How we measured

The studies

Two shared studies: 150 questions about US startup cities, and 190 about Atlanta's ecosystem, from founders, investors and engineers to students, researchers, recruiters, companies moving to Georgia and people working with the city and the state. Each was asked once of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity in September 2026: 1,360 answers and 9,382 citations. No question named an Atlanta organization. Behind them sit 13 individual organization studies (16 studies, 9,160 answers and 63,532 citations in all), which supply the full reports.

Read every question and answer

How we count

• The unit is one answer: one question asked of one engine.
• A city or organization named in the question itself isn't counted on that question.
• Cities are compared on the questions that aren't head-to-heads.
• A publication isn't scored on being named or recommended. It is placed by how many of the 1,360 shared answers cite it as a source.
• Every answer was read twice: an exact scan for every tracked name, then a model that coded how each was described. Names and quotes it returned had to appear in the answer.
• "Picked" means the answer singles it out as a top recommendation. Reasons are our coding; quotes are the engines' own words.
• On the map, a line joins two organizations when the same answer names both; the more answers, the stronger the line.
• Rows built on fewer than 30 answers are marked as direction.

What this can't tell you

• One snapshot. Answers vary from run to run and the engines update their models; the re-measure repeats the same questions.
• A citation shows an engine listed a page as a source, not that the page produced a particular sentence.
• City results are being checked against answers collected from outside Atlanta.

Who made this

PursueATL publishes it and is excluded from every figure. The research is by Resonate Labs. No organization paid to be included. The moves are suggestions, drafted from what the engines say today.