For businesses with a catchment area
AI search optimization for local business
When somebody asks an assistant who to use nearby, three or four businesses get named and the rest of the street does not exist. We measure whether you are one of them, fix the local sources those answers are built from, and measure again.
- Any English-speaking market
- No call, no retainer
- Free result in about thirty minutes
Who's good near me and can take someone on this week?
Based on what's listed locally, Harbour Street is taking new customers, Northgate lists evening slots, and Mill Lane publishes its prices. I couldn't confirm availability for the others.
- business profile
- local directory
- review platform
- city roundup
"I couldn't confirm" is what absence looks like: the fact was not on your pages, so nothing could repeat it.
What is different locally
Four things that do not work the way local SEO taught you
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Nobody asks a local question the way they type one
Buyers type “dentist odesa” into a search box and ask an assistant “who can see me today without an appointment?”. The phrasing carries the urgency, and the urgency decides which businesses get named.
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The practical facts have to be published somewhere
Opening hours, prices, areas covered, whether you take new customers. These belong on your own pages first, where you control them, and then on the listings that repeat them. A fact that exists in neither place cannot be quoted by anybody.
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One assistant is not the market
Four assistants asked the same local questions named 63 businesses between them, and only 4 appeared on all four. Checking the one you happen to use tells you about a quarter of your market.
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A share, not a ranking
There is no position inside a written answer. What there is: how often you are named out of how many asks, per assistant, per question type. Small enough to count by hand, which is why you can check ours.
Six source types
Where a local answer comes from
Six source types do the work in a local market, and your own site sets the facts for all of them. This is the list we work down after a measurement, starting with your pages.
| Source | What it answers for the assistant | What usually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Your own site | Prices, specifics, service names, areas covered — the detail nobody else publishes | The answer buried in paragraph four, or no prices at all |
| Your business profile | Hours, location, category, whether you are open now | Categories left at the default, hours out of date after a change |
| Local directories | Services offered, areas covered, contact details | A listing created years ago, with half the services missing |
| Review platforms | Whether you are any good, and at what specifically | Reviews that never mention the service you want to be asked about |
| City roundups and "best of" posts | The shortlist itself — these are often quoted almost verbatim | You are not on them, and nobody has ever asked to be |
| Forums and community threads | What locals actually say when somebody asks for a recommendation | Nothing to do about it directly, and worth knowing it exists |
In one market we measured, a single answer rested on eleven pages on average. Your own site is the one that decides what the other ten can say.
Why it is fixable
Most of it is on pages you control
Local businesses are usually absent for an unglamorous reason: the facts a buyer asks about — price, availability, area covered — are not written anywhere a machine can lift them, starting with their own site.
That is good news commercially. Publishing a clear answer on your own page is work we can do this week, and making the four or five sources that repeat you agree with it is slow but certain. Unlike a ranking, neither has to be won from a competitor.
Order of work
From first measurement to second
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Step 1
Your questions, in your city
Written from your services and your area, including the ones that mention price, opening hours and “today”. Those are the questions local buyers actually ask and the ones most businesses lose.
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Step 2
Measured on the assistants you choose
Each question several times on each assistant, with every answer kept. You see your share, the names that came back instead, and what each answer cited.
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Step 3
The pages a local buyer needs, published
Prices and areas covered, answered in the first two sentences under a heading phrased the way people ask. Nothing goes live without your approval.
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Step 4
The listings those answers rely on, corrected
Same services, same hours, same prices everywhere. Contradictions between sources are a reason for an assistant to name somebody else.
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Step 5
Measured again
Eight weeks later, same questions, same method. Movement under about five points is reported as no change.
Who we work with
Local businesses people ask an assistant to choose between
Anything with a shortlist at the end of the question. Two sectors have pages of their own because what patients and clients ask is specific enough to need them.
- Clinics and healthcare
- Law firms
- Dental practices
- Veterinary clinics
- Accountants
- Home services and trades
- Salons and studios
- Estate and letting agents
- Driving and training schools
- Restaurants and venues
Markets
We work remotely and measure a city by asking its questions, so the market is wherever your customers are — New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, San Diego, Long Island and anywhere else English-speaking. The assistants answering those questions have never been to your city either.
Common questions
What local owners ask first
What is the role of AI in local SEO now?+
AI has added a second surface to local SEO rather than replacing the first. People still search and still click maps results; a growing share also ask an assistant to shortlist for them, and that answer is assembled from directories, review platforms and local roundups rather than from a ranking. The practical consequence is that local SEO work — consistent listings, real reviews, accurate hours — now pays twice, and that there is a second number to measure which no rank tracker reports.
Does this replace my Google Business Profile work?+
AI search optimization for a local business does not replace Google Business Profile work, it depends on it. A complete, accurate profile is one of the sources these answers are built from. What it does not do is tell you whether ChatGPT or Perplexity names you, because neither reads your profile the way Google's map pack does.
We only have one location. Is this worth it?+
AI search optimization is often worth more to a single-location business than to a chain. Single-location businesses are the ones assistants struggle to place, because there is less written about them elsewhere — and that is also why a small amount of work on the right four or five sources moves the number.
Do you work with businesses outside your own city?+
Yes — we work with local businesses in any English-speaking market. The work is remote and the market is wherever your customers are: we measure a city by asking its questions, not by being in it. Most of our measurements are for markets we have never set foot in, which is also true of the assistants answering them.
How much does AI search optimization for a local business cost?+
AI search optimization for a local business starts at $150 for a one-off audit and $250 a month for continuous work. For a single-location business with one service area, the audit is usually the right first purchase: it is cheap enough to be a decision rather than a project, and it tells you whether anything further is worth buying.
How do I know the answers are not just different for everyone?+
Assistant answers to local questions genuinely are different every time — that is the point of asking each question several times. One ask is an anecdote; a share across repeats is a measurement. Anyone reporting a local business's position in an assistant answer is reporting something that does not exist.
Can we measure AI visibility ourselves?+
You can do part of the measurement yourself: open an assistant, ask your five most valuable buying questions, write down who was named. Twenty minutes, and it will tell you more than any article. What is hard to do by hand is the repetition, keeping the answers, and staying honest — everyone remembers the answer that named them and forgets the three that did not.
Ask your city's question for free
Tell us your site and your area. We write the questions your customers ask, run them, and email you who got named — usually within thirty minutes. If it is your competitors, at least you will know by lunchtime.