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Lehvel Research

What AI says about a business, and what it costs when it is wrong.

Reports from our own software and fieldwork. Each one shows what it found, how it was measured and where it stops.

Reports and analysis

Every figure carries its source, sample and review date.

Report · with Lehvel’s own measurements

How customers find a business when AI answers first

Google is still where most searches start, but fewer of them end in a click: in Pew's panel, people clicked a result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none did.

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13of 13

Asked about the business by name

6of 12

Asked for the best provider of its service

AI answers that named the business. Lehvel study, September 25, 2026. 4 U.S. businesses (three local service businesses and one national retailer); 25 answers, 24 of them from ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity and 1 from Gemini. An early sample, not a rate for businesses in general.

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Four questions behind our work.

  1. What AI says about a business. A company's own facts, set against the answers AI assistants give about it.

  2. Where the knowledge lives. How information gets captured, sourced and organized from daily operations.

  3. What AI can do on its own. Which model to use, what it may touch, and when it suggests and when it acts.

  4. How we check the work. How to confirm a change was made, seen and carried through.

How we publish

Every number has a source and a date. Our own data comes with its method.

120days

is the longest a figure goes without a check at its source. After that, the page says it is due for review.

The six publishing standards
A source and a date on every number
Who or what was measured, when, and a link to where the figure was published.
Method beside our own data
The system, the calculation, the sample size, the date range and what was excluded sit next to the figure.
Sample and scope
Each finding states how many were measured and whom the result describes.
Customer confidentiality
Customer data appears as anonymized totals. A participating business is named only with permission.
Findings you can trace
Readers can tell a measurement from an outside source, an estimate and our interpretation.
A review date on every report
Figures are re-checked at the source. One last checked more than 120 days ago is marked due for review.
Where our data comes from

Our measurements come from the Lehvel Observatory, which records what the AI platforms customers use say about a business and checks each claim against its facts. Findings become research only as anonymized totals. Our longest engagement is the case study.

Where does your own information disagree?

Business Truth Diagnostic

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