AEO for local business: get named when people ask AI nearby

"Who's a good emergency plumber in Oakland that's open on Sundays?" That question used to go into a maps app. Now it goes, more and more, to an assistant, which answers with two or three names and a sentence on each. For a local business, being one of those names is the new version of being in the map pack.

How local answers are built

Assistants answer local questions from a mix of sources: business listings and maps data, review sites, local news and directories, community threads, and businesses' own sites. Google says Google Business Profiles "can help your products and services to be visible in both AI responses and other Google Search results". The other assistants draw on their own mix of listings and web pages, which is why consistency across all of them matters.

The difference from national brands is the weight of listings and reviews. A local business with a thin website but a complete, well-reviewed profile is often named; a beautiful site with a neglected profile often isn't.

Step 1: the Business Profile

• Complete every field: categories (primary and secondary), services, service areas, hours including holiday hours, attributes (wheelchair access, parking, payment).
• Describe what you do in plain words, including the specifics people ask about: "emergency callouts", "Sunday hours", "sedation dentistry".
• Keep it current. A wrong opening time is the fact an assistant is most likely to repeat and a customer most likely to punish.
• Add real photos and post updates when something changes.

Step 2: the same facts everywhere

Your name, address, phone number and hours should be identical on your website, your Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, industry directories and social profiles. Inconsistent listings give assistants conflicting facts, and they may repeat the wrong one. Search for your business name with your old address or old phone number; every listing that turns up needs updating.

Step 3: reviews

Reviews are the evidence local answers lean on, and the text matters as much as the stars. A review that says "came out on a Sunday night and fixed the burst pipe in an hour" supports an answer to exactly the question above.

• Ask every satisfied customer, at the moment the job is done, with a direct link.
• Reply to every review, especially the critical ones, factually and politely.
• Never buy, write or gate reviews. Platforms remove them and can penalise the profile.

Step 4: a website that answers local questions

• One page per service, saying what it is, who it's for, the area you cover, typical prices or how pricing works, and how fast you can come.
• One page per area you serve, if you serve several, with something true and specific about each rather than the same text with the town name swapped.
• Your name, address, phone and hours in text on every page, matching your profile.
• LocalBusiness structured data that matches the visible page. Our guide to schema markup for AI search covers what it does and doesn't do.

Step 5: local mentions

Assistants also cite local news, neighbourhood guides, "best of the city" lists and community threads. Sponsor the local league, speak at the chamber of commerce, get listed in the trade association's directory: the ordinary local marketing that produces pages naming you.

Which questions to track

Local questions are short and full of qualifiers. Track the ones your customers ask, with the area in them:

• "best family dentist in [neighbourhood]"
• "emergency plumber near [town] open Sunday"
• "[service] in [town] that takes [insurance or payment]"
• "is [your business] open on holidays?" (a fact question, to catch wrong hours)

Answers to local questions depend on where the person is, so track them from your area or with the place named in the question. Our guide to choosing the questions to track covers the rest.

When an assistant gets you wrong

Wrong hours, a closed location shown as open, a service you don't offer: find the listing or page it came from and fix it there. Our guide to fixing wrong information AI says about you walks through it. For the bigger plan, including what to do first if you're short on time, see our AEO strategy guide.