AI Search
What AI search looks for, and how to see where you stand
ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity pick local businesses from a short list of signals you can check and change. Here's the list, and a free way to see yours.
A customer opens ChatGPT and types "who are the best roofers near me." ChatGPT names five businesses. You are not one of them.
The same thing happens in Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and inside Google Business Profile's own AI answer box. These engines are not guessing. They pull from a short list of signals, most of which you can see and change.
Below is the list. Every item on it is checked by WebsiteGlue in a free scan.
AI search is mostly local SEO with new rules bolted on
AI search engines do not crawl the whole web the way Google did in 2015. For local questions they lean on structured sources Google already trusts:
- Google Business Profiles. The same data that ranks the map pack ranks you in AI answers.
- Third-party sites with structured business data. Yelp, Angi, BBB, and directory sites with proper schema.
- Your own website, when it answers questions clearly and gives the AI facts to verify.
If you have already done the local SEO work for the map pack, you have done 60 to 70% of the GEO work. The rest is specific to how AI engines read pages.
The signals that get you named
A healthy Google Business Profile
Rating above 4.5, a dozen reviews or more with the newest one from this month, current hours, photos the business posted (not just customers), and a filled-out service list. AI engines use Google's own ranking of your profile as a shortcut for local trust. A weak profile keeps you out of the answer no matter how good the website is.
A website that answers questions
Open any page on your site. Would it answer a question a customer might type into ChatGPT? Brochure-style pages do not get quoted. Pages structured around questions do.
Three practical fixes:
- Write H2 headings as questions. "How much does a roof replacement cost?" instead of "Pricing."
- Add an FAQ section at the bottom of every service page.
- Give each service page one specific answer in the first paragraph, before any marketing copy.
Facts AI can verify
AI engines check facts before they recommend you. If the name, address, and phone on your website do not match your Google Business Profile, the engine lowers your weight or drops you.
Add LocalBusiness schema. Put a complete address and phone in your footer on every page. Make the phone on your site match the phone on Google. If a customer could pull up two different numbers for you, so can the AI, and that costs you placements.
Content the AI can actually read
Two technical traps:
- A robots.txt file that blocks GPTBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, or OAI-SearchBot. If any of these are blocked, you have opted out of that engine.
- A site built in JavaScript that renders content after the page loads. Most AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. They see an empty page and move on.
A fast check: open your site in a private browser window with JavaScript disabled. If the page is blank, your AI readiness is zero no matter what else you do right.
Freshness
AI engines weight recent content higher. A post from 2022 titled "best plumbers in [your city]" counts for less than one from last month on the same topic. Review recency matters even more. A business whose newest Google review is 11 months old reads as closed.
How WebsiteGlue scores all of this for free
A WebsiteGlue scan audits every competitor Google returns for your industry in your city, plus your own site if you add it. Each business gets five scores from zero to 100:
- Google profile: rating, review count, how recent the newest review is, hours, photos the business posted
- AI ready: all five signals above, scored with specific gaps named
- Staleness: sitemap freshness, copyright year, outdated code
- SEO effort: whether pages target the real searches customers make
- Mobile: viewport, responsive layout, phone experience
The results open as a heatmap of every business and every score, so you can see at a glance where your competitors are weakest and where you need to catch up. Click any row and a panel shows the exact items helping and holding back each score, with the market median marked on every bar.
The scan is free. One per email, no account, no credit card. Results in about three minutes, with an email link that doesn't expire.
Scan your market
See every competitor's Google profile, AI readiness, and site scores. Add your URL and yours scores alongside them.
Run a free scanCommon questions
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization. The work of showing up in AI search answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and similar engines. For local businesses GEO overlaps heavily with local SEO because the same Google data feeds both.
Do I have to add LocalBusiness schema myself?
Most website platforms add it for you if you fill out the business details in settings. WordPress sites usually get it from a plugin like Yoast or Rank Math. If you built the site yourself, schema.org has copy-paste examples. The WebsiteGlue scan tells you whether yours is already in place.
Should I block GPTBot to keep my content out of AI training?
That is a decision about training data, not about search visibility. Blocking GPTBot keeps OpenAI from training new models on your pages. It also often blocks ChatGPT’s live search from reading you, which costs you placements in answers. Most local businesses want to be read. Most publishers do not. Choose on purpose.
How often should I run a scan?
Once a quarter is enough for most local businesses. Scores change slowly, and the signals that move are the ones you work on between scans. Run one now to set a baseline, make the fixes the report calls out, and scan again in 90 days.