Show up when locals ask AI for a rec

A growing share of people don't open Maps anymore. They ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity "who's the best [service] in [town]?" and take the two or three names it hands back. If you're not one of them, you don't exist for that customer, and they never even saw a result to scroll past.

AI picks the same way Google does, only stricter

The AIs don't rank ten links. They name a couple of businesses and move on. To choose them they lean on the same signals that win the map pack, your reviews, your citations, what other sites say about you, pulled from Maps, review sites and search indexes. Thin presence, no mention. And there's no page two to sneak onto.

Here's the upside: almost no local business optimises for this yet. The plumber who dominates Maps probably has no idea whether ChatGPT names him. Show up in the AI answers now and you're ahead of your entire street.