What Questions Do Customers Ask AI Before Hiring a Local Business? 67 Questions From Our Seattle Audits

If you run a dental clinic, a plumbing company or a cleaning business, the question that decides whether an AI assistant sends someone your way is rarely "who is the best?" It is closer to "dentist that takes Delta Dental in Seattle" or "plumber in Ballard Seattle."

We know this because we went back to three of our own audits. On October 16, 2026, Beket AI ran 67 unbranded questions about Seattle dentists, plumbers and house cleaners through ChatGPT, Google AI Overview and Perplexity. When we sorted those questions by what the person wanted, only 9 of the 67 were a plain "best" or "most trusted" request. The other 58 asked for a neighborhood, a specific job, a price or insurance plan, a time of day, or a fit for a certain kind of customer.

This guide walks through those six kinds of questions, what the AI answers leaned on when they replied, and how to build the same question list for your own business.

At a glance

• 67 unbranded questions, none naming a business: 24 about dentists, 21 about plumbers, 22 about house cleaners, all set in Seattle.
• Neighborhood questions were the biggest group (22 of 67). Specific jobs or services came next (17).
• Only 9 questions asked for the "best" or "most trusted" business. Price or insurance (5) and urgency or opening hours (5) were smaller but very specific.
• In the answers, businesses' own websites made up most of the top-cited domains for plumbers and house cleaners, while dentist answers leaned as much on booking directories and review sites as on clinic sites.
• One narrow question can reshape the whole list: in the dentist study, an insurer (Delta Dental) was the most-mentioned name, and one of the 24 questions asked for a dentist that takes Delta Dental.

Why the questions matter more than the ranking

People now ask AI tools for local recommendations at real scale. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 of 1,002 US adults found that 45% used ChatGPT or another AI tool to find a local business recommendation in the past year, up from 6% the year before, and 31% had used ChatGPT for it.

They don't stop at the AI answer, though. In BrightLocal's consumer search behavior research, among people whose most recent local search started on an AI tool, just 2% used it as their only channel and 43% went on to check Google. The same AI-trust report says 88% of AI users fact-check reviews the AI cites.

And the share of ChatGPT use that looks like search is growing. OpenAI's own paper, How People Use ChatGPT, reports that "Seeking Information" grew from 14% to 24% of usage between July 2024 and July 2025.

So the practical question for a local business is not only "does ChatGPT know us?" It is "which of the questions our customers actually type do we show up for, and what does the answer send them to check next?" If you haven't checked the first part yet, start with our guide on how to check by hand whether ChatGPT recommends your business.

Where these 67 questions came from

Be clear on what this data is and isn't.

• They are the questions our audits asked, not logs of real customer chats. OpenAI, Google and Perplexity don't publish what people type about local businesses. Beket AI built most of each audit's questions from the business category profile and the related questions Google shows for it, with a few added by hand, and kept only unbranded ones. They are a stand-in for buyer questions, not a transcript.
• One city, three trades, one day. Every question was set in Seattle and run on October 16, 2026, on ChatGPT, Google AI Overview and Perplexity. AI answers change over time.
• The grouping is ours. We put each question into exactly one of six groups by its main ask. "Affordable family dentist Seattle" went under price, for example, even though it also says "family."

The full question lists and per-trade results are in the original studies: Seattle dentists, Seattle plumbers and Seattle house cleaners. Every question is also listed at the end of this post.

The six kinds of questions

Source: Beket AI audits, October 16, 2026. Grouping by Beket AI.

Group	Dentists	Plumbers	House cleaners	Total	Example question
Neighborhood	8	7	7	22	plumber in Ballard Seattle
Specific job or service	5	5	7	17	tankless water heater install Seattle
Best or most trusted	3	3	3	9	reputable local home cleaning companies Seattle
Fit: who it suits, what is included	3	3	3	9	What does professional house cleaning in Seattle include?
Price or insurance	3	1	1	5	dentist that accepts Medicaid Apple Health Seattle
Urgency or hours	2	2	1	5	emergency plumber Seattle open now
Total	24	21	22	67

The pattern held across all three trades. Each set had exactly three "best" questions and seven or eight neighborhood questions. What changed was the detail. Dentist questions brought in insurance (Delta Dental, Medicaid Apple Health). Plumber questions brought in licensing and round-the-clock service. Cleaning questions split into many job types: move-out, post-construction, short-term rental turnover, deep cleaning, recurring service.

1. Neighborhood: "dentist in Capitol Hill Seattle"

Twenty-two of 67 questions named a part of the city. If your site only says "Seattle," an AI answer to "house cleaning in West Seattle" has nothing on your pages that matches the place the person asked about.

What to publish: the neighborhoods you serve, written in plain text on your site and listings, and your street address if you have one. A service-area business can list the areas it covers without inventing local offices.

2. Specific job: "sewer line repair Seattle"

Seventeen questions asked for one job: implants, Invisalign, water heater replacement, leak detection, move-out cleaning. These are the questions where a general "we do it all" page is weakest.

What to publish: one clear page per service you want to be named for, saying what it is, who does it, where, and roughly what it involves.

3. Best or most trusted: "who are the most trusted dental brands in Seattle"

Only nine questions were this generic, and three of those leaned on a trust signal rather than "best": "licensed plumber Seattle," "reputable local home cleaning companies Seattle" and "top dental clinics in Seattle with modern technology."

What to publish: proof the engine can repeat, such as your license number and the official place to verify it, years in business, and reviews on sites people already check.

4. Fit: "Best residential cleaning services in Seattle for renters"

Nine questions asked whether a business suits a kind of customer (families, renters, busy professionals, small businesses, property managers, anxious patients) or what a service includes.

What to publish: who you work with and what is and isn't included, in sentences a person could quote back.

5. Price or insurance: "affordable plumber Seattle"

Five questions, but they're the ones closest to a booking. Dentist questions named specific insurance plans.

What to publish: the insurance plans you accept, by name, and starting prices or price ranges if you're comfortable sharing them. If you don't publish a price, an AI answer can't quote yours.

6. Urgency or hours: "dentist open Saturday Seattle"

Five questions were about time: open now, 24 hours, same day, Saturday.

What to publish: your real hours in text on your site and kept current on Google Business Profile and other listings, plus whether you take emergency or same-day work.

What the answers leaned on

Knowing the question is half the job. The other half is knowing which pages the engines used to answer it. Across the three studies, the engines cited 390 sources for dentists, 362 for plumbers and 376 for house cleaners. Here is what the ten most-cited domains in each study were.

Source: Beket AI audits, October 16, 2026. Citations to the ten most-cited domains in each study.

Trade	Top-cited domains (times cited)	What it suggests
Dentists	zocdoc.com (24), opencare.com (18), seattlemet.com (18), yelp.com (13), plus six clinic websites (57 combined)	Booking directories and local media carried about as much weight as clinic sites
Plumbers	rotorooter.com (21), seattle.gov (17), 2sonsplumbing.com (17), beaconplumbing.net (12), the state Department of Labor & Industries license lookup (11), bens.plumbing (10)	Company sites led, and official government pages showed up strongly
House cleaners	seattlesimplyclean.com (32), dazzlecompany.com (22), nwmaids.com (19), thumbtack.com (16), yelp.com (11), bbb.org (10)	Seven of the ten were cleaning companies' own sites

Two things are worth noticing.

Your own site gets cited when it answers the question. In the plumber and house-cleaning studies, each of the four most-named businesses also had its own site among the ten most-cited domains.

The narrow question shapes the list. In the dentist study, the most-mentioned name was Delta Dental, an insurer, with 29 mentions, and one of the 24 questions asked for a dentist that takes Delta Dental. In the plumber study, the question set included "licensed plumber Seattle," and the state's contractor license lookup was among the most-cited domains. We can't tie each citation to a single question, but the overlap shows how much the wording of a question can steer which sources come back.

How to build your own question list

You don't need our data to do this for your business. Here is a short process that mirrors how these audits were built.

1. Write 3 "best" questions, such as "best [your trade] in [city]" and one trust version ("licensed," "reputable," "most trusted").
2. Add one question per neighborhood or town you serve. Seven or eight is a good start for a city business.
3. Add one question per service you want to be known for. Use the words customers use ("clogged drain plumber"), not your internal service names.
4. Add the price and insurance questions your front desk hears most ("affordable," "takes [plan name]").
5. Add the time questions: "open now," "open Saturday," "same day," "24 hour."
6. Add 2 or 3 fit questions for the customers you most want ("for renters," "for small businesses," "for anxiety").
7. Keep every question unbranded. If your name is in the question, you're testing recall, not whether AI would recommend you to a stranger.
8. Run each question in more than one engine, and note who is named, who is named first, and which sites are cited.
9. Fix the page behind each gap, then check again in a few weeks, since answers move.

That's roughly 25 questions, the same size as a free Beket AI audit, which runs 25 prompts across 3 engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview) and shows who gets named and which sources get cited. Pro, at $49/month, re-runs the audit daily starting at 50 prompts.

Limitations

• These are audit questions, not real chat logs. They were built mostly from each business category and Google's related questions, plus a few written by hand. Real customers may phrase things differently or ask longer, conversational questions.
• Seattle only, three trades. Other cities and trades may show a different mix.
• The six groups are our judgment. Several questions could fit two groups; we placed each in one.
• No per-engine split here. The original studies ran every question on all three engines, but the audit data does not split mentions or first picks by engine, so we don't compare engines.
• A snapshot. This is the data the engines returned on October 16, 2026. AI answers change over time. Businesses can request another run at beket.ai.

Appendix: all 67 questions, by trade and group

Dentists (24 questions)

#	Question	Group
1	best dentists in Seattle for tooth pain	Specific job or service
2	How do Seattle families choose a dentist?	Fit: who it suits, what is included
3	family dentist recommendations in Seattle	Fit: who it suits, what is included
4	top dental clinics in Seattle with modern technology	Best or most trusted
5	who are the most trusted dental brands in Seattle	Best or most trusted
6	Seattle dental services for anxiety	Fit: who it suits, what is included
7	emergency dentist Seattle open now	Urgency or hours
8	dentist in Ballard Seattle	Neighborhood
9	best dentist in Seattle	Best or most trusted
10	dentist that takes Delta Dental in Seattle	Price or insurance
11	cosmetic dentist Seattle	Specific job or service
12	dentist in Queen Anne Seattle	Neighborhood
13	affordable family dentist Seattle	Price or insurance
14	teeth cleaning near downtown Seattle	Neighborhood
15	dentist that accepts Medicaid Apple Health Seattle	Price or insurance
16	dentist open Saturday Seattle	Urgency or hours
17	dentist in Capitol Hill Seattle	Neighborhood
18	best pediatric dentist Seattle	Specific job or service
19	dentist in Fremont Seattle	Neighborhood
20	dental implants Seattle	Specific job or service
21	Invisalign dentist Seattle	Specific job or service
22	dentist in Northgate Seattle	Neighborhood
23	dentist in University District Seattle	Neighborhood
24	dentist in West Seattle	Neighborhood

Plumbers (21 questions)

#	Question	Group
1	How do Seattle property managers find emergency plumbers?	Fit: who it suits, what is included
2	Best plumbing services in Seattle	Best or most trusted
3	What are the different plumbing services in Seattle?	Fit: who it suits, what is included
4	Best plumbing services for Seattle small businesses	Fit: who it suits, what is included
5	sewer line repair Seattle	Specific job or service
6	plumber in Northgate Seattle	Neighborhood
7	water heater replacement Seattle	Specific job or service
8	plumber in Ballard Seattle	Neighborhood
9	licensed plumber Seattle	Best or most trusted
10	clogged drain plumber Seattle	Specific job or service
11	emergency plumber Seattle open now	Urgency or hours
12	24 hour plumber Seattle	Urgency or hours
13	tankless water heater install Seattle	Specific job or service
14	plumber in University District Seattle	Neighborhood
15	plumber in West Seattle	Neighborhood
16	leak detection Seattle	Specific job or service
17	plumber in Capitol Hill Seattle	Neighborhood
18	plumber in Queen Anne Seattle	Neighborhood
19	plumber in Fremont Seattle	Neighborhood
20	best plumber Seattle	Best or most trusted
21	affordable plumber Seattle	Price or insurance

House cleaners (22 questions)

#	Question	Group
1	Best home cleaning services for Seattle busy professionals	Fit: who it suits, what is included
2	What does professional house cleaning in Seattle include?	Fit: who it suits, what is included
3	Top residential cleaning services in Seattle	Best or most trusted
4	Best residential cleaning services in Seattle for renters	Fit: who it suits, what is included
5	same day house cleaning Seattle	Urgency or hours
6	best house cleaning service Seattle	Best or most trusted
7	eco friendly house cleaning Seattle	Specific job or service
8	reputable local home cleaning companies Seattle	Best or most trusted
9	short term rental turnover cleaning Seattle	Specific job or service
10	post construction cleaning Seattle	Specific job or service
11	deep cleaning service Seattle	Specific job or service
12	affordable house cleaners Seattle	Price or insurance
13	house cleaning in Fremont Seattle	Neighborhood
14	recurring maid service Seattle	Specific job or service
15	move out cleaning Seattle	Specific job or service
16	house cleaning in Ballard Seattle	Neighborhood
17	apartment cleaning service Seattle	Specific job or service
18	house cleaning in West Seattle	Neighborhood
19	house cleaning in Northgate Seattle	Neighborhood
20	house cleaning in University District Seattle	Neighborhood
21	house cleaning in Capitol Hill Seattle	Neighborhood
22	house cleaning in Queen Anne Seattle	Neighborhood