Answers
Direct answers to the questions small business owners ask us most: about Google Business Profile, local rankings, reviews, and showing up in AI assistants.
- Google Business ProfileDo Google Business Profile posts help my ranking?There is no evidence that posting moves map pack position by itself. Posts work on conversion rather than ranking: they occupy space on the profile, answer questions before a customer calls, and give the profile something current to show. Treat them as merchandising, not as a ranking lever.
- Google Business ProfileHow do I choose the right Google Business Profile categories?Choose one primary category that describes what the business fundamentally is, not what it sells most this month, and add secondary categories only for services you actually provide. The primary category carries far more weight than the rest and is one of the strongest ranking levers on the whole profile.
- Google Business ProfileHow does a service area business rank on Google?A service area business ranks from the point Google associates with it, usually the address used at verification, even when that address is hidden. Listing more service areas does not extend map pack reach into them. Coverage across a wider area comes from location pages on your website, reviews mentioning the places you work, and organic rankings rather than from the profile.
- Google Business ProfileWhy is my Google Business Profile suspended?Google suspends a Business Profile when it detects a guideline violation, most often a keyword-stuffed business name, an address that cannot be verified, a virtual office, or a sudden edit to core information. Suspensions are either soft (profile unverified but still listed) or hard (profile removed from Maps entirely).
- Local SEODo I need a website if I have a Google Business Profile?Yes. A Business Profile only appears for searches Google already associates with your category and location, and you do not own it. A website is what ranks for the specific questions customers ask, what AI assistants read when deciding whom to recommend, and the only asset in local search that cannot be suspended overnight.
- Local SEOHow long does local SEO take to work?Expect early movement in two to six weeks from profile and technical fixes, meaningful map pack change in three to six months, and organic rankings for competitive service pages in six to twelve. A neglected profile in a thin market moves fastest; a well-optimized business in a dense city moves slowest.
- Local SEOWhy is my business not showing up on Google Maps?There are five likely causes: the profile is unverified, it has been suspended, it is being filtered as a duplicate, the searcher is too far away for your business to be shown, or your primary category does not match what they searched for. Checking them in that order identifies the problem in most cases within twenty minutes.
- AI VisibilityCan I use AI to write my local SEO content?Yes. Google's guidance targets content produced primarily to manipulate rankings, regardless of how it was written, so AI assistance is not itself a problem. What fails is what AI makes easy: interchangeable pages with no first-hand detail, no verifiable numbers and no named author. That is also the content AI assistants have no reason to cite.
- AI VisibilityDo AI assistants use Google Business Profile data?Indirectly, and the distinction matters. Assistants generally do not read your Google Business Profile dashboard or query Google's local index. They read the open web, meaning directories, review platforms, aggregators and articles, which is largely populated from the same business data your profile establishes. Your profile shapes what the model finds, even when the model never touches it.
- AI VisibilityDoes my business website need an llms.txt file?Probably not, in the sense that it will change anything. No major AI provider has confirmed reading llms.txt, adoption across the web remains marginal, and there is no published evidence of it affecting whether a business gets cited. It costs nothing to publish, so publishing it is harmless. Treating it as an AI visibility strategy, or paying an agency for it, is not.
- AI VisibilityDoes my local business need schema markup?Yes, though it is not a ranking factor. Schema markup states your name, address, phone, hours, services and authorship in a form that machines read without guessing, which makes rich results possible and makes your facts easy for AI assistants to lift correctly. It is cheap, it is verifiable, and it removes ambiguity.
- AI VisibilityHow do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?ChatGPT names local businesses it can corroborate. When someone asks for the best plumber in a city, the model runs a web search and assembles an answer from pages it can read and trust: directory listings, review platforms, local publications, and the business's own site. You get recommended by being consistently described, in the same terms, in enough of those places.
- AI VisibilityHow do I track whether AI assistants mention my business?By running a fixed set of buying-intent prompts on a schedule and recording the results. There is no equivalent of a rank tracker for AI answers, because there are no ranks, only whether your business was named. The workable method is 25 to 50 prompts for your category and city, run monthly across several assistants, logged consistently enough to see a trend.
- AI VisibilityHow does Perplexity decide which local businesses to recommend?Perplexity answers by retrieving live web results and summarizing the pages it reads, with citations attached. So the businesses it names are the ones appearing in the sources it retrieves for that query, from directories, roundups and review sites to the businesses' own pages, and stated there in terms clear enough to quote.
- AI VisibilityWhat is generative engine optimization (GEO)?Generative engine optimization is the practice of making a business appear in answers produced by AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews. Where SEO competes for a position in a list of links, GEO competes to be the source a model quotes when it writes an answer in prose.
- AI VisibilityWhy does ChatGPT recommend my competitor instead of me?Almost always because your competitor is easier to verify. The assistant searched the web, found several independent sources describing that business the same way, and found either nothing about you or sources that disagreed with each other. It is an evidence problem, not a popularity contest, and it is fixable.
- ReviewsCan I get a fake Google review removed?Only if it violates one of Google's content policies: fake engagement, off-topic content, a conflict of interest, harassment or restricted content. An honest review you disagree with will not be removed, and Google does not adjudicate whether a customer's account of events is accurate.
- ReviewsHow do I respond to a negative Google review?Reply publicly within a day or two, in three or four sentences: acknowledge the specific problem, state plainly what you are doing about it, and give one direct way to continue privately. Do not argue, do not repeat the accusation, and never mention details about the customer that they did not share themselves.
- ReviewsHow many Google reviews do I need?At least 20 to clear the threshold where consumers start taking a business seriously: 47% say they will not use a business with fewer. Beyond that there is no target number, only a moving one: enough to be credible against the specific competitors appearing next to you, kept recent enough that customers trust the picture.
- CitationsDo citations still matter for local SEO?Yes, but for a different reason than a decade ago. Building hundreds of directory listings no longer lifts rankings meaningfully. What still matters is consistency: contradictory business data across the web undermines trust in your listing and gives AI assistants a reason to recommend a competitor they can verify more easily.
- CitationsDoes my business name, address and phone number have to match everywhere?It has to be consistent, not character-identical. Search engines resolve ordinary formatting differences like Street versus St. What causes real damage is substantive conflict: a second phone number, an old address still live on directories, or variations of the business name that read as different companies.
- RankingHow do I rank in the Google map pack?By being relevant, close, and demonstrably prominent. Google decides the local pack on those three factors. Distance is fixed, so the work is category and content relevance on one side, and reviews, citations and links on the other. Primary category, business title keywords and proximity consistently top practitioner surveys of what moves the pack.
- RankingWhy do my Google rankings change depending on where I search from?Because Google computes local results from where the searcher is. Distance is one of the three factors behind map pack ranking, so your position changes block by block. Checking from your own office tells you almost nothing about what a customer two miles away sees.
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