Study traces citations in Google AI Mode and Perplexity local answers
10/31/2026 — 10/31, 05:17·1 sources (all)·1 reports (all)
Key takeaways
- On October 30 the author posed 232 unbranded local queries to Google AI Mode and Perplexity, spanning 15 industries and 8 Houston-area citie…
Background & analysis
The available reporting on this subject is a single article published on DEV Community's AI section on October 31, 2026. The author had earlier crawled 3014 Houston business websites to see what AI crawlers can actually read, and that left a question the crawl data could not answer on its own: whether any of it matters, meaning whether AI search engines cite the sites that are easy to read or something else entirely. To find out, the author on October 30 asked Google AI Mode and Perplexity 232 brand-name-free local questions, covering 15 industries and 8 cities in the Houston area. The questions mirrored the phrasing customers type every day, such as "Who is the best plumber in Katy, TX?
" and "How much does AC repair cost in Sugar Land, TX?
" After collecting the answers, the author traced the cited sources and recommended businesses one by one, then matched them against the earlier crawl data of the 3014 business websites. The full report and dataset are published under CC BY 4.0 on Hugging Face and Kaggle. The material does not include any further developments after this step.
AI-generated from 1 reports · updated 6 days ago
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A researcher asked Google AI Mode and Perplexity 232 unbranded local questions across 15 industries and eight Houston-area cities on October 30, then traced every cited source and recommended business back to an earlier crawl of 3,014 local business sites. The full report and dataset are released under CC BY 4.0.
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