More of your customers are asking AI tools and voice assistants for recommendations instead of scrolling search results. The question we hear from business owners is whether their SEO still matters.
It matters more. AI search tools pull their answers from the same signals traditional search uses: your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your site content, your local citations. Businesses with those foundations in order are the ones AI recommends. Businesses without them disappear from a results page and from the answer entirely.
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What AI actually looks at before recommending a local business
When someone asks for the best emergency electrician open now, AI weighs location, opening hours, reviews, and how clearly your website explains what you do. It reads context, not just keywords.
That puts a premium on the basics done properly: a complete and current Google Business Profile, consistent name, address and phone details everywhere you appear online, service pages for each location you cover, genuine customer reviews, and content that answers the questions your customers actually ask.
Conversational queries need conversational content
People type differently when they talk to AI. Instead of “boiler repair Cambridge” they ask “who can fix my boiler today in Cambridge and how much will it cost”. Content structured around real questions, with clear and direct answers, gets surfaced. Pages stuffed with keyword variations do not.
Reviews carry more weight than ever
AI tools lean heavily on review signals to judge which business to recommend. Volume matters, recency matters, and how you respond matters. A steady flow of genuine reviews is now one of the highest-return marketing activities a local business can invest in.
The mistakes we see most often
Three failures come up constantly when we audit local businesses in Cambridge. First, an abandoned Google Business Profile: wrong hours, old photos, unanswered reviews. AI treats a neglected profile as a signal of a neglected business. Second, one generic services page trying to rank for every location, when separate pages for each area served would each rank properly. Third, no question-based content at all, which means no chance of matching the conversational queries that now make up a growing share of searches.
None of these is expensive to fix. All of them are expensive to ignore, because the businesses that fix them first take the AI recommendations in their area, and those recommendations compound.
Where to start if you do nothing else
Claim and complete your Google Business Profile this week. Ask your last ten happy customers for a review. Write one page that fully answers the single question you get asked most on the phone. Those three actions alone put you ahead of most local competitors, because most local competitors are doing none of them.
What this looks like when it works
The principles are the same ones behind every result we deliver. Pellys Solicitors came to us receiving 2 to 3 enquiries a week. Two years of SEO and website management later, it is 2 to 3 an hour. The fundamentals, applied consistently and measured honestly.
GoBig Digital manages SEO for around 70 businesses on monthly retainers, with 51 five-star reviews on Google. If you want to know where your business stands as search shifts towards AI, we will tell you honestly. Book a free discovery call.