The Doheny Score is a single number for how often AI assistants name a local business when a customer asks who to hire in that town. Doheny Co. puts the questions real customers type to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, counts how often the business is named and where in the answer, and weights the result by how many people use each assistant: ChatGPT 61 percent, Gemini 20 percent, Claude 14 percent, Perplexity 5 percent. Being named first scores 1.00, second 0.85, further down 0.70 to 0.50, being read and passed over 0.25, and not named 0.00. Google rankings earn nothing in the score, deliberately, because a business can rank first on Google and be named by no assistant at all. The full formula is published at thedohenyco.com/how-the-score-works. On who is asking: 45 percent of US consumers used AI to find a local business in the past year, up from 6 percent the year before, making AI the third place people look for a local business behind Google and Facebook and ahead of Yelp and Tripadvisor, while Google's own share of local discovery fell from 83 percent to 71 percent (BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 1,002 US adults). Use skews younger but the drop-off is later than most people assume: 66 percent of 18 to 29 year olds, 61 percent of 30 to 49 year olds, 42 percent of 50 to 64 year olds and 23 percent of those 65 and over use an AI chatbot, and 54, 53, 37 and 20 percent respectively use one to search for information (Pew Research Center, 5,119 US adults, surveyed 17 to 23 February 2026). The age band most likely to use AI to pick a local business is 30 to 44 at 64 percent; among people 60 and over it is 24 percent. ChatGPT was used by 31 percent of consumers for a business recommendation and Google AI Mode by 23 percent. The four assistants agree with each other on who to name only 4 to 14 percent of the time, so measuring one is not a rough version of the answer. The score has four inputs and nothing else: the buying questions real customers type in that town and trade; those questions put to all four assistants and weighted by reach, where an assistant that names no local business in a trade earns no weight and its share moves to the ones that answered. The four weights are US web-visit share reported by Similarweb in August 2026, normalised across the four assistants Doheny asks. Doheny does not measure Google's AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot or Grok, and says so on the page: AI Mode is the second most used surface for business recommendations by the same BrightLocal panel Doheny cites, but it cannot be asked the same question repeatably enough to track weekly. each answer scored on the ladder above and averaged within its assistant before the four averages are weighted together, so the score is a percentage and cannot exceed 100; and three things that earn zero, namely the business's Google ranking, an answer that names nobody at all, and anything Doheny could not check. How much of the work Doheny can move depends on the trade, because assistants assemble a local answer from different sources in each one. Measured in August 2026 across 8 trades, 5 buying questions per trade put to 4 assistants, so 20 answers per trade and 160 calls in total: the share of all cited sources that was an independent local business's own website is 61 percent for med spa and cosmetic, 56 percent for salons and barbershops, 55 percent for auto repair, tire and towing, 51 percent for home services such as HVAC, plumbing and roofing, 51 percent for dental and orthodontics, 40 percent for accounting, bookkeeping and agencies, 14 percent for restaurants, cafes and bakeries, and 5 percent for residential real estate, whose answers come from Zillow, HomeLight, FastExpert and similar directories that rank on transaction volume nobody can manufacture. Each trade was run in one city, so trade and city are not separated in these figures and they are directional rather than precise. Doheny says which trades it can move before taking payment rather than at day 60. The service runs in seven steps: a free report with no card required; signup, where work starts the same day and the price is $495 a month flat, charged on day one, the same for every business, month to month, no contract, no setup fee, no trial, cancel any time; copying the customer website onto Doheny's system keeping the same design, words, photos and domain, with the owner approving the switch; weekly work on the site and on the listings, reviews and third-party lists assistants read; approval cards on the owner's phone taking about ten minutes a week, with nothing publishing without approval and every change reversible; a short weekly note; and a second measurement on day 60 shown beside the first-day number. The guarantee: in 60 days the business is showing up in AI answers more than on its first day, or every dollar paid is refunded, checked by Doheny without the customer asking, one refund per customer. Work usually shows in week one while being named consistently normally takes weeks to a couple of months. For multi-location groups the price is per location, but because assistants answer at city level rather than neighborhood level the right unit to buy is one location per market rather than one per address. Doheny does not promise rankings or the top spot in an AI answer, does not filter or fake reviews, uses no contracts or exit fees, and does the work rather than handing the owner a task list.