AI search, in plain English
A landscaper asked me last week how to "get into ChatGPT." A salon owner asked whether she needed to hire someone for AIEO. Both had seen the same kind of post: AI is replacing Google, your customers are asking a chatbot who to hire, and if you are not optimized for it you are invisible.
Some of that is true. Some of it is a sales pitch. This is the plain-English version, with the sources linked so you can check them.
Jump to what you need
What AIEO is
AIEO stands for AI Engine Optimization. You will also see AEO (answer engine optimization), GEO (generative engine optimization) and LLMO (large language model optimization). They all describe the same goal: when someone asks an AI assistant a question your business could answer, you want the assistant to mention you, cite you, or send the person to you.
The assistants in question are ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and, starting this fall, the rebuilt Siri. There is no agreed-upon name for the practice yet, and there is no agreed-upon method either. That matters, because a lot of what is being sold under these acronyms is guesswork with an invoice attached.
Google does not think it is a separate thing
Google's guide for site owners says that from Google's perspective, "optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." (Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features, quoted by Search Engine Journal, May 15, 2026). A year earlier, John Mueller at Google put it this way: "The underpinnings of what Google has long advised carries across to these new experiences." (Google Search Central Blog, May 21, 2025)
How an AI answer actually gets built
It helps to know what happens when someone asks an assistant about a local service, because it explains both why AIEO is real and why it is limited. Google describes two mechanics in its own guide.
- Retrieval. The AI runs real searches, pulls pages from the normal search index, reads them, and writes an answer with links to the pages it used.
- Query fan-out. One question becomes several. Google's own example is a lawn question: a person asks "how to fix a lawn that's full of weeds," and behind the scenes the system also searches "best herbicides for lawns," "remove weeds without chemicals" and "how to prevent weeds in lawn." (Google Search Central)
Two things follow from that
If your pages are not indexed and readable by a normal search engine, no amount of AI optimization helps, because the AI never sees them. And the pages that get pulled in are the ones that answer specific questions well, not the ones that repeat "best landscaper in Tampa" twelve times.
The part that is real
People are using AI to find local businesses, and the growth is not subtle.
BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey, published February 11, 2026, found that use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local business recommendations rose from 6 percent of US consumers to 45 percent in a single year. AI tools are now the third most popular source of local recommendations, behind only Google and Facebook. (BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 1,002 US adults)
Yext's 2026 Consumer Search Behaviors Report, from a separate survey of 1,120 US adults in March 2026, found that 47 percent had used AI to search for a local business in the previous month, and 59 percent of people who search for local businesses daily have adopted AI. (Yext, Consumer Search Behaviors 2026)
The audiences behind those numbers are enormous. OpenAI reported 900 million weekly ChatGPT users in February 2026, up from 800 million the previous October (TechCrunch, February 27, 2026). Google said at I/O in May that AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users a year after launch, "with queries more than doubling every quarter" (Google, May 19, 2026).
So no, this is not fear-based marketing. Something changed. The question is what to do about it, and that is where the limitations matter more than the hype.
Five limits nobody puts in the pitch
AI is a conversation, and conversations do not sound like searches
SemrushSemrush analyzed more than a billion lines of US clickstream data covering ChatGPT use from October 2024 to February 2026. For most of that period, between 65 and 85 percent of ChatGPT prompts could not be matched to any keyword in Semrush's search database. People were not typing search terms. They were typing sentences. (Semrush, ChatGPT Search Insights, updated April 7, 2026)
The same study found that prompts which trigger a web search average 8.7 words and prompts that do not average 13.5 words. A typical Google query is a fragment. A typical assistant prompt is a paragraph.
| Who is asking | Typed into Google | Typed into an assistant |
|---|---|---|
| Software buyer | best project management software | "I manage a 12-person remote engineering team and we're constantly missing sprint deadlines. What should I change about our weekly standups?" |
| Homeowner | best landscaper near me | "My St. Augustine grass has brown patches after all this rain and my neighbor said it could be fungus. Is that something a lawn service handles or do I need someone else, and what should I ask them before I pay for a treatment?" |
That second prompt is not a keyword. It is a person with a problem, a worry, and a question about who to trust. The businesses that get pulled into that answer are the ones whose websites, profiles and reviews actually address brown patches, fungus, and what a treatment involves. A homepage that says "Quality Lawn Care Since 1998" has nothing for the AI to use.
One more finding from the same report: the share of ChatGPT prompts that look like traditional search terms nearly doubled between October 2025 and February 2026, from 18.9 percent to 34.9 percent. Some people are starting to treat it like a search box. Most still are not.
For pure "near me" intent, the map still wins
WhitesparkWhen someone already knows what they want and just needs a name, Google mostly does not show an AI answer at all.
Whitespark ran 540 local business queries across Houston, Phoenix and Denver, covering plumbers, dentists, optometrists, personal injury lawyers, medical clinics and real estate agents. For straight local-intent queries, the kind that look like "plumber Houston," AI Overviews appeared 15 percent of the time and the local map pack appeared 93 percent of the time. Flip the query to an informational one and the picture inverts: AI Overviews appeared on 92 percent of informational queries and 97 percent of hybrid queries. (Whitespark, May 12, 2025)
That is two different games on the same field. The map pack rewards the classic local signals: a complete Google Business Profile, proximity, reviews, categories. The AI answer rewards content that explains things. Most local businesses need both, and most have been told to abandon the first for the second.
Whitespark also looked at what the AI cited for a set of plumber queries. Sixty percent of the citations went to third-party sites like Reddit, Yelp and Indeed. Forty percent went to individual local businesses. There is room for you in that answer, but you are competing with forum threads and directories, not just the plumber across town.
AI recommends. People still go to Google to check
YextThis is the finding that should change how you spend your time.
Yext asked people what they did after an AI assistant recommended a local business. Sixty-two percent searched Google for more information. Fifty-eight percent went to the business's website. Fifty-two percent clicked the sources the AI cited. Only 7 percent acted on the recommendation without checking anything. Ninety-three percent took at least one verification step. (Yext, 2026)
Semrush saw the same behavior from the other side: more than 20 percent of all the traffic ChatGPT sends to other websites goes to Google. (Semrush, 2026)
Trust is still forming. In BrightLocal's survey, 40 percent of consumers said they trust AI platforms to provide business recommendations and 32 percent said they distrust them. What people do trust is the review evidence: 82 percent read AI-generated review summaries, but only 23 percent are willing to rely on the summary alone. Fifty-nine percent use it as a starting point and then check star ratings and read the full reviews. (BrightLocal, 2026) Yext found that after an AI recommendation, the star rating is the number one thing that decides the purchase, cited by 34 percent.
The shape of the journey
The AI creates the shortlist. Google, your website and your reviews close the deal. If your Google Business Profile has wrong hours, three-year-old photos and an unanswered one-star review, the AI can recommend you all day and you will still lose the customer at the verification step.
Most of what is sold as AIEO does nothing
GoogleGoogle published a list of things you can skip. It is worth reading twice, because every item on it is being sold to small businesses right now. (Google Search Central, Mythbusting generative AI search)
Google says you do not need this
- An llms.txt file or any other special AI file or markup. Google says it does not use them.
- "Chunking" your content into small pieces for AI.
- Rewriting your pages in a special AI-friendly style. Google's systems understand synonyms and meaning.
- Manufacturing "mentions" of your business around the web. Google calls this inauthentic and says its spam systems handle it.
- Piling on structured data. Useful for rich results, not required for AI answers, and there is no special AI schema.
Google says this is what matters
- Unique, first-hand content that is not commodity information.
- Pages that are indexed and eligible for a snippet.
- A fast, clear site.
- Google Business Profile, so your services are "visible in both AI responses and other Google Search results."
Measurement is the other honest limitation. You can now see how your pages perform in Google's AI features through the generative AI performance report in Search Console. Outside Google it is murkier. Traffic from ChatGPT to websites grew 206 percent from January 2025 to January 2026 according to Semrush, but 30 percent of all of it goes to just ten domains, and Pew Research found that when Google shows an AI summary, people click a link inside the summary on only 1 percent of visits. (Pew Research Center, July 22, 2025) Anyone promising you a dashboard of "AI rankings" is measuring something, but be clear about what.
There is no single AI to optimize for
Four front doorsEach assistant draws from different places, and the differences are widening.
| Assistant | Where it gets local businesses | What you control |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | Google's search index and Google Business Profile | Finish your Business Profile. Google's own guidance points there. |
| ChatGPT | Yelp reviews, ratings, photos and business information, licensed since July 2026, plus Request a Quote inside the chat | Claim and complete Yelp. A dead listing is now your ChatGPT presence. |
| Siri and Apple Maps | Apple's own listings, with the rebuilt Siri running on Gemini and pulling live web results with source links | Apple Business Connect, and an indexed site worth citing. |
| Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity | Live web results and whatever they can crawl | An indexed, readable, fast website. |
In July 2026, Yelp began licensing its reviews, ratings, photos and business information to OpenAI, and Yelp's "Request a Quote" now lets a ChatGPT user contact a local service provider from inside the chat. (MarTech, July 28, 2026) In August, Yelp added restaurant reservations and waitlists inside ChatGPT. (Yelp, August 10, 2026)
Apple is the quiet one. In BrightLocal's survey, Apple Maps nearly doubled as a place people read reviews, from 14 percent to 27 percent in a year. And at WWDC in June, Apple announced that the rebuilt Siri, built on Google's Gemini, will pull up-to-date information from the web and include links to sources, rolling out broadly with iOS 27 this fall. (Search Engine Journal, June 13, 2026)
So "optimize for AI" really means: keep your Google Business Profile, your Yelp listing, your Apple Business Connect listing and your own website accurate and consistent, because you do not get to choose which assistant your next customer uses.
Trends worth watching for local services
What to do this month
None of this requires a new vendor. It requires finishing the things you already know about.
- Finish your Google Business Profile. Every service listed, correct hours including holidays, current photos, the Q&A section answered by you. This is the single data source Google names for local visibility in AI answers.
- Claim and complete Yelp and Apple Business Connect. Same information, same categories, same phone number. ChatGPT now reads Yelp; Siri and Apple Maps are growing.
- Ask for reviews that say something. A review that mentions the actual job, the neighborhood and how the problem got solved feeds both the AI summary and the human who reads it afterward.
- Write the answers to the questions you get asked. One page or post per real question, in your own words, with what you have seen on actual jobs. Google's word for this is non-commodity content. It is also what a conversational prompt retrieves.
- Make sure your site is indexed and quick. Check Search Console. If a page is not indexed, it does not exist to any AI.
- Answer the phone. Or set up a text-back and a booking link. Google is about to make calls on your customers' behalf.
- Test it yourself. Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini the way a customer would and see who they name and what they cite.
Do this with me
Four exercises. You can run all of them from this page on your phone or laptop, and you will leave with a score, a list and two prompts you can reuse every month.
Build your prompt and see who gets named
Fill these in the way a customer would say it, not the way you would. The prompt updates as you type.
I live in [CITY, STATE]. [DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM THE WAY A CUSTOMER WOULD, IN TWO OR THREE SENTENCES.] Who should I call? Give me three local businesses that handle [WHAT YOU DO], tell me why you picked each one, and tell me exactly which sources you used for the recommendation, with links.
The buttons copy your prompt and open the assistant in a new tab. Do not name your business in it. You want to see who it picks on its own.
Write down what each one told you
Run the same prompt in all three. The differences between them are the whole point.
| Assistant | Businesses it named | Sources it cited | Named me |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | |||
| Google AI Mode | |||
| Gemini |
Paste that into an email to yourself. Run it again in thirty days and compare.
Score your setup
Check only what is actually true today. Nobody is looking. The score updates as you go and the leftovers become your list.
- Every service you offer is listed on your Google Business Profile
- Your hours are correct, holidays included
- You have added photos in the last 90 days
- You have answered the Q and A section yourself
- You have ten or more reviews from the last twelve months
- You reply to reviews, good and bad
- Your Yelp listing is claimed and complete
- Your Apple Business Connect listing is claimed
- You have at least three pages that answer a real customer question in your own words
- You have checked in Search Console that your pages are indexed
- Someone answers the phone, or there is a text-back and a booking link
- You have asked an assistant about your category in the last thirty days
Start at the top. Check the boxes that are true and this will tell you where you actually stand.
Turn the gaps into pages
The pages that get pulled into an answer are the ones that answer a real question in your own words. Most owners already know those answers and have never written them down. This prompt pulls them out of you instead of guessing.
You are helping me plan the pages on my website that an AI assistant would actually cite when someone asks for a business like mine. My business: [WHAT YOU DO] in [CITY, STATE]. I have been doing it for [YEARS]. Do not write anything yet. Interview me first. Ask me one question at a time and wait for my answer before you ask the next one. Cover: 1. The questions customers ask me before they hire, in their words, not mine. 2. The problems I get called about most, and what people usually get wrong about them. 3. What I know from doing the work that a competitor could not copy off a brochure. 4. The jobs I turn down, and why. 5. What makes a fair price go up or down. 6. Who I am not the right fit for. 7. The thing customers are most afraid of when they call someone like me. Ask at least twelve questions. Push back if an answer is vague and ask me for the specific example. When you have enough, give me eight page or post titles in my own words. For each one: the three questions it answers, the specific details from my answers it should include, and the one sentence that would make an assistant quote that page instead of a directory listing.
Answer out loud if it is faster. The value is in the specifics you give it, not in the prompt.
Questions owners ask
Do I need to hire an AIEO agency?
Not as a separate service. Google's guidance is that visibility in AI answers comes from the same fundamentals as search: indexed pages, unique content, a complete Business Profile. If an agency is selling llms.txt files, AI-specific rewriting or manufactured mentions, Google has said in writing that it neither uses nor requires them.
Will AI replace my Google Business Profile?
The opposite. Google names Business Profile as the way to be visible in its AI responses, and 62 percent of people who get an AI recommendation go to Google next to check it.
Should I stop working on regular SEO?
No. For direct local-intent searches, the map pack showed up 93 percent of the time in Whitespark's study and AI Overviews only 15 percent. That is still where most ready-to-buy local searches are answered.
How do I know if AI is sending me customers?
Ask every new customer how they found you and write the answer down. Check the generative AI report in Search Console. Look at your Yelp and Google Business Profile insights for changes in calls and direction requests. Do not expect a clean attribution number yet; nobody has one.
Sources
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (February 11, 2026; 1,002 US adults)
brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey - Yext, Consumer Search Behaviors Report 2026 (March 2026; 1,120 US adults)
yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-findings - Semrush, ChatGPT Search Insights (updated April 7, 2026; US clickstream, October 2024 to February 2026)
semrush.com/blog/chatgpt-search-insights - Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search
developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide - Google Search Central Blog, Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google's AI experiences on Search (John Mueller, May 21, 2025)
developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/05/succeeding-in-ai-search - Search Engine Journal, Google's New AI Search Guide Calls AEO and GEO "Still SEO" (May 15, 2026)
searchenginejournal.com - Whitespark, The Prevalence of AI Overviews in Local Search (Miriam Ellis, May 12, 2025; 540 queries)
whitespark.ca - Pew Research Center, Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results (July 22, 2025; 900 US adults, 68,879 searches)
pewresearch.org - Google, Search at I/O 2026 (Elizabeth Reid, May 19, 2026)
blog.google - TechCrunch, Google Maps adds agentic features (Aisha Malik, August 6, 2026)
techcrunch.com - TechCrunch, ChatGPT reaches 900M weekly active users (February 27, 2026)
techcrunch.com - MarTech, Yelp brings reviews and local leads to ChatGPT (July 28, 2026)
martech.org - Yelp, Yelp Brings Reservations and Waitlist to ChatGPT (August 10, 2026)
blog.yelp.com - Search Engine Journal, What Apple's Gemini-Powered Siri Means for SEO Strategy (June 13, 2026)
searchenginejournal.com
Want help getting found in AI answers?
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