AI Recommends Clutch for Tech, Yelp for Local, RealSelf for Health

Ask an AI engine how to find a trustworthy plumber. It says check Yelp. Ask it about a Shopify agency. It says check Clutch. Ask about a cosmetic surgeon. It says check RealSelf.

This isn't a guess. We queried Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity 750 times across 50 commercial categories and recorded every directory they mentioned. The data is from our AI Citation Study, published last week. This article breaks down what the data reveals about directory visibility by industry.

The core finding: there is no universal "best directory." AI engines recommend different directories depending on the category. Businesses listed on the wrong directory for their vertical are invisible to AI search.

Local Home Services: Yelp, Then Everything Else

Yelp received 62 mentions across Local & Home Services queries. That's more than double the next directory (Angi at 30, BBB at 29). No other vertical showed this level of single-directory dominance.

The breakdown by category:

Two exceptions stood out. Electricians: Angi beat Yelp by one mention. AI engines associate electricians with licensed-contractor directories more than general review sites. Moving Companies: BBB beat Yelp. Trust signals matter more than reviews when you're handing someone your entire household.

Dog Trainers was the only local category where a niche directory (Bark, 6 mentions) outperformed the generals. If you train dogs and you're not on Bark, AI doesn't know you exist.

The Template 4 data (organic verification queries, where we asked "how would you verify this provider is legitimate?" without mentioning directories) confirmed the pattern. Yelp appeared 24 times, BBB 13, Angi 10. AI engines genuinely trust these sources for local businesses.

Tech and SaaS: Clutch and G2 Run the Table

Tech looked nothing like local services. Clutch and G2 tied at 27 mentions each. Expertise.com came in at 30 but spread thinner across categories.

The split was clean: Clutch dominated agency categories. G2 dominated software and product categories.

Cybersecurity was the outlier. MDR providers got pointed to Gartner (4) and Forrester (3) alongside G2. AI engines treat security as an analyst-driven market, not a review-driven one. The same pattern appeared for Virtual CISO Services: Expertise led at 10 mentions, with Gartner at 2.

Template 4 confirmed the split. When asked "how do you verify a tech provider?", AI engines recommended Trustpilot (15), G2 (13), and Clutch (11). For tech, trust verification runs through product review sites, not local review sites.

Professional Services: Expertise.com Dominates, Legal Gets Its Own Stack

Expertise.com crushed this vertical with 46 mentions. Nothing else came close (Clutch at 23 was a distant second).

But the real story was legal. Lawyers have their own directory ecosystem that AI engines fully recognise.

Personal Injury Lawyers is the only category in the entire study where Avvo and Martindale topped the list. AI engines know that legal directories carry weight that Yelp doesn't for this vertical. If you're a PI firm spending money on Yelp ads but not claiming your Avvo profile, you're optimising for the wrong platform.

DesignRush appeared twice for Branding agencies. It's the only category where DesignRush registered at all. Niche directories get niche recognition.