is not a handful of big names.

The words inside the queries point the same way. "Official" appeared in 13.1% of English fan-out queries in September, up from 10.1% in August. "Price" appeared in 8.9% in September, up from 6.0%. Ahrefs also reports that price and review fan-outs rose by up to 47% in a month.

In separate citation data, Ahrefs found ChatGPT's Reddit citations dropped 88% in six months. Linehan's read is that ChatGPT seems to be moving away from sites that summarize information and toward the sources that produce it.

If you want to see the same idea explained on screen, this short video walks through how ChatGPT picks what to cite.

What does this mean for a roofing, plumbing or HVAC company?

For a roofer, plumber or HVAC company, the practical read is to make your own information complete, current and consistent. The study suggests ChatGPT wants first-hand sources. Your website and Google Business Profile are first-hand sources about your business. That is my reading, not Ahrefs' finding.

Here is why I think it matters. Ahrefs saw "official," "price" and "reviews" climbing in the queries ChatGPT sends. Homeowners ask about cost and about whether a company is any good. If your site says nothing about how you price jobs, and your reviews are thin, there is nothing first-hand for ChatGPT to land on.

Notice also who is not winning in the site: data. Forums and social sites got a tiny share. Brand sites got most of it. So the plan "get mentioned on a forum and hope" looks weaker than "make sure the source that is actually yours is solid."

One more honest point. The study is not about local service businesses. It does not tell us how ChatGPT handles "who is the best roofer near me." I would not build a strategy on a claim the data does not make. I would build on the things that are cheap, useful to real customers, and good for Google too.

How do I make my business easier for ChatGPT to know?

You cannot control ChatGPT, but you can make your business easy to know. Keep the same name, phone, address, services and service area everywhere, and publish clear answers on your own site. Then keep your Google Business Profile current. Here is the order I would work in.

1. Fix your own website first. List every service you actually sell. Name the towns you serve. Say how you price jobs, even if it is a range or "what affects the cost." Make it obvious this is the official site.
2. Complete your Google Business Profile. Categories, services, hours, service area, photos, and a description that matches your site. If you want a quick look at what is missing, our Google Profile Audit checks it.
3. Make your details match everywhere. Same business name, same phone number, same address on your site, your profile and any directory you are listed in. Small differences confuse people and machines.
4. Earn and answer reviews. Ahrefs saw review-related fan-outs growing. Real reviews from real customers, with a reply from you, are first-hand proof you did the work.
5. Check where you stand. Ask the questions your customers ask and see who gets named. Our AI Visibility Report does that for your business, so you are not guessing.

None of this is exotic. It is the same housekeeping that helps you in Google Maps. The difference is that now a second kind of search tool is reading it too.

What does this study not tell us?

It does not tell us how ChatGPT treats local home-services searches. Ahrefs studied free, logged-out GPT-5.6 Luna responses from August and September. The sample is huge, but it is general. Nobody should claim from it that a roofer gets cited if they do one specific thing.

A few other limits are worth knowing.

The site: searches were only 6.8% of the fan-out queries, and those queries came from only the 14.4% of responses that searched at all. So the brand-site finding describes a slice of a slice. It is a strong signal inside that slice, not a rule for every answer.

The study used logged-out sessions on purpose. According to Olivier de Segonzac of RESONEO, writing in Search Engine Land, more than 90% of ChatGPT's weekly users are on the free plan. Logging out also strips out chat history and memory, so Ahrefs saw default behavior. A homeowner who is logged in with a long chat history may see something different.

And the data covers two months. Ahrefs itself saw "official" and "price" shift by a few points month to month, and Reddit citations moved a lot over six months. This area changes fast. Treat any number here as a snapshot.

Common questions

Does ChatGPT search the web every time?

No. Ahrefs found that only 14.4% of the 66.6 million responses it tracked triggered a web search. The rest were answered without one. When ChatGPT did search, it ran about 1.6 fan-out queries per response on average, so most searches are short and targeted.

What is a site: search in ChatGPT?

It is a search limited to one website. In the Ahrefs data, 6.8% of fan-out queries used the site: operator. Among the roughly 160 most-searched sites, 75.9% of those searches targeted a brand site. In plain terms, ChatGPT often goes straight to a company's own website when it wants a fact.

Is Reddit still a good way to get cited by ChatGPT?

Ahrefs' separate citation data shows ChatGPT's Reddit citations dropped 88% in six months. That is one data set, so do not build a plan around it either way. For a local contractor, I would put effort into your own website and Google Business Profile before anything else.

Should a contractor worry about ChatGPT yet?

The Ahrefs study does not measure how many homeowners use ChatGPT to hire contractors, so I cannot give you a number. What I can say is that the fixes are cheap and also help your Google ranking. Get your site and profile solid now, then check how you show up in AI answers.