AI search and local business: how to be the one it recommends

What has changed

Search engines now often write an answer at the top of the page instead of only listing links, and many people ask assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot directly. For questions and how-to searches, that means fewer clicks to websites.

For local and buying searches the change is smaller but real. Someone can now ask “who is a good accountant in York for a small limited company?” and get named suggestions. Which names appear depends on what the assistant can find and trust.

Where the answers come from

An assistant has no private knowledge of your business. It draws on:

• your own website;
• your Google Business Profile and other listings;
• reviews, on Google and elsewhere;
• directories, local press and other sites that mention you;
• the wider search index it uses to look things up.

If your website does not say clearly what you do and where, if your details differ from one listing to the next, or if nobody else mentions you, there is little for it to work with.

Eight practical steps

1. State the facts plainlyWhat you do, for whom, where and since when, in ordinary sentences on your website, not buried in a slogan.
2. Make your details identical everywhereName, address, phone and services the same on your site, your profiles and every directory.
3. Answer real questions on your sitePrices or price guides, areas covered, how the service works. Specifics are what an assistant can quote.
4. Add structured dataMarkup that labels your business details, services and questions, so machines do not have to guess.
5. Earn reviews in more than one placeGoogle first, then the platforms relevant to your trade.
6. Be mentioned by othersTrade bodies, suppliers, local press, community organisations. Independent mentions carry weight.
7. Claim your Bing Places listingSome assistants draw on Bing’s index as well as Google’s.
8. Decide about AI crawlers deliberatelyYour site can allow or block them. Blocking protects content; allowing makes you easier to cite.

Check what AI says about you

Open two or three assistants and ask what a customer would: “recommend a [your trade] in [your town]”, then “what do you know about [your business name]?”. Note who is named, what is said about you and whether it is accurate.

Do it again a week later. The answers vary from one asking to the next, which is itself useful to know: this is a matter of improving your chances, not securing a position.

What not to do

• Do not pay for “guaranteed AI rankings”. No such thing exists.
• Do not publish large amounts of machine-written filler. It adds nothing an assistant can use and can harm the rest of the site.
• Do not neglect the map. For most local searches it is still where the customer chooses.