AI Assistants Cite Other Cleaning Companies Far More Than Review Sites or Social Media
In Diib's AI visibility scans of 705 cleaning company websites, about 7 in 10 sources ChatGPT cited were other businesses' websites, mostly other cleaning companies. Social media made up less than 1%.
For a cleaning business, the competition for an AI recommendation is mostly other cleaning companies' websites, plus the review sites customers already check. Social posts barely registered in these answers. Business websites and review profiles are what showed up, so that's where effort is most likely to count.
A new study from Mencoro tracked 176,332 AI citations for 42 large consumer brands in Spain and found that each AI engine leans on different sources. Google’s AI leaned on Instagram, ChatGPT on newspapers and official records, and Perplexity on YouTube. Local service businesses are a different world, so Diib checked what AI assistants cite when people ask about cleaning services.
What the data shows
Diib’s AI visibility scans ask AI assistants the kinds of questions a customer might ask about a business’s services, then record which websites the answers cite. This covers scans of cleaning company websites between September 14 and October 2, 2026.
| Share of citations | ChatGPT | Claude | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other businesses’ websites | 72% | 47% | 60% |
| Review sites and directories | 15% | 29% | 21% |
| The scanned company’s own site | 11% | 24% | 17% |
| Social media and video | Under 1% | Under 1% | 1% |
| Websites scanned | 705 | 288 | 140 |
- The “other businesses” were mostly other cleaning companies, many of them national franchise brands.
- Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other social platforms combined accounted for 22 of 4,637 citations across all three assistants.
- Claude and Perplexity leaned on review sites such as Yelp, Angi, HomeAdvisor and Trustpilot more than ChatGPT did.
What this does and doesn’t tell you
This is aggregated Diib data. Diib’s scans don’t include Google’s AI Overviews (the AI summaries at the top of Google results), so this can’t test the Instagram finding directly. The Claude and Perplexity samples are smaller than ChatGPT’s. The overall picture lines up with Mencoro’s broader result that most AI citations go to company websites, not media or social platforms.
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