Yelp, BBB, and Angi: How to Check Directory Visibility in AI Search

A directory can matter to your business in several ways: a homeowner may visit its profile, an AI answer may cite it, or it may send an inquiry. Keep those outcomes separate when deciding where to invest your time.

What the directory study actually measured

Foundation and AirOps reported analyzing more than 28 million AI responses to local-business queries in Q4 2025. Their comparison covered six directories: Yelp, BBB, Angi, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, and Nextdoor. Yelp received 512,680 citations in that comparison. The figure is Yelp's citation count, not the total study sample.

The study's public summary, updated July 30, 2026, reports Yelp's 62.1% share on Perplexity within the selected competitive set. That is not 62.1% of every source Perplexity cites. Treat these historical observations as a reason to investigate relevant directories, not proof of a current ranking formula or results in your service area.

Inspect the answer and its sources

ChatGPT's search documentation explains that it can search the web, use location information, and provide sources. It also warns that results and citations can be incomplete or incorrect. Open the cited page and check whether it actually supports the recommendation.

For your own review, choose a small set of realistic questions about services you offer in places you serve. Record the exact question, product, date, location supplied, business names mentioned, and cited URLs. Repeat the same questions later while noting any changed context. These checks are observations of particular answers, not a complete measure of everyone else's results.

If a competitor appears, inspect the supporting page. Do not assume their review count, accreditation, or directory membership caused the recommendation. A citation alone does not isolate which change would make your business appear.

Correct information people can act on

Start with profiles that customers use or that appear in the answers you inspected. Check the business name, working phone number, website destination, actual services, hours, and applicable location or service-area information. Respect each platform's rules for businesses without a public storefront.

Prioritize errors that could mislead a customer, such as an old phone number or a service you no longer provide. Keep credentials accurate and distinguish accreditation from an ordinary listing. Do not purchase a badge or a directory package on the assumption that it guarantees an AI recommendation.

Use service descriptions and genuine project details that help a homeowner evaluate the business. Do not invent reviews, imply that a certain star rating unlocks AI visibility, or count every added service as a known ranking signal.

If you use a listing-distribution provider, review its current coverage, terms, and correction process. Verify the important destination profiles after an update. Record unresolved errors rather than assuming one submission has fixed every downstream listing.

Check website access separately

Perplexity distinguishes its search crawler from its user-requested page fetcher. Its crawler guidance recommends checking the published IP ranges alongside the user-agent when configuring firewall access. A request that merely calls itself Perplexity is not enough to authenticate the visitor.

Record successful retrieval separately from a mention or citation. Allowing a crawler is a technical access decision; it does not establish that your business has been recommended to a homeowner.

Measure business outcomes alongside visibility

Keep a review log with separate fields for observed mentions, cited pages, identifiable referral visits, qualified inquiries, and booked work. Leave unknown attribution marked unknown. A referral visit does not establish a booking, and a citation without a click will not be represented by that visit.

Use this record to choose the next correction: repair a broken contact route, clarify an inaccurate service description, or improve a page that a source already references. Evaluate paid directory services against their actual costs and business outcomes. Maintain accurate profiles because they help people assess and contact you, without treating directory membership as a guaranteed route into every AI answer.