Match Protocol™ Benchmark 2026 · Inaugural edition · Published October 2026
The first Match Protocol™ Benchmark put 100 U.S. small businesses across 10 industries and 11 metro areas through up to 32 blind buyer conversations each with ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini. The average business scored 50.9 of 100. Eighty of the 100 landed in the Ghosted tier. AI never recommended 36 of them, and never even named 31.
A Modern Asset Lab report. Media inquiries: press@modernassetlab.com
The Match Protocol™ Benchmark 2026 found that AI engines can read and verify most of the small businesses in the benchmark but rarely recommend them. Across 100 businesses, the Found stage averaged 80 of 100 and the Trusted stage averaged 88, yet the Recommended stage averaged 18. Eighty of the 100 scored under 60 and landed in the Ghosted tier. The average Match Protocol Score™ was 50.9, the median 49.5, the lowest score 29 and the highest 88. No business reached The One.
The benchmark exists because businesses had no standard way to measure whether AI recommends them. Rankings, impressions and traffic describe the old search. In AI search a buyer asks a question and receives one, two or three names. Either you are one of them or you are absent. This report is the first measurement of how often U.S. small businesses are absent, and why.
The method is deliberately conservative. Every engine was asked the questions a buyer asks without ever naming the business, conversations that timed out were left out rather than scored against the business, and Recommended, the only stage that actually sends a buyer, carries the most weight. The sample is 100 small businesses across 10 industries and 11 metro areas. At that size the results are directional, so they are reported as counts of businesses in the benchmark, not as national rates.
Finding 1
The average business scored 80 of 100 on Found and 88 on Trusted. The engines could crawl their sites, confirm they exist and see their reviews. Then, asked the questions a buyer asks, the engines recommended someone else. Recommended averaged 18 of 100, and Matched, whether AI even named the business for the right question, averaged 42.
A working website is no longer a referral. It is a prerequisite that most businesses have already met, which is exactly why it no longer separates anyone. The separation happens at the recommendation, and the recommendation is earned by a different set of signals: extractable answers to the buyer's actual questions, structured data that describes the business as an entity, and corroboration the engine can lean on when it chooses.
Finding 2
Eighty of the 100 businesses landed in the Ghosted tier. The behavior underneath the tiers is starker. Sixty-two of the 100 were recommended three times or fewer across an average of 27.8 buyer conversations, and 36 were never recommended at all. For most of the benchmark, an AI recommendation is a rare event, not a channel.
Eight businesses were recommended in more than half of their conversations, and only two scored 80 or higher. What separated them was not size or review count. It was whether the site answered the buyer's questions in a form the engines could lift directly into a response, and whether the web corroborated what the site claimed.
Finding 3
Among the industries and metro areas large enough to report, every group averaged under 60, the Ghosted line. The best-scoring industry, plumbing, averaged 56.6. The best-scoring metro, St. Louis, averaged 55.6. Being in a strong category or a strong city did not earn the recommendation.
Plumbers averaged 56.6 and HVAC contractors 54.9, the only two industries to average above 54. Even at the top of the table, 6 of 11 plumbers and 8 of 11 HVAC contractors scored under 60 and landed in the Ghosted tier.
Dental practices averaged 50.7, and 10 of 11 scored under 60. Auto repair shops landed in the Ghosted tier in 9 of 10 cases, roofers in 9 of 11 and med spas in 8 of 10. High-trust, high-ticket categories were no safer than the rest.
The 25 Midwest businesses averaged 54.3, the 45 in the South 51.8 and the 30 in the West 46.5. St. Louis led the reportable metros at 55.6; Boise (44.9) and Phoenix (45.2) trailed, with 9 of 10 and 10 of 10 businesses under 60.
The tiers follow the U.S. school grading scale, so below 60 reads as a fail: Ghosted (F, 0–59), Friend Zone (D, 60–69), First Date (C, 70–79), Going Steady (B, 80–89) and The One (A, 90–100). Recommended carries the most weight, so a business AI never recommends cannot leave the Ghosted tier.
Tier
Score range
Businesses
What it means
Ghosted
0–59 (F)
80
AI rarely or never recommends the business
Friend Zone
60–69 (D)
13
AI names the business but rarely picks it
70–79 (C)
5
AI recommends the business in a meaningful share of conversations
80–89 (B)
2
AI recommends the business in most conversations where it fits
90–100 (A)
0
AI recommends the business across all four engines and the buyer who clicks is met by a page that closes. No business reached it; the highest score was 88.
The benchmark applies the Match Protocol Score™ identically to every business. No engine was ever told which business was being measured, and every conversation was run fresh for this report rather than re-scored from earlier answers.
100 U.S. small businesses with live websites, across 10 industries and 11 metro areas in the South, West and Midwest. One business whose domain lapsed during the study was replaced by another business from the same industry and metro.
IndustriesHVAC (11), plumbing (11), roofing (11), dental practices (11), med spas (10), auto repair (10), personal injury and family law firms (9), independent restaurants (9), CPA and accounting firms (9), landscaping and lawn care (9).
MetrosTampa, Boise, Houston, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago, Phoenix and Dallas (10 each), Atlanta (9), Nashville (6) and Minneapolis (5). By Census region: South 45, West 30, Midwest 25.
EnginesChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini.
ConversationsUp to 32 blind buyer conversations per business: eight buyer questions, written at the buyer's level, each asked of all four engines without ever naming the business. 27.8 conversations were answered on average (lowest 19); conversations that timed out were left out, not scored against the business.
Site readHomepage plus up to two pages, robots.txt, sitemap.xml, llms.txt and structured data, read without executing JavaScript. Businesses whose sites block the research crawler were excluded and replaced.
ScoringFive stages weighted Found 20, Matched 20, Recommended 35, Trusted 15, Chosen 10, each mapped to the Match Protocol™ layer that improves it. Recommended carries the most weight, so a business AI never recommends cannot leave the Ghosted tier.
PeriodConversations run October 6–8, 2026. Published October 14, 2026.
At n=100, results are directional rather than nationally representative. They describe the small businesses in the benchmark, not every business in America, and the sample should not be read as random. Industry and metro groups with fewer than 10 businesses are not reported individually, and the groups that are reported carry wide intervals and are not rankings. AI engine behavior changes week to week; this report describes the period in which it was run.
The AI Recommendation Rate depends on the buyer questions asked. The question sets were generated from each industry's real buyer intent, local or national, and held constant across engines. A different question set would move individual scores. It would not change the central finding: the engines can read these businesses and overwhelmingly choose not to recommend them.
Modern Asset Lab. (2026). Match Protocol™ Benchmark 2026: AI ghosts 8 in 10 U.S. small businesses. 100 U.S. small businesses, October 2026. Tulsa, OK. https://modernassetlab.com/benchmark
AI search is a matchmaker. When a buyer asks an engine for a recommendation, it selects the safest, most verifiable match and introduces it. The buyer arrives at that business already told it is the answer. Ahrefs reported in June 2025 that AI search visitors were 0.5 percent of its traffic but 12.1 percent of its sign-ups, converting 23 times better than organic visitors. A recommendation is not a visit. It is a pre-sold visit.
That makes the Recommended stage the one that produces revenue and the one the sample fails hardest. The businesses in this benchmark are not invisible to AI. They are known, verified and passed over. The fix is not more content or more links. It is the specific set of work Match Protocol™ describes: make the business readable as an entity, align it to the questions buyers ask, write answers an engine can lift, give the engine corroboration to lean on, and meet the human who clicks with a page that closes.
Read the framework, see how the Score is calculated, or score your own business.
The Match Protocol™ Benchmark is a study by Modern Asset Lab that measures how often AI engines recommend U.S. small businesses. The inaugural 2026 edition scored 100 businesses across 10 industries and 11 metro areas using the Match Protocol Score™, with up to 32 blind buyer conversations per business on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini, an average of 27.8 answered.
Average Match Protocol Score™ 50.9 of 100, median 49.5. Eighty of the 100 businesses landed in the Ghosted tier, 13 in Friend Zone, 5 in First Date and 2 in Going Steady; none reached The One. Thirty-six were never recommended and 31 were never named. Eight were recommended in more than half of their conversations. Stage averages: Found 80, Matched 42, Recommended 18, Trusted 88, Chosen 74.
One hundred U.S. small businesses with live websites across 10 industries and 11 metro areas in the South, West and Midwest, between five and eleven businesses per group. The benchmark is a fixed panel rather than a random or nationally representative sample, and it will be re-scored with the same method so results can be compared over time.
No. At n=100 the results are directional. They describe the small businesses in the benchmark, not a precise national rate, and industry or metro groups with fewer than 10 businesses are not reported individually. The benchmark will be repeated with the same methodology so results can be compared over time.
Yes. The Match Protocol Score™ at match.modernassetlab.com applies the same methodology to any business, and a Match Protocol™ Strategy Session reviews the full four-engine results with Modern Asset Lab.
Yes, with attribution to Modern Asset Lab and a link to this page. For interviews, underlying tables or the full methodology document, contact press@modernassetlab.com.
In a 45-minute Match Protocol™ Strategy Session we run your score across all four engines, show you who AI recommends instead of you, and map the layers that change it.
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The strategies discussed herein are business growth systems. This is not financial advice. Individual results vary based on implementation, market, and execution. Modern Asset Lab is a division of Do More Good Inc.