How to do AI search optimization for local businesses

Optimizing your local business for AI search means applying tactics that help AI search platforms recommend your business when users ask service-and-location-related questions like “Who does emergency AC repair near me?” and “Where can I find a good physiotherapist downtown?”

These optimization tactics don’t replace local SEO ones — in fact, both overlap. But AI search optimization tactics serve a different goal: earning mentions and citations in AI answers rather than ranking in search results.

Keep reading to learn the importance of optimizing for AI search, how to do it for your local business, and how to track your AI visibility afterward.

Why is it important for local businesses to optimize for AI search?

It’s important for local businesses to optimize for AI search because AI search platforms surface local businesses differently from search engines. And local queries in AI tools tend to carry high purchase intent, because they pair a specific need with a location.

Unlike Google, which ranks local businesses primarily based on information in their sites and Google Business Profiles, AI search platforms consider information from a wider range of online sources, especially third-party ones, to decide which businesses to recommend. As a result, a local business can rank well on Google, yet suffer from poor AI visibility if its third-party site presence is thin.

Appearing in AI recommendations can also be the difference between winning customers with high purchase intent and losing them to competitors.

Users who click through from AI citations to your site have likely read the AI search platform’s assessment of their issue and how your business solves it. They’re therefore more purchase-ready than search engine users, who typically need more nurturing if they land on your site without being convinced of your business’s value yet.

How do AI search platforms surface local businesses?

AI search platforms haven’t publicly documented their exact process for surfacing local businesses. However, we know that a business’s entity clarity and relevance to user queries, as strengthened by third-party corroboration, give these platforms confidence to surface certain businesses over others:

Entity clarity

Entity clarity is the extent to which AI search platforms can define a business’s entity.

An entity is an intangible object comprising characteristics of a concept, like the fact that your business exists, provides certain services, and operates in certain areas.

These platforms define entities using their training data and real-time information from the web. The more well-defined your entity, the more likely they are to mention and cite it.

Relevance

Relevance is how much surfacing your business would help answer the user's query. These systems read intent from the prompt, then look for businesses that fit.

Let’s say a user’s prompt is “Which ramen restaurants are within walking distance of Toronto Public Library and can seat a party of six?”

A ramen restaurant that’s a five-minute walk from this library and that can host groups of up to eight people is a more relevant recommendation than a burger joint that’s an hour’s walk away and that has only tables for four.

Corroboration

Corroboration is the extent to which third-party sources confirm the business’s entity, and thus its relevance to a prompt. These sources include industry publications, online directories, and community forums like Reddit.

Businesses can say anything about their services and reputation on their own sites. But these claims become more trustworthy if third-party sources, especially authoritative ones, confirm them.

How to optimize your local business for AI search

AI search optimization for a local business follows the same principles as AI search optimization more broadly, with one difference: Local businesses compete on location, so entity clarity and corroboration do most of the work. The goal is to help AI search platforms find accurate information about your business when they crawl the web and search it in real time, so they can define and corroborate your entity and surface it for the right prompts.

Use these six tactics to optimize your local business for AI search:

1. Get your local SEO fundamentals in order

Get your local SEO fundamentals in order, because what helps search engines find your business helps AI search platforms discover it, too.

Here are local SEO fundamentals worth implementing if you haven’t already, and how they help with AI search visibility:

Optimize your Google Business Profile

Optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP), because it’s one of the most authoritative third-party sources AI search platforms rely on to learn about your business and corroborate information about it.

Pay attention to these four highest-impact fields while filling out your GBP:

• Business name, address, and phone number (NAP): This essential information helps users identify, locate, and contact your business
• Business description: An introduction to your business. Succinctly mention your business’s services, operational areas, and unique value proposition to help AI search platforms promote it in a few short sentences.
• Services: Your business’s services. You can add either pre-defined or custom services to your profile. For each service you add, fill out its price and description, so AI search platforms can communicate this information to users.
• Reviews: AI search platforms look at not just how many Google reviews your business has gotten, but also these reviews’ star ratings and content. Encourage customers to leave Google reviews if they’re happy with your services.

Revisit your Google Business Profile whenever your business information changes. Also, monitor your profile’s performance, including the views and clicks it drives to your site.

Your Google account lets you view metrics for the past six months, while Semrush’s GBP Optimization tool offers 24 months’ worth of historical data.

Create directory listings

Create listings on online directories relevant to your industry and keep them accurate.

Third-party directory listings corroborate NAP and the other business information you’ve published on your site. In turn, this consistency facilitates entity clarity, helping AI search platforms recommend your business with confidence.

The opposite is also true: listing inconsistent NAP information across multiple sources fragments your business’s entity, deterring AI search platforms from surfacing it.

Relevant industry directories to list your business on include:

• For hotels: Expedia, TripAdvisor, and Yelp
• For home services: Angi, Houzz, and Yelp
• For medical services: WebMD, Yelp, and Zocdoc
• For restaurants: OpenTable, TripAdvisor, and Yelp

To create your listings quicker, use a tool like Semrush’s Listing Management, which automatically distributes your NAP data to multiple directories. This includes updating your listings if your business information changes.

Publish relevant content on your site

Publish content on topics related to your services, which helps AI search platforms cite your website in response to relevant queries.

Just like how ChatGPT cites New Zealand fly screen supplier Ecoscreen’s articles when Auckland-based users ask whether they should install a fly screen:

Use a tool like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to identify relevant search queries, or keywords, to create content for.

Then, optimize your content for search engines to help them and AI search platforms surface your content.

Get more reviews

Get more reviews on Google and online directories, because your reviews’ overall sentiment affects whether AI search platforms speak positively about your business, and whether they even recommend you.

Ways of getting reviews include:

• Asking customers to write a review after they receive their service
• Putting up QR codes that customers can scan to add a review
• Sending automated follow-up emails asking customers to leave a review

Don’t offer incentives, like freebies or discounts, in exchange for reviews. Directories generally forbid this practice and may remove offending reviews.

2. Let AI search platforms crawl your site

Let AI search platforms crawl your site so they can form a clear picture of your business's entity and cite it for relevant prompts. The one thing to check is that your robots.txt file doesn't block AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and others) under a "disallow:" rule. 

Crawlers are allowed by default, so you only need to act if you've already blocked them. For the full list of AI crawler names and how to manage them, see our guide to optimizing content for AI search engines.

3. Ensure search engines have indexed your site

AI search platforms pull live results from search engines, so your site has to be indexed before it can show up in their answers.

AI search platforms tap into these search engines for real-time information:

• Google: Used by Google-related AI search platforms like AI Overviews and AI Mode
• Bing: Used by ChatGPT
• Brave: Used by Claude

Because each engine feeds a different AI platform, an indexing gap turns into a citation gap. Allow the search-engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot), then submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to speed things up.

Brave doesn’t have a platform you can submit your sitemap to. Instead, the search engine builds its index when Web Discovery Project users contribute anonymous search data. You can nevertheless submit individual URLs with Brave’s URL submission tool.

4. Answer the questions people ask AI

Publish site content that answers the questions people ask AI about your business, so it can cite your content and give accurate answers that inform buying decisions.

For example, Essendon Plumbing Services’s site has a frequently asked questions (FAQs) page addressing common questions like “Can you CCTV our drains?”:

This FAQ content helps AI systems answer similar questions from prospects (and notice how closely the AI answer mirrors the business’s).

Ways of identifying questions that AI users may ask about your business include:

• Tapping into your past experience: If people have commonly asked certain questions in person or in their contact form submissions, chances are these questions might appear in AI prompts as well
• Looking at Google’s People Also Ask section: Google your service and check which questions appear in the People Also Ask section
• Conducting AI prompt research: Use a tool like Semrush’s Prompt Research to research the prompts involving your services and your business’s name, as the image below shows. Adjust the results to show only prompts from your country’s users.

Compile questions for every key service you offer. Then, add an FAQ section to each service’s site page, providing a succinct, direct answer to each question.

5. Make your site content machine-readable

Schema markup translates your content into a format that machines can read easily, so the right details are easy to pull into an answer.

Schema markup is a standardized data format that helps machines, including search engines, understand data. It comes in many forms, each corresponding to a different data type.

One example is LocalBusiness schema markup for structuring NAP and other data about a physical business. Here’s how it could look:

This schema markup flags components of the business's NAP data, making them easier for search engines to parse. AI search platforms may then cite this information when using search engine results to synthesize answers.

Prioritize adding these schema markup types to your local business’s site to make the data within each more machine-readable:

• LocalBusiness: An overview of your business’s NAP, opening hours, reviews, and more
• Service: Information on your business’s service, including its type, locations, and available hours
• FAQPage: Your customers' frequently asked questions and your answers (Google no longer shows FAQ rich results from this, but it still helps AI parse your Q&A)
• AggregateRating: Your business’s average rating based on its number of reviews

Check out our schema markup guide to learn how to add schema markup to your site and test it afterward.

Machine-readable structure is half of the job. The other is being citation-ready: earning the third-party corroboration that makes AI systems trust you enough to cite you, which is the next step.

6. Get third-party mentions and citations

Third-party mentions and citations corroborate your business from the outside, and that outside confirmation is what gives AI systems the confidence to recommend you.

Third-party mentions are text references to your business on sites you don’t own, like industry publications, blogs, and community forums. They provide AI search platforms with context on your business, helping them define your business’s entity.

These mentions also facilitate co-occurrence, a phenomenon where AI models learn to associate your business with certain concepts, like “farm-to-table” and “licensed HVAC contractor,” when your business repeatedly appears alongside them in training data.

Third-party citations are structured NAP listings in directories like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Tripadvisor. They help corroborate your business’s NAP information across multiple trusted sources.

This is how AI search platforms can correctly cite a business’s address after confirming it with third-party directories, for example:

To get more third-party mentions and citations, take steps like:

• Creating listings on relevant directories (covered in step 1): Keep NAP consistent across every one, since that consistency is what corroborates your entity
• Running digital public relations campaigns: Pitch industry publications about your business’s latest service launches, milestones, or research to earn mentions and build credibility
• Responding to forum users: When responding, use language that reflects how you want users and AI search platforms to describe your business

How to track AI visibility for your local business

To track AI visibility for your local business, use an AI visibility tool like Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit. Its Visibility Overview report displays baseline metrics on your business’s AI visibility, mentions, and citations across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Google’s AI Mode, and Gemini.

Enter your domain into the tool and click “Get started.”

Next, use the country selector at the top of the Visibility Overview report to filter for data from your country.

Scroll down to “Topics & Sources,” and then click “Mentioned” or “Cited” under the “Your Performing Topics” tab to view the prompts your business is mentioned or cited in, respectively.

The “Topics & Sources” report also displays prompts featuring your competitors but not you. Find these prompts by clicking “Topic Opportunities.”

Enter up to four competitors’ domains and click “Analyze.” Finally, click “Prompts.”

Next, enter your domain into the AI Visibility Toolkit’s Brand Performance tool, which reports on user sentiment toward your business, and its share of voice, which means your business’s visibility in relevant non-branded AI answers compared to competitors.

These metrics are especially useful for local businesses, since the language customers use in their reviews influences how AI search platforms talk about you.

Build on local SEO foundations to earn AI mentions and citations

Most signals that drive AI visibility for local businesses build on established local SEO foundations. If your local business has these in place, it’s already partway there to earn AI mentions and citations.

From here, optimize your site and presence on third-party platforms to make it even easier for AI search platforms to define your business, corroborate its information, and finally surface it for relevant prompts.

Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit tracks your local business’s AI visibility on ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode, and other leading AI search platforms. Try it for free today.