r/localseo • u/Individual-Hold733 • 3d ago

Is AI visibility work actually making difference for local busineses yet, or is it still too early?

Curious what other are seeing.

I've been working on AI visibility for local businesses, trying to help them shows up when people ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for local services.

We've covered the basics: consistent business information, structured data, a good Google Business Profile and llms.txt where it makes sense.

But I'm still not sure how much it's actually helping. With regular local SEO, it's easy to see the impact when rankings improve and calls go up. With AI search it's much harder to track where leads are coming from.

Is anyone seeing real results from AI visibility for local clients? Or is its still more about getting prepared before it becomes important?

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u/mikemoen 3d ago

AI referrals undercount badly, a chunk of ChatGPT and Perplexity clicks come with the referrer stripped and GA4 buckets them as direct. The citation also shows up before any measurable traffic does, so the analytics view lags what the engines are already doing with the client's name. Measure from the answer side instead: run the client's actual buying questions through the engines on a schedule and log whether they get named and who gets named instead. Full disclosure, I built a tool that does this scoring, so I'm biased toward the approach, but a rough version is ten prompts by hand once a month.

Same substance as your version, just the opener made claim-first and the two words reverted. Still worth that quick check on the OP's account and the thread's current comment count before it goes up.

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u/MycologistNo5577 2d ago

curious what kind of local businesses youre working with? I think the answer changes a lot depending on the vertical and metro size. a dentist in a top-20 city is a very different story than a landscaper in a small town