The Match Protocol™ Benchmark 2026 found that 60% of 100 independent U.S. small businesses were Ghosted by AI search, with an average score of 47.3 out of 100. AI could read most of these businesses and trusted them. It just rarely recommended them.
What did the Match Protocol™ Benchmark 2026 measure?
The benchmark measured how often ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini recommend a small business when a buyer asks a question that never names it.
Modern Asset Lab scored 100 independently owned U.S. small businesses across 10 industries: HVAC, plumbing, roofing, dental, med spa, personal injury and family law, auto repair, restaurants, CPA and accounting, and landscaping. They sat in 10 metros across all four U.S. Census regions. They were randomly selected from candidate pools, not pulled from top search results, so the sample is not made of businesses already winning at search.
Each business was run through the Match Protocol Score™ methodology, version 2.0: roughly 30 blind buyer conversations per business.
What were the headline results?
The headline is that AI search leaves most small businesses out of the answer.
- Average score: 47.3 out of 100.
- 60% Ghosted (0 to 49), 39% Friend Zone (50 to 69), 1% Second Date (70 to 84), 0% The One (85 to 100).
- 46% were never recommended. 32% were never named.
- 84 of 100 were recommended 3 times or fewer out of roughly 30 conversations.
- Only 1 business was recommended in more than half of them.
Nobody reached the top tier. Almost nobody reached the second.
Why can AI read these businesses and still not recommend them?
The stage averages show the break: AI finds and trusts these businesses, then fails to match and recommend them.
Found averaged 80. Trusted averaged 87. Recommended averaged 15. The Recommended stage carries 35% of the score, so a weak result there drags the whole number down. A business can be easy to see and easy to verify and still be left out of the answer.
Recommendation is a choice. The engine has to connect your business to the buyer's question and find an answer it can lift. That is where most businesses fall apart.
What did the data say about structured data and FAQ content?
The data shows two gaps that are consistent with the weak Recommended scores: structured data and FAQ content.
Eighty-eight percent of businesses had incomplete or missing structured data, and 24% had none at all. Sixty-six percent had no FAQ content answering buyer questions. Structured data tells machines what you are. FAQ content gives them an answer to quote. Missing either makes you harder to name.
These are the exact gaps that the Machine-Readable Architecture and Targeted Extraction layers of Match Protocol™ address.
What does this mean for your business?
It means the field is wide open, because almost no one has built the work AI rewards.
The score is capped by the AI Recommendation Rate. A business AI never names cannot score above 49, no matter how clean its site is. And the buyers at stake are valuable: Ahrefs reported in June 2025 that AI search visitors were 0.5% of its traffic but 12.1% of its sign-ups, converting 23 times better than organic. Google moved AI answers to the front of search in May 2026.
If 84 of 100 businesses get named three times or fewer, the few that get named repeatedly take the buyers.
One more detail worth sitting with. Thirty-two percent of the businesses were never named at all, not even in passing. For those owners, a buyer could ask the exact question their business answers every day and never hear the name.
That is what Ghosted feels like from the outside. Nothing looks broken. The buyer simply goes somewhere else.
What should an owner do with these numbers?
Use them as a map, not a verdict on your business.
The benchmark tells you where businesses like yours tend to fall short. Most are readable and verifiable already, so the highest-return work sits in the middle of the chain. Map the questions your buyers ask. Rewrite your pages to answer them in the first sentence. Add structured data and FAQ content. Then confirm your facts across the web.
Then measure again. A business that moves from never recommended to sometimes recommended has changed what buyers see first.
How reliable is the data?
The benchmark is directional, not nationally representative.
With n=100, it shows a pattern clearly but cannot speak for every business in America. We published the method so you can see how it was built. The full write-up is on the benchmark page.
Frequently asked questions
What does Ghosted mean on the Match Protocol Score™?
Ghosted is the lowest tier, covering scores from 0 to 49. It means AI rarely or never names the business when buyers ask relevant questions. Sixty percent of the businesses in the 2026 benchmark landed there.
How were the 100 businesses selected?
They were randomly selected from candidate pools across 10 industries and 10 metros in all four U.S. Census regions. They were not picked from top search results, so the sample is not skewed toward businesses already ranking well.
Can my business beat the average score of 47.3?
Yes. The average is low because few businesses have done the work. Fixing structured data, adding FAQ content and building proof across the web are the moves that lift the Recommended stage, which carries the most weight.
Next step
Find out which side of the 47.3 average you are on. Book Your Match Protocol™ Strategy Session or Get Your Match Protocol Score™.
Clint Rogers is the founder of Modern Asset Lab and the developer of Match Protocol™.
