Does ChatGPT Use Reddit to Recommend Local Businesses? What We Found

ChatGPT does use Reddit, but hardly ever when someone asks it which local business to hire. We asked ChatGPT and Perplexity who to hire in 11 Singapore trades, ten times per question, and their 1,100 answers carried 13,054 links. Fifteen went to Reddit. At rankr, the Singapore SEO agency that writes this blog, we ran that study on 5 and 6 October 2026, and the figure sat so far from what Ahrefs and Semrush publish that we checked it against their studies before writing this.

Their numbers hold up too. They measure a different kind of question.

How often did ChatGPT and Perplexity link to Reddit?

Four of ChatGPT's five Reddit links came from questions about movers, and one of those four was a moving company's post on its own Reddit profile rather than a discussion. The fifth was an r/TuitionSingapore thread asking parents whether big tuition centres are actually better or just a brand.

Perplexity's ten were all the same thread: an r/askSingapore post asking for aircon servicing on the Tampines side. It appeared in every one of the ten answers to "I live in Tampines. Which aircon servicing company near me would you recommend?" Perplexity's other 54 questions never linked to Reddit.

Perplexity linked to LinkedIn 76 times, more than seven times as often as Reddit. HardwareZone, Facebook, YouTube, Quora, TikTok and Instagram did not appear once in either assistant's 13,054 links.

Reddit ranked on Google for these searches. The assistants skipped those threads.

For each trade's main search, such as "aircon servicing singapore" or "dental clinic singapore", Google Singapore's first page held 9 Reddit threads among 94 results, spread across 6 of the 11 trades. Dental clinics, aesthetic clinics and accounting firms had two each. The Google results are Ahrefs' captures for Singapore, dated 11 August to 5 October 2026.

Neither assistant linked any of those 9 threads in any of the 1,100 answers.

So a customer can read a Reddit thread about your trade on Google and still get an answer from ChatGPT or Perplexity that never touched Reddit. Our Reddit research page has a sharper case: on 30 October 2026 the top Google result for "best italian restaurant singapore" was a Reddit thread with 104 answers.

Why do Ahrefs and Semrush say Reddit is one of the most cited sites?

Because they count every kind of question, mostly in the US, and they don't all count the same way. Here is what each published, with the two studies we found that looked only at local business questions further down the table.

Three things account for most of the gap.

The questions. None of the first six studies splits out local service questions. The two that asked only local business questions, Yext and BrightLocal, found 2% and none, and our figure sits with them.

The measure. "Answers with a Reddit link in them" and "Reddit's share of all links" are different numbers. An answer with 20 links and one Reddit thread counts in full toward the first and as 1 in 20 toward the second. Semrush reports the first kind, Profound and Ahrefs the second, and we counted the second.

The date. Reddit's share moves fast. Semrush watched ChatGPT go from close to 60% of answers to about 10% within six weeks in 2025, and Ahrefs recorded a 32% drop in ChatGPT's Reddit citations in its November 2026 update.

What we could not check is the ChatGPT app. Our study used OpenAI's model with OpenAI's web search through the API, and Perplexity through its API, and the app can behave differently: it showed Google star ratings that the API never linked to, as we found in does ChatGPT use Google reviews. Ours is also 55 questions in one country, against prompt sets in the hundreds of thousands.

Should a Singapore local business bother with Reddit?

Not as the first move if the goal is to get named when a customer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity who to hire. In the first three rounds of the study, where every link was sorted by type, 57% of ChatGPT's 803 links went to the websites of businesses in the trade, and 42% of Perplexity's 3,109 went to "best X in Singapore" lists. Your own pages and those lists come first, and the listings ChatGPT and Perplexity read names them for 11 trades.

Reddit still earns its place in three ways:

• On Google. A thread about your trade on Google's first page is something customers read before they call. If your trade has one, read it, and reply from your own account, as yourself, when you have something useful to add.
• As research. Reddit is where buyers ask, in their own words, what worries them and what they expect to pay. That is where we find the questions a page should answer, which is what our Reddit research delivers.
• For product and comparison questions. Semrush found that more than half of AI tools' Reddit citations went to question-and-answer threads, with comparison posts next. If you sell a product people compare, such as a mattress or software, the big studies describe your situation better than ours does.

How we counted

We asked ChatGPT (OpenAI's gpt-5.6-luna with OpenAI's own web search, through the API) and Perplexity (its sonar model, through the API) 55 questions about 11 Singapore trades, ten times each, on 5 and 6 October 2026. A link is one source an answer cited, and any link to reddit.com counted as Reddit. Runs 1 to 3 were sorted by source type when the study was published: 3,912 links, 4 of them to Reddit. We counted runs 4 to 10 from the same raw files on 7 November 2026: 9,142 links, 11 to Reddit. Every answer can be downloaded from the study page. The other studies' figures were read on their own pages on 7 November 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Does ChatGPT use Reddit?

Yes, but rarely when recommending a local business. In our study ChatGPT linked to Reddit 5 times in 2,689 links across 550 answers about Singapore businesses. Across all topics, Ahrefs ranked Reddit second among ChatGPT's sources in November 2026, at 6.2% of citations among the top sources.

Does Perplexity cite Reddit?

In our study, 10 times in 10,365 links, all to one r/askSingapore thread about aircon servicing in Tampines. Across all topics, Semrush found a Reddit link in 4% of Perplexity answers, and Profound put Reddit at 6.6% of Perplexity's citations.

Why do other studies say Reddit is the most cited source?

They count questions on every topic, mostly in the US, and some count the share of answers with a Reddit link rather than Reddit's share of all links. The studies limited to local business questions, by Yext and BrightLocal, found 2% and none.

Will posting on Reddit get my business recommended by ChatGPT?

Our data gives no reason to expect it for a local service business. Neither assistant linked any of the 9 Reddit threads on Google Singapore's first page for these trades. Work on your own website and on the best-of lists the assistants cite comes first.