Local Visibility

AI Search

AI search lets a person ask about a local business in ordinary language and receive a generated answer, a place result, or both. A business reaches that answer through public records that describe it: its Google Business Profile, its website, third-party listings, and customer reviews. Google says Business Profile information can come from the owner, public web content, licensed third-party data, user contributions, and Google's own interactions with a place. A complete record gives systems more consistent facts to read, but it does not guarantee inclusion, a citation, or a position in any answer.

A local business record is assembled from several public sources

A local business is not represented by one universal AI-search file. The Google Business Profile carries facts such as the business name, address, hours, category, contact details, and attributes. The website explains the services, locations, policies, and other details in the business's own words. Third-party listings and customer reviews add information from outside the business. Google says it combines owner-provided information with public web content, licensed data, user contributions, and its own observations when it builds information about a place.¹
The owner controls the accuracy of the records the owner can edit. Customers and other public sources can add reviews, photos, or factual suggestions. Google can also review, change, or supplement profile information. Google's Business Profile editing guidance requires one primary category and permits up to nine additional categories for a location; it says not to use categories solely as keywords or to describe business features, and not to use categories that match other nearby or related businesses.¹⁹ Google's local-ranking guidance says local results mainly reflect relevance, distance, and popularity, and a business cannot request or pay for a better local ranking.²⁰ That is why the practical job is consistency across the Business Profile, website, and legitimate third-party records, not a special submission to an AI system. The Google Maps optimization guide covers the profile record in more detail.

Google's generative AI guidance starts with Search

Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features, updated July 10, 2026, says that generative AI visibility on Google Search is still built on SEO fundamentals. For a local business, Google specifically points to Google Business Profiles and business details as ways products and services can appear in AI responses and ordinary Search. A page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a Search snippet. The updated guide also says the site must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console. Indexing and serving are not guaranteed.²³
Google does not require an AI-only file, llms.txt, special Markdown, or special Schema.org markup for Google Search. Google says it is fine to maintain an llms.txt file for another service that uses one, but Google Search itself ignores it. Structured data can still support a wider SEO strategy and rich-result eligibility, so this is a boundary about Google's AI-search requirement, not a reason to remove accurate markup.²
Google's guide also points owners toward agent-friendly website practices when an agentic experience matters to the business. Browser agents may inspect a rendered page, its DOM, and its accessibility tree while completing a task such as booking. Google describes those practices and emerging protocols as an area to explore, not as a ranking requirement.² The answer on choosing who gets you onto AI search handles the provider-choice question.

AI search surfaces read different local business records

Surface	What it reads for a local business	What the owner controls
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode monitoring	Indexed, snippet-eligible pages from Google Search, related queries, and other Search data sources. Google says local business details and Business Profiles can support AI responses. The site must also be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console.²³	Crawlable website pages, useful business details, an accurate Business Profile, and eligible structured data. Google does not require a special AI file or schema, and does not promise that an eligible page will be served.²³
Ask Maps in Google Maps	Google Maps place information and contributions. Google describes Ask Maps as answering complex questions conversationally, with a customized map, recommendations, directions, and estimated arrival times. Its March 12, 2026 launch and August 6, 2026 update describe broader place discovery, personalization, and actions such as food ordering.⁴⁵	Business Profile facts such as hours, contact details, categories, attributes, and owner-added media. Customers and Google also contribute reviews, photos, and edits, so the owner does not control every part of a place record.¹⁴¹⁹
ChatGPT Search	OpenAI says ChatGPT Search can rewrite a prompt into queries sent to search providers, use approximate or shared device location for local results, and use trusted third parties for nearby business information. Restaurant availability may come from OpenTable, Resy, or Yelp, depending on the restaurant.⁶	A crawlable public website, accurate business pages, and relevant partner records such as reservation details. OpenAI says allowing OAI-SearchBot makes a website eligible for inclusion, while placement is not guaranteed. See where ChatGPT gets local business data.
Perplexity	Perplexity says its Search uses the open web and a live web index, with a source behind each claim and inline citations in answers.⁷	Current, accessible website pages and accurate public records that the service can find. The owner can make facts easier to verify, but cannot choose whether Perplexity cites a page in a particular answer.
Gemini	Google's Gemini business workflow can use a connected Google Business Profile, including reviews and performance data, and a business website in a Business notebook. Google's Maps grounding documentation also describes local place information such as addresses, hours, ratings, reviews, and other Maps data.⁸⁹	The owner or manager controls the profile connection, the website URL, and the Business Profile facts, media, attributes, and action links that Gemini can help manage. Google says the Business Profile connection is rolling out gradually and has eligibility limits.⁸
Microsoft Copilot	Microsoft says Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and agents can generate a short Bing query, use current public web information, and show the exact query and sources behind a response. Bing says its AI Performance preview covers Copilot, AI-generated Bing summaries, and selected partner integrations.¹⁰¹¹	A crawlable website and a current Bing Places listing. Bing says owners can claim and manage listing details such as business name, hours, contact details, website links, and photos. Deeper integrations with Bing Maps and Copilot are planned.¹²
Apple Maps	Apple says Apple Business lets a business claim its location and manage a place card with its name, logo, hours, images, detailed location information, and custom actions across Apple Maps and related Apple services.¹³	The claimed location, place-card details, photos, hours, showcases, action links, and the business information shown across Apple services. Apple also reports searches, views, and action taps in location insights.¹³

Reviews add customer experience, with a strict policy boundary

Policy area	What the rule says
Allowed requests	Businesses may ask customers for reviews when the reviews represent genuine experiences and the request does not influence the rating or contents. Google recommends sending customers to a review link or QR code.¹⁴¹⁵
Prohibited requests	Businesses may not offer payment, discounts, free goods, or free services in exchange for posting, revising, or removing a review; discourage or prohibit negative reviews; selectively solicit positive reviews; pressure people to review while on the premises; request specific content; set staff review quotas; or ask staff to solicit content that identifies a staff member.¹⁵
Owner boundary	Review gating names the prohibited filtering pattern. Honest feedback can be requested, but the business cannot control which customer experiences become public or which review a surface retrieves.

Structured data describes a page, not an AI-only channel

LocalBusiness structured data is a machine-readable description embedded in a business page. Google says it can help Search and Maps understand information such as hours, departments, and reviews when a site captures reviews about other businesses. Google's documentation lists name and address as required properties, recommends fields such as opening hours, telephone, and URL, and points owners to the Rich Results Test and URL Inspection tool.¹⁶
Google says structured data should match the visible text on the page.³ Google says owners should allow time for recrawling and reindexing after publishing a change, and may take several days to find and crawl a page.¹⁶ The markup helps describe a page that already exists. It is not a separate channel that submits a business directly to an AI answer.

Reports show references and visits, not answer placement

Bing's AI Performance public preview, introduced February 10, 2026, reports total citations, average unique cited pages per day, sampled grounding query phrases, URL-level citation counts, and citation trends across Copilot, Bing AI summaries, and selected partners. Bing says those measures do not show a page's placement in an answer, ranking, authority, role, or importance. On June 16, 2026, Bing added Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare to the preview.¹¹¹⁷
Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in overall Search traffic in Search Console's Performance report under Web search. Since August 31, 2026, the separate Generative AI performance report has been available to websites worldwide and has shown impressions for AI Overviews and AI Mode.³²¹ Google also announced multimodal reporting for Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads, and Chrome's Search this image queries through a multimodal search-type filter.¹⁸
These reports help an owner check whether a page or URL was referenced and whether people arrived through a reported search surface. They do not turn an observed citation into a ranking guarantee. For the wider question of checking local search performance, use tracking your local search rankings.

Everything you can do about AI search

Ranking higher on AI searchGoogle Search eligibility, local business records, and the boundaries of visibility claims.
Choosing a local rank tracker for AI searchthe reporting surfaces that expose citations, visits, and search performance.
Fixing your business on AI search when it disappearsthe public records and reporting views to inspect after a visibility change.
Understanding AI searchthe differences between generated answers, search results, and the sources behind them.
Is AI search free — and what actually costs moneythe boundary between public access, measurement, and paid work.
Publishing photos and posts to AI searchhow images and business updates become public records that search surfaces can inspect.

Sources

Last updated September 28, 2026. Maintained by the Maps Agent research team.

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