Ottawa small businesses are being measured by a new yardstick: whether ChatGPT mentions them. A study from Clixera Ai, led by Warren Butland, compared how Ottawa and Toronto businesses show up in answers from the AI tool, and the results suggest plenty of local shops are still invisible.
How the study worked
The study tested 2,000 Ottawa businesses. According to the Ottawa Business Journal, it ran "hundreds of consumer-style searches that became thousands of ChatGPT prompts", the kind of questions an ordinary person might type when looking for somewhere to shop, eat or book a service.
The headline number: 41 per cent of Ottawa businesses appeared at least once in relevant ChatGPT answers. That means a majority did not show up at all.
Ottawa and Toronto, head to head
When ChatGPT was asked to recommend where a user should go, about 29 per cent of businesses appeared. On that measure the two cities tied.
The gap shows up elsewhere. On broad citywide shopping questions, only one verified local business appeared in 57 per cent of Ottawa responses, while major chains and recognizable brands appeared in 71 per cent of responses. In other words, a general question about where to shop in Ottawa tends to surface big names ahead of independent operators.
Which sectors do best
Health and wellness businesses and professional services had the strongest visibility in both Ottawa and Toronto.
The basics are missing for many
The study also found that 26 per cent of Ottawa businesses lacked an identifiable website or a confidently matched Google Business listing. Butland put it this way: "One in four don't even have the online basics."
The sources provided do not spell out exactly why some businesses are mentioned and others are not, so it would be a stretch to draw a direct line from a missing listing to a missing mention. But the figure shows how many local businesses have little digital footprint for an AI tool, or a customer, to find.
Why it matters for Ottawa shoppers and owners
People are increasingly turning to AI for this kind of question. A CIRA survey found 46 per cent of adult Canadian internet users had used generative AI in the previous year, and 52 per cent of those people used it as a search engine. Separately, an Angus Reid finding showed that one-quarter of all Canadians who had used AI had used it for shopping advice, research or reviews.
For an Ottawa business owner, that means a growing share of potential customers may be asking a chatbot instead of scrolling a list of search results. For residents, it is a reminder that an AI recommendation is not a complete map of what is available nearby: in this study, the answers leaned toward major chains and recognizable brands on broad questions.
The full study details beyond what the Ottawa Business Journal reported have not been made available here, so questions such as how results changed from prompt to prompt remain unanswered for now.
Sources: Ottawa Business Journal
