How Japanese AI search cites local businesses: six industries, four AIs, 1,500+ answers (October 2026)
About this article: Written by Synapse Arrows, which sells AI visibility work (AI映え診断) and operates the independent measurement instrument KanseiLINK. The numbers are counts of AI answers and the sources they cited; they are not ratings or rankings of any business. AI answers change with wording, date and account. No business is named. This is the English summary of seven Japanese articles published on 2 November 2026; the per-industry detail and charts are in Japanese, linked below.
There is no single "AI search optimization" in Japan, because the place an AI goes to read differs by industry.
More people in Japan now ask ChatGPT and its peers "Which hair salon in Sapporo is good?" or "Which tax accountant handles inheritance?" (in an August 2026 CyberAgent survey of 9,278 people, 52.3% of respondents said they use generative AI for search). Where does the AI read to write that answer? In October 2026 we put questions about six industries in Sapporo and Fukuoka to four AIs and counted, industry by industry, the pages each answer cited as its sources.
The results differ sharply by industry. If you work on GEO or AEO in English-speaking markets, or you are a company considering Japan, the short version is: the sources you are used to (review platforms, LinkedIn, G2, Google Maps) are not what Japanese-language AI answers are built from.
- Restaurants: the AI top ten and the Google top ten are different lists. In 5 of 7 dining situations, not one restaurant appeared in both. 12 of the 20 restaurants the AIs named most often were described with details that did not match the official information.
- Tax accountants: 54.5% of cited pages were the firms' own websites. The more specific the question, the more the firms' own pages were read instead of comparison sites.
- Hotels: the booking sites the AI reads swap with the language of the question. Japanese: Ikyu.com, JTB, Yahoo! Travel. English: Trip.com, Expedia, Booking.com.
- Beauty salons: 91 of 100 answers cited Hot Pepper Beauty. Google Maps: 0.
- Real estate agents: 66 of 100 answers cited a "ranking" or "top N recommended" article. Half of all cited pages were such articles.
- IT and web development: 69 of 100 answers cited a "top N" article. LinkedIn, GitHub, Crunchbase and G2: 0.
Method, in brief
- AIs: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, each with web search on.
- Questions: built from the words people actually use to search for each industry (Google's search suggestions for Sapporo and Fukuoka), in two forms: a short question and a longer request with context. Hotels and restaurants were also asked in English, from a foreign traveller's point of view, to compare languages.
- Counting: for each answer, the sites it cited as sources, de-duplicated per answer. Where Gemini gave redirect links we followed them to the destination site. Gemini often shows no sources at all.
- Dates: 2, 20 and 28 October 2026 (per-industry detail in the Japanese articles).
The six industries side by side
The number of questions and runs differs by industry, so this table is not a league table. Beauty salons, real estate and IT are one city (Sapporo) and one run per AI.
| Industry | Questions and answers | Where the AIs read most | Number that stands out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants (Sapporo, Fukuoka) | 14 traveller situations, Japanese and English, 3 runs each (331 answers), plus source counts in both cities | Tabelog (most cited in both cities), Retty, Ikyu Restaurant, Hot Pepper Gourmet | AI top 10 and Google top 10 overlapped by 0 restaurants in 5 of 7 situations |
| Tax accountants (Sapporo) | 30 questions, 3 runs (359 answers) | Firms' own sites 54.5%; comparison and listing sites 28.1%; accountant directories run by accounting-software vendors 10.6% | Same question three times: the firms named overlapped by only 17% on ChatGPT |
| Hotels (Sapporo, Fukuoka) | 3 hotel-choice situations, Japanese and English, 3 runs (134 answers), plus 25 Sapporo questions (100 answers) | Japanese: Ikyu.com, JTB, Yahoo! Travel. English: Trip.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Booking.com | Hotels named in Japanese and English overlapped by 47% in Sapporo and 51% in Fukuoka |
| Beauty salons (Sapporo) | 25 questions, 1 run (100 answers) | Hot Pepper Beauty 91, Rakuten Beauty 79, minimo 29 | Google Maps 0, Instagram 1 |
| Real estate agents (Sapporo) | 25 questions, 1 run (100 answers) | Ranking and "top N" articles (51% of cited pages); LIFULL HOME'S 42; SUUMO 39 | 66 answers cited a listicle. Gemini: all 11 answers that showed sources |
| IT and web development (Sapporo and nationwide) | 25 questions, 1 run (100 answers) | "Top N" articles (55% of cited pages); Hatchu Navi 15; PRONI Aimitsu 14; Web Kanji 12 | LinkedIn, GitHub, Crunchbase and G2: 0 answers. ChatGPT cited none of the three Japanese vendor directories |
Three patterns
Pattern 1: booking platforms (restaurants, beauty salons, hotels)
The AIs go to the large booking platforms where every business has a structured page. For restaurants that is Tabelog (食べログ); for salons, Hot Pepper Beauty (ホットペッパービューティー); for hotels, Ikyu (一休) and Jalan (じゃらん) in Japanese, and Trip.com, Expedia and Booking.com in English. In these industries, whether your own page on the platform is up to date is the first thing that matters. For beauty salons, 23 of 100 answers cited a specific salon's page on a booking platform rather than a listing. Google Maps and Instagram, where customers do look, were almost never read when the AI composed its answer.
Pattern 2: the business's own pages (tax accountants)
For tax accountants, the firms' own websites were read more than comparison sites (54.5% of cited pages). What gets read is not the home page but pages that take a customer's question as their title and contain numbers: "how to choose a tax accountant for inheritance", "what a monthly retainer costs". For a vague question ("recommended tax accountants?"), comparison sites made up 58% of sources. For specific topics the firms' own pages passed 60%: inheritance 62%, start-ups 63%, bookkeeping 75%. In a separate nationwide set (12 questions, 48 answers, 30 September 2026), 10 of the 13 firm pages cited used the question's wording in the title, 11 contained figures, and 9 named a licensed accountant as author or supervisor.
Pattern 3: listicles (real estate, IT and web development)
For real estate agents and IT companies, "ranking" and "top N recommended" articles made up about half of all cited pages (51% and 55%). The authors were not only comparison media: many were competitors publishing a "top N companies in Sapporo" list on their own site. In these industries, the first step is to check whether the articles the AIs are reading describe your company correctly. We are not recommending paid placement in such articles, and we did not test whether paid placement gets a company cited.
What was true in every industry
- A business the AI does not name is not in the comparison set. It is not ranked lower; it is treated as if it did not exist.
- Each AI reads different places. Within the same industry the mix of sources changes between ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Gemini often shows no sources. For IT companies, Perplexity cited Hatchu Navi in 10 of 25 answers and ChatGPT in none.
- The same question gets a different answer each time. For tax accountants, the overlap in firms named across three runs ranged from 17% to 59% depending on the AI. Testing once and concluding "we appear" or "we don't" is unreliable.
- Official websites are read. In every industry the AIs fetched the business's own site. For hotels, official sites were cited in 52% to 69% of answers in both languages. Prices, menus and services written as text, not images, have a reason to exist.
Why this matters outside Japan
If you measure AI visibility for a client entering Japan, or you are that company, the English-language playbook does not transfer as it is. The sources that build a Japanese-language answer are Japanese platforms: Tabelog, Hot Pepper Beauty, Ikyu, Jalan, Yahoo! Travel, SUUMO, LIFULL HOME'S, the accountant directories run by freee, Money Forward and Yayoi, and Japanese vendor directories such as Hatchu Navi, PRONI Aimitsu and Web Kanji. In 100 Japanese answers about choosing a developer, LinkedIn, GitHub, Crunchbase and G2 were cited zero times; ITreview (a Japanese review site) 6 times and Clutch 2. The hotel data shows the same thing from the other side: ask the same question in English and the booking sites swap to Trip.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor and Booking.com. We wrote a separate guide on what this means for a company entering Japan: Getting cited by Japanese AI search.
The seven Japanese articles
Each contains the full tables, the questions asked, and four things a business in that industry can check now.
- Summary: AI は業種ごとに「読む場所」が違う
- Restaurants: 札幌の飲食店 20 店のうち 12 店で AI の説明が公式と食い違い
- Tax accountants: 札幌で税理士を探す 359 回答、AI の根拠の 55% は事務所自身のページ
- Hotels: 日本語と英語で AI が読む予約サイトが入れ替わる (also in English: Hotels: Japanese and English AI read different booking sites)
- Beauty salons: 札幌の美容院 100 回答のうち 91 回答がホットペッパービューティーを根拠に
- Real estate agents: 札幌の 100 回答のうち 66 回答が「おすすめ N 選」の記事を根拠に
- IT and web development: 100 回答のうち 69 回答が「おすすめ ◯選」の記事を根拠に。LinkedIn や G2 は 0
Frequently asked questions
Is AI search optimization the same for every industry in Japan?
No. In this October 2026 measurement, restaurants, beauty salons and hotels were cited mainly from booking sites, tax accountants from the firms' own pages, and real estate and IT companies from top-N recommendation articles. Check where the AIs read for your industry before deciding what to fix first.
If my Google Maps and Instagram are in good shape, will Japanese AI search cite me?
Not in this study. For beauty salons, 0 of 100 answers cited Google Maps and 1 cited Instagram; for hotels, 0 of 100 answers cited Google Maps. Where customers search and where the AI reads when it writes an answer are different places.
I asked an AI once and my company did not appear. Does that mean I am not listed?
Not necessarily. When the same tax accountant question was put to the same AI three times, the set of firms named overlapped by 59% for Perplexity, 42% for Gemini, 40% for Claude and 17% for ChatGPT. One run is not enough to judge.
Do Japanese AIs cite LinkedIn, G2 or Crunchbase for IT companies?
In 100 Japanese-language answers about choosing a web or software developer, LinkedIn, GitHub, Crunchbase and G2 were cited zero times. Japanese vendor directories and top-N articles were cited instead.
Limits of this research
Only restaurants and hotels were measured in two cities (Sapporo and Fukuoka). Tax accountants, beauty salons, real estate and IT were measured in Sapporo alone (the IT set includes nationwide questions), and beauty salons, real estate and IT are one run per AI. Results change with city and date.
"Where the AI reads" counts the sites an answer cited as sources. We did not check whether those sites' information is correct or how the AI used it, except for the restaurant fact-check of 142 statements about 20 restaurants.
Synapse Arrows offers a fact-check report (AI映え診断) that applies the same method to a single business across the four AIs; details on our AI visibility check page. The findings above do not depend on whether a business is a client.
This article aggregates AI answers at the dates stated and implies no partnership, sponsorship or endorsement by any company. Businesses that were not named are not identified. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and the site names mentioned are trademarks of their owners. If anything here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it. The aggregated data may be reused under CC BY 4.0 (credit: Synapse Arrows).