A quick one to chew on:

Your local brand isn’t losing because of some mega ad agency or billion-pound brand breathing down your neck.

You’re being outranked by a plumber who answered someone’s question better than you did.

AI search doesn’t care about big brands

It cares about usefulness and specificity.

When someone asks a question on ChatGPT, Copilot, or Google’s new AI-powered search, here’s what the machine is trying to answer for you:

“Who’s got the best, clearest, most helpful answer right now?”

That’s it.

No keyword trickery. No backlinks arms race. No big-brand bias.

AI search has changed the game.

And the local businesses that show up in those AI answers?

Nine times out of ten, they’re just the ones who did the basics really, really well.

They wrote an FAQ.

They structured their content.

They answered a real question.

The bar isn’t as high as it used to be.

The shift nobody is talking about

This is the part that gets missed in 99% of SEO advice:

You’re not competing for keywords anymore. You’re competing to be the answer to the question.

That means:

• If you run a service-based business and you’ve explained your pricing clearly, you’ll win more on price.
• If you’ve written a 300-word guide to “how long X usually takes” – you’re on the AI radar
• If you’ve answered the ONE thing customers are nervous to ask? Congrats, you’re doing it right.

You don’t need the perfect anything.

You just need to be useful and specific.

That’s what AI tools are pulling into their answers. Every day. Right now.

So what can YOU do?

Here’s what I’d do if I were running a local service business right now:

• Make a list of the 50 most common questions customers ask
• Write a blog post or one-pager for each of them. Don’t overthink it. Just be clear and honest.
• Add FAQ schema to your content
• Make sure your business contact details are correct across the web

This isn’t a popularity contest. You don’t need to go viral. You just need to answer one person’s question really well.

The bottom line

You’re not too small. You’re not too late. And you’re not outmatched.

In this new era of AI-powered search, being useful and specific is the key.

And if you want help showing up in the tools people are actually using to find local services? That’s exactly what we do.

No fluff, no gatekeeping, just real help for brands who want to be found.

Check out some more of our advice, discoveries, and much more below 👇