State of AI visibility 2026: what we found auditing 25 local business sites

We analyzed the 25 most recent local business websites run through HopHQ's full-site audit (our own properties excluded), scoring each from 0 to 100 across ten signals. The takeaway: more than a third of local businesses are not set up to be found by AI search, and the gaps that hold them back are the same handful of fixable problems on nearly every site.

What we looked at

Every site was run through the same full-site audit and scored 0 to 100 in ten categories - speed, search appearance, social sharing, page structure, images, AI visibility, schema, links, and technical - rolled into one overall score. This is a snapshot of 25 real local business sites, not a census of the whole web, but the pattern is consistent enough to be useful. Here is what stood out.

A third of local sites are not ready for AI search

36% of the sites scored below 50 out of 100 on AI visibility - our measure of how readable and citable a site is to AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. The median AI-visibility score was just 55. In plain terms: when a buyer asks an AI assistant "who's the best [service] near me," more than a third of these businesses have a site the AI struggles to read, let alone recommend. That is the single biggest gap we saw, and it is the newest - most owners have not looked at it yet.

Structured data is all-or-nothing

Schema was the strangest result. The median schema score was 100 - but the average was 63, because the sites split into two camps. Sites built on a modern platform tend to have full structured data; everyone else has almost none. 32% of sites - roughly one in three - scored under 30 on schema, meaning search engines have to guess what and where the business is. There is no middle ground: you either have the foundational LocalBusiness and Service markup or you don't. (Worth repeating from our schema guide: AI models don't read schema directly, but it helps the search engines that AI pulls its sources from.)

The most-skipped basic: social sharing tags

40% of sites scored below 50 on social sharing - the Open Graph tags that control how your link looks when someone shares it in a text, on Facebook, or in a group chat. Skip them and your link shows up as a bare URL with no title or image, which quietly kills clicks. It is one of the easiest things to fix and one of the most commonly ignored.

Speed is the most common drag

Speed had the lowest median score of any category at 50 out of 100 - the one place where even otherwise-strong sites lose points. On mobile, where most local searches happen, a slow site costs you both rankings and the visitors who bounce before it loads.

The full picture

*Schema median is 100 but average is 63 - the sites split into "has it" and "has almost none," with about a third in the second camp.

What this means for you

The encouraging part: the gaps are boringly consistent. It is almost always the same short list - AI readability, structured data, social tags, and speed - and all of it is fixable without a rebuild. The businesses that close those gaps now get read and recommended by AI search while their competitors are still wondering whether it matters. Run your own site through the free AI-visibility check and you will see exactly where you land against this benchmark.