Here’s something most local business owners haven’t noticed yet: your next customer may never see your website — or Google — at all. According to Bain & Company’s 2025 research, about 80% of consumers now rely on AI-written summaries for at least 40% of their searches, and those zero-click answers are cutting traditional website traffic by an estimated 15 to 25%.
Meanwhile, Gartner predicts traditional search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026 as people shift their questions to AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
The good news? Checking — and improving — how AI engines talk about your business doesn’t require a big budget. It requires 30 minutes. Set a timer and work through this checklist.
Minutes 0–10: Find Out What AI Says About You
Open ChatGPT (the free version works) and Perplexity, and ask each one:
- “Who is the best [your service] in [your city]?”
- “Tell me about [your business name] in [your city].”
- “What do reviews say about [your business name]?”
Write down three things:
- Do you show up at all? If the AI doesn’t mention you when someone asks for the best plumber, dentist, or contractor in your town, you’re invisible in a channel your competitors may already own.
- Is the information correct? Wrong hours, an old address, or a discontinued service in an AI answer costs you real customers.
- Who does show up? Those competitors are your benchmark. Ask the AI why it recommended them — the answer usually points to reviews, directories, or press coverage you’re missing.
This is called generative engine optimization, or GEO — the practice of getting AI engines to find, trust, and recommend your business, the way SEO did for Google.
Minutes 10–20: Fix the Sources AI Actually Reads
AI engines don’t invent answers. They pull from sources they trust: your Google Business Profile, review sites, local directories, and your own website. Spend these ten minutes on the highest-impact fixes:
- Google Business Profile: Confirm your hours, address, phone, and services are current. AI search tools lean heavily on this data for local questions.
- Reviews: Check your last five reviews on Google and Yelp. Respond to any you’ve missed — AI engines summarize review sentiment, and unanswered complaints get summarized too.
- Your homepage: Read your first paragraph out loud. Does it plainly say what you do, where you do it, and for whom? “Family-owned HVAC repair serving Prescott and Prescott Valley since 2009” beats “Comfort solutions for the modern home” every single time. AI engines quote plain statements; they skip vague ones.
Minutes 20–30: Add What the Research Says AI Engines Reward
This is where most businesses stop — and where the biggest gains hide. Researchers from Princeton and Georgia Tech published the first major study on this at ACM KDD 2024, testing which content changes actually make AI engines cite a source more often. Their finding: adding statistics, direct quotations, and citations to credible sources boosted visibility in AI-generated answers by up to 40%.
Translate that to your business in ten minutes:
- Add one real number to your homepage or top service page. “We’ve completed 1,200+ roof repairs in Yavapai County” is exactly the kind of concrete, quotable fact AI engines pull into answers.
- Add one customer quote. A short, specific testimonial (“They fixed our AC the same day we called”) gives the AI a quotation to use — one of the top-performing tactics in the Princeton study.
- Answer one real question in plain language. Take the question customers ask you most (“How much does a water heater replacement cost in Prescott?”) and answer it in two or three honest sentences on your site. AI engines are answer machines — pages that directly answer questions get cited; pages that dance around them don’t.
Notice what’s not on this list: keyword stuffing. The Princeton research found it performs poorly with AI engines. Clear, factual, well-sourced content wins.
What to Do After the Timer Goes Off
Put a repeat of this checklist on your calendar for 30 days out. AI answers change as engines update their sources, so a one-time check isn’t enough — but a monthly half hour keeps you ahead of the 90% of local businesses who’ve never once asked ChatGPT about themselves.
And if you’d rather see hard numbers than guess, get your free AI Visibility Score at rankforward.ai/score. RankForward will show you exactly how ChatGPT and Perplexity see your business right now — so you know where you stand before your competitors do.