ChatGPT Leans Mostly on Firms' Own Websites to Decide Which Environmental Consultant to Recommend

ASHEVILLE, N.C. - EntSun -- A new independent study from Bonfire Studio, a website design and digital strategy firm serving regulated industries, finds that when ChatGPT is asked to recommend an environmental consulting firm, it draws almost entirely on two kinds of sources: the firm's own website and government or regulatory sites.

The study ran 72 recommendation-style questions, each repeated three times on separate days, across twelve U.S. metro areas and six service specialties, simulating the way a developer, municipality, or law firm might ask ChatGPT for a referral. Every citation the model returned was captured and classified, 1,029 citations in total. The methodology and full findings, including limitations, are publicly available.

Key findings include:

• Firm-owned websites dominated the citations. 72.1% of all 1,029 citations pointed to a consulting firm's own website, and government or regulatory sites accounted for another 25.2%. Directories, rankings, trade associations, news, and social media combined made up less than 3%.
• Homepages were rarely the page cited. Only 6.5% of firm-website citations pointed to a homepage. Nearly two-thirds went to interior pages built around a specific service, a specific location, or both.
• No single firm owns the citations. The 742 firm citations were spread across 158 distinct firms, and the five most-cited firms combined accounted for less than a quarter of them, evidence this is not a market a handful of national names have already won.
• The specific service being asked about shifts the odds. On wetland delineation, a field-driven, regionally specialized service, 74% of firm citations went to local and regional firms. On NEPA compliance, tied to federal actions, 88% went to national firms.

"The last study we ran showed that a website is a firm's best shot at being recommended by AI. This one confirms that finding and takes it a step further by showing what types of pages AI looks at before recommending a firm. That's a rare level of specificity for something this new," said Sara MacQueen, founder and president of Bonfire Studio. "For environmental consulting firms, those are pages that clearly state what they do and where they do it."

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Bonfire Studio is a woman-owned web design studio that builds websites for established firms in complex, regulated industries, including environmental consulting. This research was conducted independently of any client engagement, with the question set finalized before any results were reviewed. The full question set, and complete list of cited URLs are available to media on request.

The full study, including methodology and limitations, is available at:  https://meetbonfire.com/research/chatgpt-environmental-consulting-firms