"Who's the best plumber in Seattle?", "A good Italian restaurant near Union Square?", "Family lawyer in Denver with free consultations?". People now ask these to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode (AI Overviews), and the answer names a few businesses. For a local business, being one of them is the new first page.
To answer, an AI platform usually searches the web and reads:
Map and business listings: Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places
Review sites: Google reviews, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and the ones for your trade (Avvo for lawyers, Healthgrades or Zocdoc for doctors, Angi or HomeAdvisor for home services)
Local press and "best of" lists: city magazines, local news, neighborhood guides
Your website: what you do, where, for whom, at what price
Local discussions: city subreddits and community forums
It then names the businesses those sources agree on. If your listings are thin, your reviews few and your site vague about where you work, the answer names someone else.
Same name, address, phone, hours and categories everywhere. Fill every field of your Google Business Profile, post updates and add photos. Rank Prompt's Business Profile page manages it from one place.
Ask every happy customer for a review on the sites your trade uses, and answer the reviews you get. Recent reviews that mention the service and the neighborhood give an answer something concrete to say.
A page per service and per area you serve ("Emergency plumbing in Ballard and Fremont")
Prices or price ranges, hours, languages spoken
Answers to the questions customers ask before they call
Local business schema markup
Local press, sponsorships, chamber of commerce and trade association listings, and "best of" lists from your city. In Rank Prompt, Sources shows which of these the answers for your prompts cite.
City subreddits and neighborhood forums get cited. Be the business that answers questions there helpfully, without a sales pitch. Community finds the threads AI cites.
Business | Focus on |
|---|---|
Restaurants and cafes | Google and Yelp reviews, TripAdvisor, menus on your site, city food guides |
Lawyers, accountants and other professionals | Directories for your profession, practice-area pages, reviews, local press quotes |
Doctors, dentists and clinics | Healthgrades, Zocdoc and similar, insurance and services pages, reviews |
Plumbers, electricians and home services | Angi, HomeAdvisor, Google reviews, service-area pages, licensing details |
Shops | Google Business Profile with products, local guides, what you stock and when you're open |
A national score hides what matters locally. In Rank Prompt:
Write prompts the way locals ask them: "best dentist in Austin for kids", "emergency plumber open Sunday Seattle"
Create a Scheduled Report and add a location for each city you serve: country, city and language
Read each location's score, the competitors named there and the pages cited
For Google Maps, run a geo grid scan to see where you rank in the local pack around your address
Each location runs its own prompts, so a clinic with branches in Austin and Dallas sees each city on its own.
Only working on Google. AI answers read many sources beyond your Google listing
Ignoring your trade's directories. They're often exactly what the answer cites
Incomplete profiles. Missing hours or categories leave the answer guessing
Not asking for reviews. They're the most common reason one business gets named over another
Email [email protected] and I'll help.
