When one of Warren Butland’s daughters asked ChatGPT to find a nail salon with good reviews nearby, that was the moment he realized that people are increasingly moving away from Google searches.
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When one of Warren Butland’s daughters asked ChatGPT to find a nail salon with good reviews nearby, that was the moment he realized that people are increasingly moving away from Google searches.
And so he decided to find out which local businesses appear when consumers ask AI where to spend their money.
He’d already launched his Ottawa-based company, Clixera Ai, in 2025 as a SaaS platform to help businesses in the new AI age. The competitive intelligence platform analyzes how businesses appear online through their websites, search engines, listings, reviews and AI systems.
Using his company’s capabilities, he amassed a test group of 2,000 Ottawa businesses, mostly from “Main Street” areas such as Preston Street and Wellington Street West, and found that 41 per cent appeared at least once in relevant ChatGPT answers, while 29 per cent appeared when the chatbot was asked specifically to recommend a business.
Intrigued, Butland then analyzed businesses in Toronto to see where they ranked in AI search results, with a view to comparing the results to Ottawa. Thus, the Battle of Ontario was born.
“I was just going to do Ottawa and I thought, you know what? Let's make this fun and do Toronto too.”
Butland built comparable samples in both cities by pulling businesses from similar business improvement areas and Main Street commercial districts, rather than comparing dense downtown office districts. Major chains were separated from the local business sample. He then ran hundreds of consumer-style searches that became thousands of ChatGPT prompts, asking questions such as where to get a haircut, replace car brakes or find a particular local service.
The results showed that, while 41 per cent of Ottawa businesses in the sample appeared at least once in the responses, Toronto’s businesses came in slightly higher at 43 per cent. Butland said the results stood out because each business had multiple opportunities to appear.
“You would think that you would get more mentions or a higher percentage,” he said. “I really didn’t ask just one question. I asked a lot of questions.”
The two cities were also virtually tied when Butland narrowed the test to specific recommendations.
In both Ottawa and Toronto, about 29 per cent of businesses appeared when ChatGPT was asked to recommend where a user should go for a particular product or service. Butland said the similarity surprised him, given Toronto’s larger and more competitive business environment.
A separate part of the study tested broader 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. Ottawa performed better than Toronto on the broader questions, according to Butland.
Larger brands often have an advantage because more information about them is available online, he said.
“It's not just, hey, did I answer questions and answers on my website,” he said. “There are many factors at play. Is my website authority good? Is my website page speed good? Do I have listings? Do I have reviews? Do I show up elsewhere on the web? It’s a combination of a lot of those.”
He found more basic problems for some Ottawa businesses, with 26 per cent missing either an identifiable website or a confidently matched Google Business listing. “One in four don’t even have the online basics,” he said.
Performance also varied by business category. While health and wellness businesses and professional services had the strongest visibility in both Ottawa and Toronto, results for food and drink businesses were more mixed. He said businesses such as physiotherapists, dentists, accountants and lawyers often have more detailed websites and stronger online profiles because their customers rely on web search. Restaurants, by comparison, may have little more than a menu and basic listing online.
Businesses need to make information about what they offer, where they are located and what customers are looking for available online. “It’s important to understand what customers are looking for. Listings and reviews are more important now for a business’ online presence because those give AI systems more information to work with.”
The study comes as generative AI use grows in Canada. A 2026 survey commissioned by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) found 46 per cent of adult Canadian internet users surveyed had used generative AI in the previous year, up from 33 per cent in a 2025 survey and 16 per cent in 2024.
Among the 46 per cent, 52 per cent said they had used AI as a search engine, while 19 per cent reported verifying AI-generated results.
Meanwhile, an Angus Reid survey published in 2025 found one-quarter of all Canadians who had used AI had used it for shopping advice, research or reviews. Sixty per cent of respondents said information from AI platforms about products and services was trustworthy.
None of this means traditional search engines are disappearing. Google Search still dominates in Canada, but now even that platform is adding AI-generated answers directly into search results. AI overviews were launched in 2024, giving consumers the opportunity to ignore the usual ranked search results and read the overview instead.
That can change how local businesses structure their SEO. A customer might ask Google for a physiotherapist or restaurant and receive a small handful of recommendations before ever seeing a traditional page of results. Butland said that makes visibility in those answers increasingly important.
“If your business doesn’t know that you’re not being mentioned at all by AI and your competitors are, well, they’re winning your clients,” he said.
While Butland’s Battle of Ontario study focused on ChatGPT, the results do not necessarily show how the same businesses would appear on other AI platforms since different AI engines draw on different sources. Google’s Gemini can use information from Google Maps, Search and Google
Business, including business reviews. ChatGPT can combine web search with third-party sources.
Less frequently used models like Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity use their own combinations of models and sources.
Butland said local businesses don’t need to reverse-engineer every AI system. The first step, he said, is making sure basic information about the business is accurate, available and useful to customers.
“AI is changing how people are searching,” he said. “Every business owner needs to pay attention to this.”
