The businesses we check
The industry and state numbers come from a sample of US businesses. For each one we look up whether it has a profile on each review site and collect the public reviews on that profile. A business counts once per site, however many profiles it has there.
Every number shows its sample size as n. For industries and states, n is the number of businesses we checked in that industry or state.
Industries and states
"Has a profile, by industry" and "Top states" show the share of the businesses we checked in that industry or state that have a profile on the site. A high share means customers in that market are likely to find, and leave, reviews there.
When a state has too few businesses in the sample for a stable number, it is marked small sample. Those states are listed in the full table but are not ranked among the top states.
AI citations
We ask AI assistants the kind of questions customers ask, such as "best dentist near me" or "is this company legit", and record which web pages each answer cites. A site's AI citation share is the share of answers that cite at least one page on that site. Search-result and help pages on a review site are not counted. The assistants in the current data are Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
The questions are of two kinds: questions about the businesses in our directory ("what do customers say about ..."), asked of every business, and category questions ("best dentist in ..."). We count the answers of the last 90 days, and every share shows its n, the number of answers it rests on.
Cited by AI, by industry splits the same answers by the business's category in our directory (the categories of reviews.grades.com): the share of the answers about dentists that cite the site, the share of those about car dealers, and so on. A category needs at least 20 answers before we show a share for it. A site that matters in one industry can be cited by few answers overall: a B2B review site shows a small overall share because most questions are about local businesses, and a much higher one for business services. On the guide index, picking an industry switches every card to that industry's share and n.
Has a profile, by industry is a different measure: the share of the businesses we checked in that industry that have a profile on the site, whether or not AI assistants cite it.
Answers change from day to day and from one wording of a question to the next, so treat small differences between sites as noise. The per-assistant figures use the same answers, split by assistant.
Typical rating and reply rate
The typical rating is the mean star rating of the reviews we collected on that site for the businesses we checked. The reply rate is the share of those reviews that show a public reply from the business. The median time to reply runs from the review date to the reply date, where the site shows both.
These describe the businesses in our sample, not every business on the site.
Site reach
Site reach shows how large a site's audience is, so the index is not only about what AI assistants cite. It is the estimated number of monthly organic search visits to the site's domain (from DataForSEO Labs, October 2026), with the site's Domain Rating (from Ahrefs), a 0 to 100 score of how strong its backlinks are. We refresh it monthly.
These are third-party estimates for the whole domain, not figures published by the sites, and a domain can serve more than its review pages (Google and Facebook are far larger than their review features). Use them to compare sites with each other, not as exact counts. A site without a figure shows n/a. On the index, click "Site reach" in the table head to sort by it.
The written guides
The sections on claiming a profile, replying, review rules and reporting are written by our team from each site's own help pages and policies, in our own words. Each section links to the official page, and each guide lists its sources and the date we last checked them. When a site's rules and our summary disagree, the site's rules apply.
Tips are general good practice for any business that collects reviews. They are not shortcuts around a site's rules, and nothing in this guide asks you to filter, buy or reward reviews.
Measured vs collected
The index measures every review site that AI answers cite or that businesses have a profile on, 109 in this edition. Grades.com collects reviews from its own set, 54 sites, so businesses can read and answer them in one inbox. Those sites are marked with a check, and the two numbers are different on purpose: a site can be measured without being collected, and being collected does not change a site's numbers.
Independence and corrections
Grades.com is not affiliated with any of these review sites, and no site pays to be listed or ranked. Grades.com collects reviews from many of these sites for its customers; those sites are marked "Collected by Grades.com" on the index and "Tracked by Grades.com" on their guides, which does not change their numbers.
We refresh the numbers regularly and recheck the written guides when sites change their rules. If you spot something out of date, tell us.