1. AI search tools like ChatGPT now rely heavily on local citations, including Foursquare, Yelp, and niche directories, to answer user queries.
2. Google Business Profile remains essential for Google’s AI summaries.
3. Citations and reviews from third-party platforms now fuel AI visibility more than backlinks or traditional SEO alone.
There’s a quiet revolution happening in local SEO—and it’s catching a lot of people off guard.
In the early days of SEO, citations and local listings were the bread and butter of local visibility. But over the past few years, they’ve become almost an afterthought. If you’ve been lurking in Reddit’s SEO communities, you’ve probably seen what many SEOs are saying:
“Citations are outdated.”
“Google doesn’t care about them anymore.”
“It’s a waste of time, and they don’t move the needle.”
Frankly, many SEO pros had given up on citations altogether—and maybe, for a while, that was justified. Once foundational, local listings became “set-it-and-forget-it” items on checklists, barely nudging rankings in competitive markets.
But everything changed with the rise of AI search.
Now, citations—especially those that appear in trusted directories and aggregators—are being actively used by AI systems like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity to source, validate, and synthesize local business information. And these aren’t just supporting signals. In many cases, they’re the only source LLMs use to answer queries.
So while the old SEO world moved on from citations, the new AI-driven one has brought them roaring back into relevance.
Within the SEO community, citations have long been treated as a foundational task—important, but not exactly powerful. Some agencies automate them once and never revisit them.
But here’s the plot twist: AI doesn’t care what SEO Reddit says.
AI systems are mining these citations and listings as primary sources of business data.
Whether it’s an unlinked mention in a local newspaper, a listing on Foursquare from 2017, or your TopRatedDentist.com profile—these citations are actively being used to answer real user queries.
In this context, citations aren’t just a trust signal—they’re a source of truth.
Traditional SEO strategies revolved around websites, backlinks, and on-page optimization. But the new generation of search isn’t always taking users to your website—it’s giving them direct answers, synthesized from third-party sources.
Instead of crawling and indexing everything, AI models gather, summarize, and prioritize structured data from high-authority, localized databases.
If your business information isn’t current and distributed across those databases, you might not show up in the response at all—no matter how good your website is.
This is the new battleground of local SEO.
One of the most surprising developments in this space has been the quiet partnership between Foursquare and ChatGPT.
Despite Foursquare retiring its consumer-facing apps, it has found new life as a backend data powerhouse. In early 2024, OpenAI integrated Foursquare’s location intelligence into ChatGPT’s search layer.
As reported by Mediaelx, this means that ChatGPT now uses Foursquare’s extensive location database to answer local queries—including restaurant searches, retail recommendations, and service provider lookups (source).
“Foursquare is powering more than 60–70% of ChatGPT’s local responses in certain categories—especially in smaller cities or niche service industries
Let that sink in.
Even if no one clicks your Foursquare listing, it might still be the data source informing what ChatGPT tells potential customers about you.
That changes the game.
To understand how AI search works in practice, a recent experiment tested 20 search queries across 10 industries using:
Google AI Mode
Google Gemini
Perplexity AI
ChatGPT (with Browse or Search)
Each model was tested on both generic and specific queries—like “best dentist in Denver” or “Does Odd Pet Vet offer 24/7 service?”
No matter the platform, directories were a top source of information:
MapQuest was frequently referenced by Google AI Mode and Perplexity.
Industry-specific directories dominated niche searches:
Dentists: Zocdoc, TopRatedDentist, Healthgrades
Lawyers: Superlawyers, Justia, Findlaw
Fitness & Wellness: ClassPass, Mindbody, YogaAlliance
Despite its mixed reputation, Yelp is powering AI models across the board:
Used in 33% of all AI responses
Perplexity leveraged Yelp in every industry tested
Google AI Mode even extracted data and reviews from Yelp to display in blended responses
AI tools don’t just reference Yelp—they summarize reviews, extract sentiment, and use it to build trust in their answers.
No surprises here: Google’s LLMs favor their own ecosystem.
Even when GBP isn’t directly cited, Google AI Mode almost always includes GBP data:
Summarized snippets appear at the top of answers
AI Mode cross-references GBP with Yelp and third-party sources
A full Google Business Profile panel often appears underneath the AI text
📌 This shows that while diverse listings matter, GBP remains the anchor for your presence in Google’s AI search layer.
If you’ve let your listings lapse, or never optimized beyond Google and Yelp, you may already be invisible to AI-driven search engines.
This is about more than SEO. This is about AI visibility.
When users ask their smart assistant to “find a reliable plumber near me” or “book a facial in West Hollywood,” your appearance in the answer depends on what’s in:
If your business isn’t active across those sources—or worse, if the information is inconsistent—you won’t be recommended. Period.
Here’s what every business should be doing right now:
Task | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
🔍 Audit and update all local listings (Yelp, Foursquare, Bing, Apple Maps, etc.) | AI models use these as primary data sources |
🧠 Submit or update to aggregators like Data Axle and Neustar and index them | Powers Alexa, Siri, Uber, and other voice apps |
📘 Claim and refresh your Google Business Profile monthly | Still the most important listing for Google’s AI |
🦷 Get listed in niche directories (Zocdoc, Findlaw, ClassPass, etc.). And index them! | AI trusts industry-specific sources more |
🗞️ Build unlinked mentions via PR and community articles | AI uses them to verify and summarize business info |
🌟 Encourage consistent, high-quality reviews | AIs extract and summarize sentiment from reviews |
The SEO world may have sidelined citations, but AI search engines have brought them roaring back to the forefront.
In this new environment, your business listing isn’t just a static page—it’s training data for language models that are reshaping the search experience.
📣 The days of ignoring Foursquare and MapQuest are over. This is your wake-up call.
Every directory, every unlinked brand mention, every review—it’s all being used to compose the answers that AI gives your potential customers.
If you want to be found, booked, and chosen in 2025, you need to start optimizing beyond your website.
Welcome to the age of Citation-Driven AI Search.
