The question we asked
We sent ChatGPT a single prompt: “Who is the best CPA firm in Scottsdale, AZ? List 3-5 specific businesses by name with a short description of each.”
This isn’t a hypothetical exercise. It’s how buying decisions increasingly start. Bain’s 2025 consumer research found that about 80% of consumers now rely on AI-generated summaries for a significant share of their searches — and many never click through to a traditional results page at all. When someone new to Scottsdale needs a CPA, they’re increasingly asking an AI assistant to shortlist firms for them. The AI answers with three to five names. If your firm isn’t one of them, you were never in the running.
What ChatGPT said
ChatGPT hedged politely about “best” being subjective, then did exactly what we asked: it named five firms and described each one confidently.
The list: Henry+Horne, BeachFleischman PC, Wallace, Plese + Dreher, LLP, Moss Adams LLP, and Miller Russell Associates.
The descriptions followed a pattern. Henry+Horne was framed as one of Arizona’s largest locally owned firms with a full service range. BeachFleischman got similar large-local-firm framing with an emphasis on industry depth. Wallace, Plese + Dreher was positioned as a full-service firm known for long-term client relationships. Moss Adams was flagged as a regional office of a larger West Coast firm with specialized consulting strength. Miller Russell Associates was described as a Scottsdale-based firm focused on wealth management and retirement planning.
Notice what ChatGPT was doing: it wasn’t evaluating these firms. It was repeating the way these firms are described across the web, compressed into a recommendation.
Why these businesses got recommended
Large language models don’t inspect your work quality. They pattern-match against the text that exists about you. The Princeton GEO study (KDD 2024) demonstrated that specific, measurable content signals change how often and how prominently a business appears in AI-generated answers — adding relevant statistics to source content increased visibility by 41%, and citing credible sources increased it by 115%.
The five firms above win on exactly those signals:
- Consistent third-party descriptions. Each firm is described the same way across accounting directories, professional association listings, and business press. “One of Arizona’s largest locally owned firms” appears nearly verbatim in ChatGPT’s answer because it appears nearly verbatim in dozens of places online.
- Content density. These firms publish — tax guides, industry newsletters, advisory articles. That gives the model a large corpus of text associating their name with CPA expertise in Arizona.
- Structured, crawlable websites. Service pages that plainly state what they do, where they do it, and for whom. Machine-readable markup that confirms name, location, and category.
- Review and mention volume. Years of accumulated reviews, award listings, and “top firms in Arizona” roundups create the citation density a model treats as consensus.
What the recommended businesses have in common
Four patterns stand out across these five winners, specific to the Scottsdale accounting market:
- They have a repeatable one-line identity. Each firm can be summarized in a sentence — largest locally owned, full-service advisory, wealth-management focused. The model had a clean label to grab. Firms whose positioning is vague get flattened into nothing.
- They anchor to Arizona explicitly. The winners’ web presence repeatedly ties them to Scottsdale and Arizona by name, not just an address in the footer. Geographic association in body text matters for a geo-qualified question like this one.
- They show up in professional and industry roundups. State society listings, “top firm” rankings, and trade press mentions function as the credible external citations Princeton found worth a 115% visibility lift.
- They span the trust ladder. From a national-scale firm to a boutique wealth-management shop, each occupies a distinct, well-documented niche. The model builds a varied list, so owning a clearly described specialty is a path in even for smaller firms.
What’s missing from the CPA firms who weren’t recommended
Scottsdale has hundreds of licensed CPA firms. The ones left out generally share the same gaps:
- Thin, undifferentiated websites. A homepage that says “trusted tax and accounting services” with no specifics gives the model nothing to quote. Princeton’s finding is blunt: content with concrete statistics earned 41% more AI visibility than content without. “We’ve filed over 4,000 Arizona small-business returns” is a signal; “experienced professionals” is noise.
- No credible external citations. Firms that never appear in directories, professional listings, or local business press have no third-party corroboration. The 115% lift from credible sourcing works in reverse too — absence reads as nonexistence.
- Inconsistent or missing profile data. Mismatched names, old addresses, and unclaimed listings fragment the citation record, so no single strong entity emerges for the model to recommend.
- No published expertise. A firm that has never written about Arizona tax topics has no text associating it with the question being asked.
None of this reflects service quality. A firm can be excellent for clients and invisible to AI at the same time. That’s the uncomfortable part — and the opportunity.
What this means for your business
If you run a CPA firm, assume prospects are already asking AI assistants this exact question about your city. The fix is concrete, not mystical: tighten your one-line positioning, put real numbers and specifics on your site, get listed consistently in authoritative directories and professional associations, publish content that ties your name to your specialty and your metro area, and keep review volume growing. These are measurable inputs, and the research shows they move the output.
Want to see your score?
Before you change anything, find out where you stand today. RankForward runs a free AI visibility report that shows how the major AI engines describe your firm — and whether they recommend you at all. Get yours at rankforward.ai/score.