Highlights
- The dataset: We analyzed over 160,000 AI source citations generated from prompts specific to the cleaning services industry. The AI responses behind them come from four AI models and were run in 12 countries over the course of Q2 2026.
- Zero shared domains between ChatGPT and Google AI Overview: Their top-20 cited lists had nothing in common.
- 79% of Swedish citations are local: Only 40% of Spanish-market citations are local.
- 96% of top sources differ between any two models: Only 4% average overlap across the four assistants' top-20 lists.
- 76% of Microsoft Copilot's citations are from commercial domains: The company-website model, barely 5% user-generated content.
- 41% of Grok's citations are from user-generated domains: Reviews, forums, and social, nearly tied with commercial at 48%.
Which sources should you target to get cited as a cleaning services brand?
Each model's top sources have a distinctive character:
| Model | Top sources | Citation character |
|---|---|---|
| Grok | reddit.com, yelp.com, facebook.com, trustpilot.com | Review aggregators + social |
| Microsoft Copilot | empresas.habitissimo.com.mx, hellamaid.ca, interdomicilio.com, mrcleaner.de | Commercial cleaning brands + local directories |
| ChatGPT | reddit.com, bestprosintown.com, trustanalytica.org, trustindex.io | Reddit + review/reputation content |
| Google AI Overview | instagram.com, facebook.com, quickshine.com.mx, cronoshare.com.mx | Social profiles + regional directories |
A cleaning brand that optimizes for one assistant is effectively invisible in the ~95% of sources the others prefer. Winning Grok (reviews and social proof) is a different playbook from winning Microsoft Copilot (a polished commercial site indexed in local directories).
How have AI source rankings changed over time in the cleaning services industry?
We split the ~16-week window at its midpoint (early May 2026) and compared each domain's rank in the first half against the second within Microsoft Copilot's citations.
The clean signal: manorapido.com surged from #14 to #3 on a +118% jump in citations, and maideasy.de climbed eight places. At the same time several "three-best-rated" style directories (threebestrated.co.uk, threebestrated.ca) and a few national listings (yably.fr, stadningguiden.se) all but disappeared from Microsoft Copilot's citations. Even inside a single model, the cleaning-services source list is volatile over a few weeks, a brand can climb fast, and a directory can fall off a cliff.
What type of content do AI models cite for cleaning services?
Joining each cited source to a global domain registry, which classifies domains as commercial, UGC, reference, editorial, institutional, or other, exposes a sharp split in what kind of page each model trusts.
| Content type | ChatGPT | Microsoft Copilot | Grok | Google AI Overview |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial | 41.5% | 76.0% | 47.8% | 69.0% |
| UGC (reviews/forums/social) | 33.9% | 5.1% | 41.4% | 19.4% |
| Reference | 11.2% | 4.2% | 1.1% | 0.2% |
| Editorial | 3.3% | 1.4% | 2.9% | 0.7% |
| Institutional | 0.3% | 0.4% | 0.6% | 0.3% |
| Uncategorized / other | 9.9% | 12.9% | 6.2% | 10.4% |
Three distinct strategies emerge. Microsoft Copilot is the company-website model, three of every four citations go to a commercial cleaning-business or directory page, and it almost never cites a forum or review thread (5.1% UGC). Grok is the crowd-wisdom model, commercial and UGC are nearly tied (47.8% vs 41.4%), reflecting its heavy diet of Yelp, Reddit, and Trustpilot. ChatGPT is the most balanced and the only model that meaningfully cites reference material (11.2%, roughly 10× the others). Google AI Overview sits closest to Microsoft Copilot on commercial weight but leans more on social UGC.
If you run a cleaning company, Microsoft Copilot rewards a strong owned website; Grok rewards a strong review profile. They are not the same investment.
Do AI models cite local-language content for cleaning services?
To gauge localization we used a country-code top-level-domain (ccTLD) proxy: for each non-English market we measured the share of cited domains that end in that market's national ccTLD (German → .de, French → .fr, Italian → .it, Dutch → .nl, Swedish → .se/.nu, Spanish → .es/.mx/.ar). English-language markets (US, UK, Canada, Australia) are excluded because .com is both the global default and the local norm, so the proxy cannot separate them.
Northern-European markets are the most locally rooted: roughly four in five Swedish and German citations point to a national-TLD site. Spanish is the outlier at 40.3%, but that is a measurement artifact as much as a behavior. Spanish spans three markets here (Mexico, Spain, Argentina), and a large share of Spanish-language cleaning content sits on .com rather than .mx.es, or .ar, so the ccTLD proxy undercounts genuinely local Spanish sources.
A ccTLD is a proxy for localization, not a measure of it. A .com site can be entirely in German, and a .de site can be in English. Read these as a directional signal of how often models reach for nationally registered domains, not a precise local-language rate.
Which AI model relies most on local sources for cleaning services?
The same local-domain measure, sliced by model, shows the assistants behave very differently in non-English markets. Microsoft Copilot is the most locally anchored; Grok, which cites by far the most sources overall, reaches local domains only about half the time.
Microsoft Copilot is emphatic in the Germanic markets, sending 94% of Swedish and 93% of German citations to national-TLD sites. Grok defaults to global review aggregators (yelp.com, trustpilot.com, reddit.com) regardless of market. Cells left blank had too few Google AI Overview citations to report, the model is thin throughout this study (549 responses, versus 4,000–6,500 for the others) and appears in only three non-English languages, so its row is indicative, not conclusive.
In Sweden and Germany, a locally registered, locally hosted cleaning site is the price of entry for Microsoft Copilot. In Spanish-speaking markets, a .com is no handicap, and may even be the norm.
Should cleaning services optimize for each AI model separately?
Yes, almost completely. We built each model's most-cited domains and measured how many each pair shares. The average across all six model pairs is 4.4%, with a range of 0% to 8.1%.
The reference Hotel-industry report found a 27% average overlap. Cleaning services is far more fragmented, unsurprising for a hyper-local, long-tail service category where there is no dominant "Booking.com" of cleaning to anchor every model. With only 20 domains per list the per-pair figures carry wide uncertainty, so we lead with the average and the practical takeaway rather than any single pair.
How many sources does each AI model cite per answer?
Counting sources per response (cited and uncited) reveals an order-of-magnitude difference in how widely each model casts its net.
Grok cites roughly 7.2× more sources per answer than ChatGPT. The confidence intervals are tight and non-overlapping, so the gap is real, not sampling noise. Practically, Grok gives a cleaning brand many more shots at being cited in a single answer, but each citation is one of ~56, so individual prominence is diluted. ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot cite a short, curated list where landing a single citation carries far more weight.
Context
This analysis draws from Temso's AI visibility monitoring platform, which tracks how brands appear in AI model responses across ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, and Google AI Overview. The dataset covers cleaning-services prompts ("best house cleaning service near me," "office cleaning companies in Madrid") across 12 countries and 7 languages over roughly sixteen weeks (March–June 2026). It is built from over 160,000 cited source references drawn from 17,063 AI responses (305,128 total source references including uncited links).
It measures what AI models cite, not the underlying quality of any cleaning company. These findings reflect citation behavior for cleaning-services prompts in the monitored markets, and may not generalize to all businesses, prompt types, or other industry verticals. Google AI Overview is thinly sampled here (549 responses), which we flag wherever it affects a finding.
Methodology
How we measured this
We tracked four AI models responding to cleaning-services prompts in local languages across 12 countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Mexico, Argentina) and 7 languages (English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish), collected 2026-03-10 to 2026-06-29. Each response was parsed to extract source citations: the URLs, domains, and metadata referenced. Domain categories (commercial, UGC, reference, editorial, institutional) were assigned from a global domain registry. Cross-model overlap was measured on each model pair's top-20 most-cited domains, then averaged. Temporal analysis split the observation period at its midpoint and compared domain rankings in each half, reported within Microsoft Copilot. Model coverage varied across the observation window, so temporal movements are reported as relative ranks within each half.
The analysis covers over 160,000 cited sources from 17,063 AI responses. Sample sizes exceeded recommended thresholds for every reported finding. Localization is measured by a country-code-domain proxy (the source records carry no detected content language), so those figures are directional and exclude English-language markets, which sit overwhelmingly on generic domains. Per-model citation volumes are uneven, Grok cites far more than the others, so per-model rates are reported as shares, not raw counts.
Frequently asked questions
Do different AI assistants cite the same sources for cleaning-services questions?
Almost never. Any two models share only about 4.4% of their top-20 cited domains, and ChatGPT and Google AI Overview shared none at all in this window. Roughly 95.6% of the sources one model relies on are absent from another's top list.
Which AI model favors company websites over reviews?
Microsoft Copilot. 76% of its citations are commercial domains, cleaning-company sites and local business directories, and only about 5% are user-generated reviews or forums. It is the model where a strong owned website pays off most.
Which model cares most about reviews and social proof?
Grok. Over 41% of its citations are user-generated content (Yelp, Reddit, Facebook, Trustpilot), nearly tied with commercial sites at 48%. If your reviews are weak, Grok will notice.
Does local language matter for cleaning-services visibility in non-English markets?
Often, yes, but it depends on the market. In Sweden and Germany roughly 77–79% of citations go to national-TLD sites, and Microsoft Copilot pushes that past 90%. In Spanish-speaking markets only about 40% do, so a .com is no real handicap there.
Which AI model relies most on local sources?
Microsoft Copilot, by a clear margin, 71.6% of its citations in non-English prompts use a national domain, rising to 93–94% in German and Swedish markets. Grok relies on local sources least at about 51%, defaulting to global review platforms.
How many sources does each AI model cite per answer?
Grok cites about 56 sources per response, roughly 7× more than ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google AI Overview, which each cite about 8. More citations from Grok means more chances to appear, but each one is diluted among dozens.
Are AI source rankings stable, or do they move?
They move, even over a few weeks. Within Microsoft Copilot, manorapido.com climbed from #14 to #3 (+118% in citations) while several directory sites lost over 90% of their citations in the back half of our window.
What should a cleaning brand do with this?
Treat each assistant as a separate channel. Build a strong, locally registered company website for Microsoft Copilot; cultivate reviews and social proof for Grok; and don't assume a win on one model carries over, about 95% of the sources don't.
