If your business sits at the top of Google for your main search terms, it’s tempting to think the job’s done. For a long time, that was a fair assumption — rank well, get found, get the call.
But increasingly, that’s only half the picture. A growing number of your potential customers aren’t typing into Google at all. They’re asking ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity questions like “who’s the best plumber near me” or “recommend a good local accountant” — and getting a confident, specific answer back, often without ever opening a search engine.
If your business doesn’t come up in that answer, it doesn’t matter how well you rank on Google. You’re simply not in the conversation.
Why ranking #1 on Google doesn’t guarantee anything here
It’s a fair question — surely if Google trusts you enough to rank you first, an AI tool would recommend you too?
Not necessarily. AI tools like ChatGPT don’t work the same way Google’s ranking algorithm does. Rather than crawling and ranking your website directly, they’re drawing on a much broader pool of information — review sites, directories, forums, news mentions, and other places your business is talked about online, not just your own site.
In practice, that means a business with a brilliant website and strong Google rankings but thin presence elsewhere can be almost invisible to AI search. Meanwhile, a business with a fairly average website but consistent, detailed mentions across review platforms and local directories can show up clearly.
It’s a different game, with different rules — and most businesses haven’t started playing it yet.
What actually influences whether AI tools recommend you
A few of the things that seem to matter most:
- Consistency of information about you across the web — not just your website, but review platforms, directories, and anywhere else your business is described.
- Specificity, not just praise — reviews and mentions that describe what you do and who you do it for tend to carry more weight than generic five-star comments.
- Structured, factual content on your own site — clear service descriptions, FAQs, and genuinely informative pages, rather than purely sales-led copy.
- Recency — AI tools weigh in current, recently-updated information more heavily than stale listings from years ago.
None of this replaces traditional SEO. It sits alongside it — but it’s a layer most local businesses simply aren’t thinking about yet, which is exactly why getting ahead of it now is worth the effort.
The practical takeaway
This isn’t about chasing a brand new fad. It’s about recognising that “search” no longer means just Google, and that the businesses showing up in AI-generated answers six months from now will be the ones who started building that presence today.
If you’re not sure where you currently stand, that’s a worthwhile thing to find out — and it’s something we’re increasingly building into how we think about visibility for our clients, alongside the traditional SEO work.
Next time: it’s not just where people search that’s changing — it’s whether they click through at all. We’ll look at how Google’s AI Overviews are reshaping local search traffic, and what you can still control.