Does ChatGPT Really Use Reddit to Pick Local Businesses? We Measured It
"Post on Reddit, ChatGPT loves it" is everywhere. We tested it on real local searches. The truth depends entirely on the engine.
If you have read anything about getting recommended by AI, you have heard the advice: get yourself talked about on Reddit, because ChatGPT loves Reddit. It sounds smart. We decided to actually measure it.
In our testing of real local searches in our sectors, ChatGPT pulled Reddit threads into its behind-the-scenes search over and over, thousands of times, and then cited Reddit in its actual answers essentially zero times. For auto body and restoration, it reaches for the forum, reads around, and almost never passes it through to the customer. At platform scale, other researchers find ChatGPT cites Reddit only about 1.8% of the time overall. Source: Profound, 2026.
Gemini behaved completely differently. It cited Reddit in well over half of its answers, usually when a buyer's question touched on trust, reviews, or being treated fairly.
So who is right, the people who say Reddit matters or the people who say it does not? Both, and neither. Reddit is a real lever for Gemini and close to a dead end for ChatGPT. Advice that does not say which engine it is talking about is how businesses end up spending months in the wrong place.
This is the whole reason we measure each engine separately instead of repeating one-size-fits-all tips. The engines do not agree with each other, so your strategy cannot treat them as one thing.