"Hey Siri, find a mechanic near me." "ChatGPT, who does good roofing in Port Huron?" A growing number of your customers are asking questions like that instead of typing into Google and scrolling.
The difference matters. A Google search gives people ten links and a map, and they pick. An AI assistant usually gives them two or three names, sometimes just one. If you are not one of those names, you are not in the running at all.
The good news is that these assistants are not making things up out of thin air. They pull from a handful of sources you can actually do something about.
Where the Answers Come From
Each assistant leans on different data, which is why the same question can get different answers depending on who you ask.
Siri and Apple Maps. When someone asks Siri for a local business, the answer comes mostly from Apple Maps. Apple's listings are managed through Apple Business Connect, which is free. If you have never claimed yours, Apple is working from whatever it scraped together on its own, and that is often out of date.
ChatGPT. ChatGPT does not have its own map. For local questions it leans on outside listing services like Foursquare and Yelp, plus Bing's search index. Your Google Business Profile matters here mostly indirectly, through what Bing has picked up about you. That surprises a lot of business owners who have only ever kept Google up to date.
Google's AI answers. The AI summaries at the top of Google results draw on Google's own data: your Business Profile, your reviews, and your website. This is the one most businesses are already halfway set up for.
So the honest answer to "how do I show up in AI search" is: be correct and consistent in more places than just Google.
What the Assistants Look For
Across all of them, a few signals keep coming up.
Consistent name, address, and phone. If your Google listing says one phone number, Yelp says another, and your Facebook page has your old address, an assistant has a hard time being sure you are one business. Uncertain businesses do not get recommended.
Reviews, and recent ones. Assistants weigh review count, rating, and how recent the reviews are, often across more than one platform. A shop with 60 reviews on Google and none anywhere else is easier to overlook than one with a steady trickle in several places. We wrote about how to ask for reviews without it feeling awkward.
A website that answers questions plainly. Assistants read websites to figure out what you do, where you do it, and whether you are a good fit for the question. A page that says "Brake repair, oil changes, and diagnostics in Port Huron, Marysville, and Fort Gratiot, open Monday through Saturday" is easy to use. A homepage that says "Quality you can trust" is not.
Structured data. The schema markup we covered a few weeks ago is the machine-readable version of all of the above. It removes the guesswork.
Five Things to Do This Month
You do not need to understand how any of this works under the hood. You need to cover the basics in the places the assistants look.
- Claim Apple Business Connect. Free, about 20 minutes, and it is the main source for Siri and Apple Maps. Our post on getting listed on Apple Maps and Bing walks through it.
- Claim Bing Places. You can import straight from your Google Business Profile, so it takes minutes. Bing feeds more than just Bing.
- Check Yelp and Foursquare. You may already have a listing you never created. Claim it and make sure the details match.
- Make your details match everywhere. Same business name, same address format, same phone, same hours. Check Google, Apple, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, and your own website.
- Put your real answers on your website. Services, towns you serve, hours, prices if you can share them, and the questions customers always ask before they call. If people ask it on the phone, it belongs on the site.
This Is Still Local SEO
None of this replaces the basics. A strong Google Business Profile, real reviews, and a clear, fast website are still what wins. AI search mostly rewards the businesses that already did those things well, and it punishes messy, inconsistent information more harshly than a regular search does, because the assistant only picks a few names.
If you want to see how your business looks to these assistants right now, we put together an AI search visibility check that covers it. Or just reach out, tell us your business name, and we will tell you what we find.