When someone asks an AI platform for "the best hair salon near me", the answer depends on where they stand. The AI grid asks your customers' questions from a grid of points around one of your places and records, at each point, whether the answer names you and which businesses it names instead.
It answers a different question from the geo grid: the geo grid measures where you rank in the Google Maps local pack, the AI grid measures where AI recommends you. Both live in Local rank, side by side.
Point by point, only Gemini with Google Maps changes with where the question comes from. In our tests it gave the same businesses twice at one point and different ones 3 km away. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Grok and AI Mode changed as much between two identical questions asked from the same spot, so a grid would show noise. Reports measure them city by city instead: add the city or the place as a market of a report (see Understanding locations).
Open Local rank in the sidebar (under Explorer > Search) and pick the place at the top right
Open the AI grid tab and click Run AI grid
Fill in the window:
Prompts: one per line, up to 5, the way a customer asks. The first one is filled in from the place's Google category, for example "best hair salon near me"
Grid and Spacing: 3 x 3, 5 x 5 or 7 x 7 points, from 0.5 to 20 km apart
Grid center: the place's pin, or a custom point with a latitude and longitude
Click Run AI grid
Leave the city out of the prompts: each point asks from its own spot, and a city in the prompt would pull every point to that city. The window says so when a prompt names the place's city. "Near me" is fine.
The grid runs in the background and its points fill in as Gemini answers, usually within a minute or two.
1 credit per 3 answers, rounded up. An answer is one prompt at one point, so the answers are the points times the prompts:
Grid | 1 prompt | 3 prompts | 5 prompts |
|---|---|---|---|
3 x 3 (9 points) | 3 | 9 | 15 |
5 x 5 (25 points) | 9 | 25 | 42 |
7 x 7 (49 points) | 17 | 49 | 82 |
The window shows the cost before you run it. Answers Gemini does not give are refunded. See Understanding credits.
Each cell is a point on the map, and its figure is the share of your prompts whose answer there names this place:
Color | Meaning |
|---|---|
Every answer | Every prompt named you at this point |
Some answers | Some of them did |
No answer | None of them named you |
Not answered | Gemini gave no answer here |
Open a cell to read what Gemini answered from that point: the businesses it named, in order, with where you stand (Named #2, Mentioned or Not named), and the Google Maps places and web sources it used. Next to it, the Google Maps local pack at the same spot, taken from the nearest point of a geo grid scan of the place. With no geo grid scan near that point, the window says so: scan the place on the Scans tab to compare.
AI visibility: the share of all the answers that named you
Points where AI names you
Answers: how many came back, out of all of them
Prompts, Engine (Gemini + Google Maps) and Credits
The businesses AI named most across the grid, with the points where each one was named and how often it was named first. That is your local competition in AI answers, which is not always the same as in Google Maps.
Past AI grids of the place stay in the picker next to the button, so you can open any of them again.
Named near your door, missing a few kilometres out: AI ties you to your street. More reviews that name the neighborhoods you serve, service area pages and local press help it place you wider.
Missing even at your own point: start with your Google Business Profile (categories, hours, reviews) and the directories AI reads. See Local sources: where your places are listed.
Named in Maps but not by AI, or the other way round: compare the two in a cell. The businesses AI names instead show what it values there.
Run the same prompts on the same grid again after a change to see what moved.
The AI grid is part of Local rank, on Starter and up. Owners and editors run grids; viewers read them. The plan that counts is the one of the brand's owner.
The agent runs an AI grid of a place and reads it ("where does AI not recommend our Austin office?"), and says the credits first. So do the API (POST /v1/brands/{brand_id}/locations/{location_id}/ai-geo-scans) and the MCP tools rankprompt_run_ai_grid and rankprompt_get_ai_grids, at the same cost.
Email [email protected] and I'll help.
