Which Review Sites Does ChatGPT Use? 8 Studies

If you only have time for one review site besides Google, ChatGPT's answer in September 2026 is Yelp. It was not the answer two years ago, and it may not be the answer next year.

In November 2024, BrightLocal ran 800 local searches in ChatGPT and found no Yelp at all among the directory sources. Three Best Rated and Expertise.com led. By 2026, BrightLocal's larger study of 1,355 business locations found Yelp in 80% of ChatGPT's local answers. Between those two studies, Yelp signed a content licensing deal with OpenAI.

So when you ask which review sites ChatGPT uses, the honest answer comes with a date. This guide lines up eight citation studies, explains why their answers differ, and ends with a priority order for a contractor who has a few hours, not a marketing department.

The short answer, engine by engine

Each AI engine favors different sources, so "AI search" is not one answer. Here is what the largest recent datasets show for local business queries.

Two things stand out. First, Google's AI and ChatGPT barely overlap at the top. Google Business Profile is Google's main source, but BrightLocal's ChatGPT top ten does not include it at all. The only map listing in that top ten is apple.com, with 600 citations. Second, Yelp is the one review site that ranks near the top everywhere except Gemini. In the Foundation Marketing data, Gemini returned only 49 Yelp citations across a whole quarter.

For home services specifically, the Cheers market baseline is the most focused dataset. It ran 32 trade prompts across 100 metros in the US and Canada. It found ChatGPT sent 44.7% of its citations to directories and review platforms and 48.8% to contractor websites. Across all four engines, the most cited platform domains were google.com, expertise.com, angi.com, bbb.org and reddit.com.

How ChatGPT gets to a review site in the first place

ChatGPT does not keep its own ranked list of plumbers. It searches the web while it answers, and OpenAI's help page explains how.

According to OpenAI's help article on web search, ChatGPT "sometimes partners with other search providers," rewrites your question into targeted search queries, and can use "an approximate location based on your IP address." OpenAI's example: someone in San Francisco asks for good restaurants near them, and ChatGPT may search for "top restaurants San Francisco." For restaurant bookings, it says availability may come from OpenTable, Resy or Yelp. The only step OpenAI gives site owners is to allow OAI-SearchBot to crawl the site. The page also says plainly: "Placement is not guaranteed."

That rewrite matters more than any ranking factor list. A homeowner types "who's a good roofer near me." ChatGPT likely searches something like "top roofing companies Charlotte." The review sites that rank for that search are the ones it can read.

We checked what those rewritten searches return. On September 13, 2026, we ran three of them through Google's organic results. This is a three-query sample from Google, not ChatGPT output, and OpenAI does not say which search providers it uses. But it shows which review sites own the query:

In all three, a Yelp search page ranked. In the roofing search, the shingle maker's certified contractor locator ranked above most roofers' own websites. This is how a trade-specific directory ends up in an AI answer even though no study lists it.

The Yelp deal changed what ChatGPT can see

On July 23, 2026, Axios reported that Yelp partnered with OpenAI to surface reviews in ChatGPT. Search Engine Land's summary gives the details. Yelp is licensing reviews, ratings, photos and business information, with Yelp branding and links shown when ChatGPT uses them. OpenAI controls how that looks. The deal is non-exclusive, and Yelp already licenses data to Yahoo and Apple Maps. Search Engine Land also reported that Yelp's Request a Quote feature will be available in ChatGPT local services searches.

That last point matters for contractors. Your Yelp profile is no longer just a review page. It is becoming a way to get quote requests inside ChatGPT.

The test data after the deal is striking. Steady Demand ran 2,880 prompts across 12 metros and 12 categories in August 2026. It found Yelp in the structured business-card data on 95.83% of ChatGPT runs. The rate ranged from 93.75% for hair salons to 97.92% for plumbers.

Bing Places pulls reviews from other sites

Before the Yelp deal, most advice on ChatGPT local results started with Bing. Whitespark checked which review sites Bing Places shows on listings across 153 queries in 17 categories and nine US cities. Facebook appeared on 716 businesses, Yelp on 482, Tripadvisor on 217, Porch on 46, Yellowpages on 33 and Angi on 18.

The trade breakdown is the useful part. Plumbers had Facebook reviews on 37 listings, Yelp on 36 and Porch on 13. For garage door repair, Porch led with 32. For moving companies, Yelp (54) and Facebook (51) were nearly tied. Keep in mind this counts review sites shown on Bing Places listings, not sites ChatGPT cited. Whitespark also described ChatGPT as "confused and contradictory" about whether it uses Bing Places data. That is a good reason not to ask ChatGPT where it got its answer.

The Foursquare claim you should stop acting on

Plenty of guides still say Foursquare supplies 60 to 70% of ChatGPT's local results, and some tell you to claim Foursquare before anything else. The number has a real source, but it has been stretched far past what that source measured.

Steady Demand traced it back. It started with a May 5, 2025 study by Spanish SEO Natzir Turrado: 50 prompts, five Spanish cities, and only the business ChatGPT ranked first. Nine days later, a blog repeated it as a general fact about ChatGPT local results. Of the eight later repeats Steady Demand found, seven dropped every caveat.

Then Steady Demand tested the claim in the US. The sample favored Foursquare, with seven of 12 categories drawn from restaurants, bars and other city-guide businesses. Foursquare's citation share on ChatGPT's main surface was 0.00%. On a separate check of 1,728 prompts, it was 0.06%, one citation in total. Steady Demand also compared the businesses ChatGPT named against Google's and Foursquare's rankings for the same city and category. ChatGPT's picks overlapped more with Google's (7.5%) than with Foursquare's (5.7%).

None of this means the Foursquare partnership is fake. Foursquare says its Places data covers more than 100 million points of interest. It means you should not spend your limited listing time on Foursquare first, based on a Spanish sample from 2025.

Eight studies, eight answers: why they disagree

The studies disagree because they measure different things at different times. Here they are side by side.

Five things explain most of the gaps.

1. Before or after the Yelp deal. Studies with data from before July 2026 put BBB, Angi, Three Best Rated or Expertise at the top for ChatGPT. The ones after put Yelp on top. Foundation Marketing also found ChatGPT's citations per answer fell 51%, from 15.49 to 7.63, between November 2025 and January 2026. When ChatGPT cites fewer sources, a single partner can take a much bigger share.

2. Visible links vs data you never see. Steady Demand counted three things separately. Yelp was on 95.83% of business cards but only 1.04% of visible citation links. Tripadvisor was a visible link in 13.55% of runs. A study that only counts clickable source links will say Yelp barely matters. A study that also counts business cards will say Yelp is everywhere. Both are right about what they counted.

3. Category mix. About 20% of the locations in BrightLocal's 2026 study were restaurants. That is why OpenTable ranks in its overall top five. A study built on restaurants will say Tripadvisor matters. A study built on HVAC will not.

4. Which platforms were even tracked. Foundation Marketing's headline, Yelp 3.4 times ahead of BBB, only compared six platforms: Yelp, BBB, Angi, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor and Nextdoor. Google Maps and Tripadvisor were left out. "Most cited" only means most cited among those six.

5. Share of domains vs share of citations. BrightLocal found about 93% of cited domains were individual business websites. But Google Business Profile alone made up 28.63% of all citations. Thousands of small websites each get cited a few times. A handful of platforms get cited thousands of times. "Your website matters most" and "platforms dominate" can both be true in the same dataset.

What changes by trade

Your trade changes how much review sites matter compared with your own website. The Cheers baseline split citations by trade across all four engines:

Plumbing sent 19.5% of its citations to directories. Roofing sent 30.1%. Roofers depend on review sites more than plumbers do. For a plumber, a thin service page is the bigger problem.

Within a trade, BrightLocal's plumber data shows what makes up the directory share. Across 26,672 plumber citations on all three engines it tracked: Google Business Profile 54%, Yelp 13.8%, Facebook 3.1%, Angi 2.2%, then HomeAdvisor, BBB, Trustpilot and MapQuest at 0.9% each, and Thumbtack at 0.3%. For service businesses more broadly, Houzz (0.7%), GuildQuality (0.2%) and BuildZoom (0.1%) also made the list. Remodelers and builders should notice those three.

Trade-specific sources that general studies miss:

• Roofing: manufacturer contractor locators. The GAF certified contractor page ranked #4 for "top roofing companies Charlotte" in our sample.
• HVAC: Carrier, Trane and Lennox dealer locators. We covered those in how HVAC companies get cited by AI search.
• Remodeling and general contracting: Houzz, GuildQuality and BuildZoom, all present in BrightLocal's service-business list.
• Canada: HomeStars. Formative Digital found it cited in all nine Ontario cities it tested and by more than one engine. Cheers counts homestars.com as a directory in its 40 Canadian metros.

The review-policy trap: you cannot ask for Yelp reviews

The site ChatGPT reads most is also the one that bans asking for reviews. This is where general AI visibility advice falls apart for contractors.

Yelp's support page is blunt: "Don't ask anyone to review your business, be it customers, mailing list subscribers, friends, family, etc." It also warns that "our automated software may not recommend reviews that seem to be prompted or encouraged by the business." When one r/localseo user posted that Yelp "has shut down solicited reviews," another replied: "Now? That's been against Yelp's rules for 20 years."

The other platforms ChatGPT cites work differently:

Now look at where contractors actually collect reviews. In the Cheers panel of 119 home-services companies, 97.9% of reviews received over 90 days came from Google. The median company got 6.0 new reviews a month. Meanwhile, Cheers counted google.com at 0.2% of ChatGPT's home-services citations. That does not mean Google data never reaches ChatGPT. Steady Demand's overlap test suggests it might in some indirect way. But almost all of a typical contractor's review effort goes to the one platform ChatGPT links to least.

The fix is not to stop asking for Google reviews. Google AI Mode and AI Overviews rely on your Business Profile more than anything else, and the map pack still drives calls. We cover the Google side in how many Google reviews you need to rank. The fix is to add a second place to send people. Since Yelp is off limits for asking, that means Angi or BBB. Then get Yelp's profile details right and let Yelp reviews come in on their own.

Expertise.com: a best-of list you cannot buy your way onto

Expertise.com shows up in nearly every home-services dataset. It was the second most cited directory in BrightLocal's 2024 ChatGPT study, and it was named right after google.com among the most cited platform domains in Cheers' 2026 home-services data. It is also the most misunderstood.

Expertise.com's selection process page describes how businesses get picked. It checks licenses and accreditations. It scores reputation on "the number of professional databases reviewing them, their average review score, and the volatility of their ratings." It looks at years of experience and the range of services. Then "our mystery shoppers call each company, identifying themselves as potential customers, to gauge knowledgeability, friendliness, and professionalism." Businesses can pay to advertise on the page only after they pass that review.

Two things follow for a contractor:

1. Reviews spread across several sites help twice. Expertise.com looks at how many review sites cover you, so a BBB or Angi profile helps your chances of making that list too.
2. Answer the phone. A mystery shopper who reaches voicemail at a five-truck HVAC shop is a lost listing, not just a lost lead.

What ChatGPT seems to read in reviews

Quality counts, not just volume, though the evidence here is mostly observation rather than controlled tests. One r/localseo user described a client with 2,000 reviews and a 4.7 rating that "never gets mentioned by chatgpt." A competitor with 47 long, detailed reviews "gets cited every time." That is one person's observation, not a study. Cheers' plumbing guidance points the same way: "Specific customer language is more useful than generic five-star volume."

For a contractor, this means a review that says "replaced our 40-gallon water heater same day, cleaned up the garage" gives AI search something to work with. "Great service!" does not. You cannot write reviews for customers, and on Yelp you cannot even ask. But when you ask on Google or Angi, you can mention which job you did, so the customer remembers the details.

A priority order for a contractor with five spare hours

This order is built from the studies above. It puts the sources ChatGPT reads most first and moves on to others as their payoff drops. Adjust it for your trade using the table in the trade section.

1. Make sure ChatGPT can reach your site (15 minutes). Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, and check that your host or CDN is not blocking OpenAI's crawler IP addresses. If your site is invisible, nothing else matters. The full diagnosis is in why your website isn't showing up in ChatGPT.
2. Claim and complete Yelp (45 minutes). Correct name, phone, service area, categories, hours, real job photos and a written description of the work you do. Reply to existing reviews. Do not ask anyone for a review. If you are wondering about paid placement, Yelp ads for contractors are a separate decision from the free profile.
3. Fix your BBB profile (30 minutes). BBB publishes profiles for accredited and non-accredited businesses alike. It was ChatGPT's most cited local platform in Q4 2025 and still in its top five in 2026.
4. Set up Angi and put its review link on your invoices (30 minutes). This is your second place to send happy customers, since Yelp is off limits for asking.
5. Keep your Google review requests going (ongoing). This powers Google AI Mode and AI Overviews. The system is in how to get more Google reviews.
6. Add your trade's directory (1 hour). Manufacturer locator for roofing and HVAC, Houzz or GuildQuality for remodeling, HomeStars in Canada.
7. Search the rewritten query yourself (30 minutes). Google "top [your trade] [your city]" and write down every directory on page one. If a local best-of list or trade site ranks and you are not on it, that is your next profile.
8. Check the result once a quarter (40 minutes). Run the same prompts in ChatGPT and record the sources, using the routine in how to check if AI is recommending your business.

What to skip: claiming Foursquare as a ChatGPT tactic, based on the 2025 Spanish study. Paid "AI citation" packages that list you on hundreds of directories nobody cites. And anything involving bought or incentivized reviews, which Yelp and BBB both reject.

The checklist

• OAI-SearchBot allowed, and the CDN is not blocking OpenAI's crawler
• Yelp profile claimed, complete and matching your website. No review requests
• BBB profile correct, whether or not you are accredited
• Angi profile live, with its review link on invoices and follow-up emails
• Google review requests running every week
• One trade-specific directory or manufacturer locator filled out
• "Top [trade] [city]" searched, and every page-one directory checked
• Phone answered live during business hours, since Expertise.com mystery-shops by phone
• Quarterly prompt check logged with sources, engine and date

The answer comes with a date

Which review sites ChatGPT uses has changed three times in two years. In late 2024 it was Three Best Rated and Expertise. In late 2025 it was BBB and Angi. Since July 2026 it has been Yelp. The part that has not changed is how it works: ChatGPT reads whichever sites rank for the rewritten question, plus whatever data partners OpenAI has signed. Get your profiles right on the sites that rank for your trade in your city, ask for reviews where the rules allow it, and check again next quarter. For how the other engines differ, see how to get cited by Perplexity and how to rank on ChatGPT.