Which AI search engine should you watch in Australia?

When a customer asks an AI tool to find a local business, they get one written answer with a few links instead of a page of search results. Different tools name different businesses, so it pays to know which ones your customers use. For most Australian businesses the order is Google’s AI answers first, then ChatGPT, then any other tool your customers or your website reports point to.

Here’s an example. Say a homeowner in Parramatta asks three AI tools the same question: “Who can fix a leaking tap this weekend?” One tool names a couple of plumbers and links to a directory. Another names different plumbers and links to a government page. The third gives yet another shortlist. If you only ever checked one of those tools, you would never see what the other two say about your business.

Our own check found a similar pattern. We asked four tools the same Sydney questions and they often named different businesses. This guide covers which tools deserve your attention. It also shows what the usage research does and doesn’t say and what we found in Sydney. If you want help deciding where to act first, our AI SEO agency team can work through your own customer questions with you.

What should you do first?

Here is where we would start. Each step comes from the evidence further down this page.

1. Put your first effort into one clear, useful page and keep your business details accurate. Google treats its AI features as part of ordinary SEO, so this work counts there.
2. Once a month, ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask. Save each answer with the date and open every link it shows.
3. Add Perplexity or Copilot only when customers or your referral reports point to them. A referral is a visit that arrives from another website or app.
4. Count three things separately: being named in an answer, being linked and getting an enquiry.

What is an AI search engine?

An AI search engine looks up web pages and then writes an answer from what it found, usually with links beside it. The writing comes from software trained on huge amounts of text, called a large language model (LLM).

Definition: An AI search engine does two jobs. Retrieval means fetching web pages that fit the question. Generation means writing a new answer from what was retrieved. A tool that only writes from its training and shows no sources is acting as a chatbot and not as a search engine.

When you read an answer, open the links beside it and check that each page supports the statement next to it. Confirm the business, the service and the suburb yourself. A visible link is a starting point for checking and not proof.

AI search engines don’t replace everything else. Google still shows ordinary results and adds AI Overviews, which are written summaries, to the top of some of them.⁵ Google is only partly an AI search engine. Its classic search is the main product and its AI features sit inside it. Our guide to Google AI Overviews covers that part in detail.

The wider job of getting a business into these answers is called generative engine optimisation (GEO). Our guide on what is GEO has the full definition. This page answers a narrower question: which engines should you watch?

Which AI tools do Australians use and what does that tell us?

Roy Morgan, a research company, estimates that 13.6 million Australians aged 14 and over (58%) used AI tools in an average four weeks of January to March 2026.¹ The table shows how many of them used each of the main tools.

Source for every row: Roy Morgan, January to March 2026.¹

Read these figures with three limits in mind. They count anyone who used a tool for any reason, so they don’t tell you how many people used it to find a business. The same person can appear in several rows, so you can’t add the percentages together. Roy Morgan also says its Gemini figure leaves out the AI features built into Google Search, so Google’s AI Overviews aren’t in that number.¹

Age changes the picture. Roy Morgan reports AI tool use of 74% among 25 to 34 year olds and 31% among people 65 and over. ChatGPT reached 62% of 25 to 34 year olds. Copilot was used by 18% of 50 to 64 year olds against 11% of 18 to 24 year olds.¹ Check your own customers’ questions and referrals before choosing which search products to prioritise.

StatCounter shows where Australian search visits come from. Its search-referral shares for September 2026 were Google 87.9%, Bing 9.17%, Yahoo 1.54% and DuckDuckGo 0.92%.² Its methodology counts visits sent to the websites it measures and not every search or every answer someone viewed.³ These figures support starting with Google. They don’t measure how often Australians read AI answers.

How do Google’s AI features, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot differ?

They differ in where they live and how they find sites. Google puts AI inside its search page. ChatGPT and Perplexity are stand-alone products with their own page readers. Microsoft spreads AI across Copilot and Bing. The table sets them side by side.

A crawler is a program that reads web pages automatically. OpenAI uses one crawler, OAI-SearchBot, to support search and another, GPTBot, to collect content that may train its models. You can allow or block each one on its own.⁸ Perplexity says PerplexityBot is not used for model training either.⁹ Letting a search crawler in is a step towards being found. It isn’t a promise that the tool will link to you.

Which engine should a small business watch first?

Watch Google’s AI features first and ChatGPT second. After that, add other engines when your customers or your referral data point to them. This is our judgement from the evidence above and not a tested ranking.

Google says that optimising for its generative AI features is still SEO, because they use its core ranking systems.⁶ That supports improving one useful page before you pay for separate Google AI work. Check the other engines on their own, because Google’s guidance doesn’t tell you how they pick sources.

Kavera note: In two checks about two months apart, our client SHORE went from absent to first in one Sydney builder shortlist on ChatGPT. It is one question on two occasions, so we treat it as an example and not a ranking. The full story is in our ChatGPT SEO guide.

Do different AI search engines recommend the same businesses?

Often they don’t. We asked ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity the same 50 questions about 10 Sydney trades. None of the questions named a business.

Among the 47 questions that all four engines answered, only 6 produced a business name that appeared in every answer. The table shows how often each pair of engines shared a name.

The two Google features agreed most, which fits the fact that they share a home. Our study didn’t test why.

The picture below shows the same result as bars. The big number is the 6 questions out of 47 where all four engines named the same business. Each bar is one pair of engines and how often the pair shared a name.

Different engines, different shortlists

All four engines shared a name

6 / 47 questions

Pairs sharing a business name

Google AI Mode + Google AI Overviews35 / 47

ChatGPT + Google AI Overviews27 / 48

Google AI Mode + Perplexity24 / 49

Google AI Overviews + Perplexity26 / 48

ChatGPT + Perplexity21 / 50

ChatGPT + Google AI Mode20 / 49

Shared-name questions / paired answers

Sydney trades · 16–17 October 2026

One check per question.

Convenience sample, not market share.

The engines also linked different kinds of sources. A directory is a website that lists many businesses in one place. The counts below are completed answers with at least one captured link of that type. One answer can link several types.

ChatGPT most often linked a government site. The Service NSW licence checker was its most frequent domain, at 21 of 50 answers. Perplexity linked a directory in 14 of 50 answers. A business that only checked one engine would learn the wrong lesson about the others.

Kavera note: Perplexity read one Canterbury question as the English city, which shows how much location wording matters. The full Sydney trades study has the method and downloadable data.

How can you check an AI answer about your business?

Open every source link in the answer and ask what it says about you. A name without a good source is a weaker signal than a name that links to your own service page.

Run this check for each engine:

1. Write the question the way your customer would, including the suburb and the job.
2. Run it in a fresh chat or search, on the device and in the location a customer would use.
3. Save the whole answer with the date.
4. Open each source and check it describes the right business, service and area.
5. Note which kinds of source appear, such as your own site, a directory or a council page.
6. Repeat the same question next month and compare.

If you are choosing an engine to use yourself, run the same real question in each product. Compare whether its sources support the answer and whether it handles Australian places correctly. Also check whether its current usage limits fit the job. Read the provider’s privacy terms before you enter any client information. This is a way to choose a tool and not a claim that we tested every product.

Don’t assume one result describes everyone’s. Answers vary with wording, location and account settings. Google’s guidance asks site owners to create content that helps visitors. That is the part you control.⁶ If a directory shows old details, correct that listing. If your own page is vague, improve the page.

What do the AI reports actually measure?

Each report measures one thing. Google’s Generative AI performance report counts impressions, which means how often links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode.⁷ Bing’s AI Performance report covers total citations, which are the times an AI tool linked to your pages as a source. It also shows average cited pages and a sample of the phrases the AI used to retrieve content. Microsoft says citation counts do not show ranking or authority.¹⁰

Software that tracks AI answers for you is a separate buying decision. Our guide to AI visibility tools covers it. Our AI SEO guide describes the manual method and the first month’s work. Our guide to GEO, SEO and AEO explains how the work overlaps.

The fine print

The Roy Morgan survey base was 14,646 people.¹

The Sydney check used 50 unbranded questions, which means questions that don’t name a business. We wrote them from 27 public discussions, asked each one once on each engine and ran no follow-up questions. We did the checks on 16 and 17 October 2026 and recorded 197 completed answers from 200 planned checks. The totals in the tables differ because not every check produced a completed answer. This is a convenience sample. It is not a survey of customers and it is not a share of the Australian market.

How can we help you choose where to start?

We start with your customers’ questions and not with a list of engines. Bring three questions you want to be found for. Our AI SEO agency can show how each engine answers them and which page to fix first.

Our SEO audit is free. Implementation is separate unless retained. Compare the SEO packages for monthly scope and terms. No SEO package guarantees rankings, leads or revenue.

No agency can promise a place in any engine’s answer.