Something has been changing about the way people find local businesses. Many small business owners are aware of it aren’t quite sure what to do about it!
For years, the ‘game’ was simple: appear on Google when someone nearby searches for what you do. Get your Google Business Profile right, collect some reviews, keep your website tidy and you’d have a fighting chance of being found. While all that still matters, there’s a new question worth asking: when someone types “who’s the best bookkeeper in Winchester?” or “recommend a good independent estate agent near me” into ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, does your business come up?
If you haven’t thought about this yet, now is a very good time to start.
45% of consumers now use AI tools to find local businesses, up from just 6% a year earlier. That’s a sevenfold increase in twelve months, making AI the third most-used channel for local business discovery, behind only Google and Facebook. (BrightLocal, 2026)
This Isn’t the Future, it’s Already Happening
ChatGPT alone now has over 900 million weekly active users and Google’s AI Overviews – the AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional search results – now feature on roughly one in four searches.
When someone asks an AI assistant to recommend a local business, they typically get one or two names back, not a page of results to scroll through like with traditional search results. That’s a fundamentally different kind of visibility. AI search makes a judgement call on your behalf and a huge number of your potential customers are starting to trust that judgement. The businesses that appear in those recommendations aren’t necessarily the biggest or the most established. But they do have something in common.
How Does AI Decide Who to Recommend?
Here’s the reassuring bit: there isn’t a secret algorithm to game or a new technical trick to learn. Research published in 2026 – including a study of 10,000 local businesses across ChatGPT and Perplexity – confirmed that the factors driving AI recommendations are exactly the same things good marketing has always been built on.
AI systems are, at their core, looking for evidence. They’re trying to answer the question: is this business real, credible and worth recommending to my user? To answer that, they look for corroboration, the same information appearing consistently across multiple independent sources.
The key signals that research has identified include:
• A complete, accurate, and active Google Business Profile. still one of the most important single assets a local business can maintain.
• Consistent business information across directories, listings and social platforms. Even small inconsistencies (a slightly different trading name or an old phone number still listed somewhere) can undermine your credibility in AI systems.
• Genuine, detailed customer reviews: not just a high star rating, but reviews that describe what you actually do and how you helped. The language people use in reviews teaches AI what your business is for.
• Clear website content that answers the questions your customers actually ask. FAQs, service pages written in plain English and blog posts that address real problems all count.
• Third-party mentions and recommendations: being cited in local press, industry directories, other businesses’ websites or professional bodies reinforces your credibility as an independent source.
• Demonstrable expertise: useful guides, case studies and educational content that positions you as the knowledgeable choice in your field.
Remember, AI assistants aren’t trying to rank businesses. They’re trying to identify the safest recommendation for their user. Every piece of consistent, credible information about your business is a vote of confidence. Every inconsistency is a small doubt.
The SEO You Already Do Still Matters, Perhaps More Than Ever
It’s tempting to think that ‘AI search’ is something entirely separate from traditional SEO. It isn’t. Research published by Google in early 2026 (the SAGE paper) found that AI tools typically draw from the top results in traditional search when building their recommendations. If you’re not ranking in conventional search, you’re unlikely to be in the pool that AI considers at all.
Think of it this way: solid traditional SEO gets you in the mix. Being well understood, well reviewed and well evidenced is what gets you chosen. For small businesses owners, this is encouraging news. You don’t need a large marketing budget to build the kind of online presence that AI can understand and recommend. You need consistency, clarity and the patience to build a genuine body of evidence over time.
Try This: Ask AI What It Thinks of Your Business
Here’s a practical exercise worth doing today. Open ChatGPT, Gemini or the AI of your choice and try a few prompts:
• “What are the best [your trade] in [your town]?” Does your business appear?
• “What do customers say about [your business name]?” Is the summary accurate?
• “Who would you recommend for [your main service] in Hampshire?” Who comes up and why?
The answers may surprise you. There are already documented cases of AI tools giving inaccurate or outdated information about local businesses, sometimes confidently recommending businesses that have closed or describing services incorrectly. Knowing what AI currently ‘thinks’ about your business is the first step to improving it.
If your business doesn’t appear at all, that’s useful information too. It tells you that your online evidence base is thinner than it could be and that there’s work to be done.
What Hampshire Small Businesses Can Do Right Now
You don’t need to overhaul your entire marketing strategy. You need to build consistent, credible evidence that your business is what you say it is.
In practical terms, that means:
• Auditing your Google Business Profile and making sure it’s complete, accurate and regularly updated with posts and photos.
• Checking that your business name, address and phone number appear consistently across every directory, listing, and social platform where you’re listed.
• Making a habit of asking happy clients for reviews and encouraging them to be specific about what you helped them with.
• Writing website content (including FAQs and blog posts) in the language your clients actually use when they describe their problems.
• Building relationships with complementary local businesses, trade bodies and local press, because third-party mentions are one of the strongest signals of credibility.
The killer takeaway: don’t try to ‘optimise for AI’. Build a business that AI has plenty of good reasons to recommend. The evidence you create for human customers is exactly the same evidence AI uses to make its decisions.
Need a Hand Building Your Online Presence?
This is exactly the kind of marketing challenge that I love helping Hampshire small businesses navigate. Whether you need help auditing your online presence, improving your Google Business Profile or building a content strategy that works for both human visitors and AI recommendations, I’d love to talk.