What should you do for local SEO beyond your Google Business Profile?

What does Google say helps local results?

Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity. Google defines relevance as how well a Business Profile matches a search and distance as the customer's distance from the business or the location Google estimates for the search. Google lists links, reviews, and positive ratings as examples associated with a business's prominence. The guidance does not publish a weighting for the three factors.

Google's help list says to verify the business, provide complete and accurate information, add hours, respond to reviews, and add photos. Google also says that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business's local ranking.

Google also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Treat the three factors as Google's description of what it considers, not as a ranked checklist or a reason to buy a promised position.

Which local SEO work sits outside the Business Profile?

The work beyond a Google Business Profile makes the same business easier to identify across its website and other public sources. Use this table to see which source or surface covers each fact. Profile-specific changes belong in the Google Maps optimization guide, while the Google Map Pack explainer shows where local results appear and the local SEO glossary defines the wider work.

How does Google AI Mode explore local business questions?

Google says AI Mode may use query fan-out: it divides a question into subtopics, searches across multiple data sources at the same time, and brings the results together into one response. This describes how AI Mode explores a question. It does not establish local-ranking weights or guarantee that a business will be included.

Practical advice from Google's general local-search guidance is to keep the business facts published on the profile, website, and other public sources accurate and consistent. That is an information-quality check, not a query fan-out requirement.

In Google's U.S. account published May 19, 2026, the average AI Mode search was 3 times the length of a traditional Search query, more than 1 in 6 searches used voice or images, image searches grew by more than 40% month over month, and planning queries grew 80% faster than AI Mode queries overall during the previous 6 months.

Those are Google's U.S. search-trend observations, not local-business recommendation rates. They support writing clear answers to specific questions, not a promise that a longer query or a particular input type will name a business.

Google's May 1, 2025 AI Mode update described local place cards for restaurants, salons, and stores with details such as ratings, reviews, and opening hours. The same rollout described live busyness and call or direction actions for local stores. Treat those as fields Google described for that rollout, not as a guarantee that every current local result shows every field.

What makes a business page eligible for Google AI Overviews or AI Mode?

Google says a page is eligible to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode when the page is indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet. Google says there are no additional technical requirements, no new machine-readable files or AI text files, and no special schema.org structured data to add. Meeting that rule does not guarantee that Google will crawl, index, or serve the page.

Keep the website accessible to Google and eligible for an ordinary Search result. The existing LocalBusiness structured-data guidance can help describe visible business facts, but AI features do not require a special AI markup layer.

What should the business website prove?

The business website should make each location and service easy to identify from visible content. Google's LocalBusiness structured-data guidance says to define each location as LocalBusiness, using the most specific subtype that fits. Google lists name and address as required properties for eligibility for its rich-result feature, with the working location URL, telephone, geographic coordinates, and opening hours recommended when applicable.

Put the business name, address or service area, phone, location URL, and applicable hours on the page before adding markup. Make the structured data agree with the visible page. Google says the page must be accessible to Google and not blocked by robots.txt, a noindex tag, or a login requirement. Google does not guarantee that features consuming structured data will appear in search results.

How should name, address, and phone details stay consistent?

Google's representation guidelines say a business should use the identity by which it is known in the real world across signage, stationery, and other branding. A business with a customer-facing location should use an accurate, precise address. A service-area business that travels to customers should hide its address and provide an accurate, precise service area instead. A hybrid business can show its storefront address and designate a service area when the location is staffed and can receive customers during its stated hours.

The same Google guidance says the phone should connect to the individual business location, or the website should represent that location. Google recommends a local phone number instead of a central call-center number whenever possible, requires the phone to stay under the business's direct control, and disallows redirects to another business or landing page. Compare the profile, location page, signage, and important public mentions as one identity record, then correct the first mismatch you find. The broader local SEO guide covers the surrounding work.

How many service areas can a business list, and when do approved edits appear?

Google allows a service-area or hybrid Business Profile to list up to 20 service areas based on cities, postal codes, or other areas served. Google says service areas cannot be set as a radius and recommends an overall area of about no more than 2 hours of driving time. Businesses that do not serve customers at their address should remove that address.

Google says an approved service-area edit may take up to 48 hours to appear on the Business Profile. That timing applies to approved service-area edits, not to every kind of profile edit.

What do reviews and review replies contribute?

Google's review guidance lets a verified business reply to reviews. Google also says a Business Profile may show customer reviews from trusted non-Google sources, including travel or local review sites, where the feature is available for the country or region and business category. Reply to the feedback that customers can see, and keep the public record current.

Use Google's review-link instructions to create one link or QR code. Ask for a review that reflects a genuine experience without incentives or influence. Google's review policy prohibits incentives such as payment, discounts, or free goods and services, selectively soliciting positive reviews, discouraging negative reviews, or requiring specific content.

Google's local-ranking guidance says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking, but it does not state a target in the cited section. Use the guidance to build a repeatable process for genuine feedback, not to chase a threshold or promise a result.

How do you use Google Profile Strength?

Google's Profile Strength Indicator is available only for verified listings. In the Business Profile, select Profile Strength, follow the on-screen instructions, select Next after updating, use Skip to move through a screen when needed, and select Go to profile on the last screen. Google says the tool identifies missing descriptions, hours, and contact information, checks consistency across Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Shopping, and helps add photos, videos, and posts.

Profile Strength is a completion check, not a ranking promise. Use it to find missing or inconsistent profile information before you inspect the website and outside records.

How should I build local links?

Google Search Central's link guidance says Google uses links to determine page relevance and find new pages to crawl. A crawlable link generally uses an HTML anchor element with an href, and descriptive anchor text helps people and Google understand the linked page.

Build a link when another page genuinely explains the business, its service, its trade, or its place. Keep the destination relevant to the words around the link. Start with local associations, suppliers, partners, community groups, and trade pages that already have a reason to mention the business. If you are evaluating directory distribution, use the guide to choose a citation and directory listing service for local SEO, then check that each link opens the intended location page.

How should you measure a local SEO change?

Use separate measurements for separate surfaces. Business Profile Performance describes activity around a verified profile. Search Console describes links to the website from Google Search. Google says sites appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in overall Search Console traffic, in the Performance report under the Web search type. Search Console does not provide a separate AI Mode-only traffic number in that reporting rule. Do not call a website average position a map result.

For an observed AI-visibility check, use a fixed prompt set. Record the date and search point or location for each run, repeat each prompt, and report the share of runs in which the business or its site appears. This is an observation method, not a Google metric. Keep it separate from Business Profile Performance and Search Console.

Google says Performance data requires a verified Business Profile and the associated Google Account. That access condition matters before a baseline is recorded.

When can Google AI Mode call a local business?

Google's Check for me can research service costs, open appointment slots, and nearby inventory. AI Mode can gather web information, complete forms, or call businesses when the requested detail is not online. Google says web results can take a few minutes and call results can take up to 30 minutes. The feature is documented for English, signed-in users over 18 on mobile and desktop, and a searcher can type "don't call".

Business Profile owners can manage Google's automated calls and texts at Business Profile → More → Business Profile settings → Advanced settings → Google automated calls and text messages. Google lists three switches:

1. Bookings and inquiries from customers
2. Keep your profile up to date
3. Post to your profile on your behalf

Google says businesses can opt out, although occasional manual confirmation calls may still occur. The posting switch is available only to businesses with a verified Business Profile.

Google limits these automated appointment, restaurant-wait-time, and product or service-detail calls to select regions and languages. In the United States, Google lists every state except Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, and Nebraska. When in-store product details come from Merchant Center, Google says it will not call to ask about that inventory.

How many people use AI to find local businesses?

The available 2026 survey figures describe reported behavior, not a Google ranking signal. Keep the populations, periods, and question wording attached to each figure.

Yext's figures are global and self-reported. BrightLocal's figures are US survey findings with different samples and questions. They should not be combined into one estimate of local-business recommendations.

What should I do first?

Start with the facts you can verify, not with a ranking recipe. These checks are separate:

• Compare the Business Profile, website, signage, and important public mentions for the business name, address or service area, phone, and location URL. Google's representation guidance sets the identity rules, and Google says profile information can come from crawled web content and other sources.
• If the listing is verified, use Profile Strength to find missing descriptions, hours, and contact information. Google documents the menu path and the fields the tool checks.
• Check each location page for visible business facts and a page that Google can access. Google says an AI-feature supporting page must be indexed and eligible for a normal Search snippet.
• For a service-area business, use cities, postal codes, or other areas served rather than a radius. Google allows up to 20 service areas, and an approved service-area edit may take up to 48 hours to appear.
• Use Google's review-link instructions to create one link or QR code. Ask for feedback that reflects a genuine experience without incentives or influence, and do not selectively solicit positive reviews, discourage negative reviews, or require specific content.
• For observed AI visibility, use a fixed prompt set, record the date and search point or location, repeat each run, and report the share of runs in which the business or its site appears. Keep this observation separate from Business Profile Performance and Search Console.
• Use Business Profile Performance for profile activity and Search Console for website search traffic. Google reports AI-feature traffic in Search Console's Performance report under the Web search type.