Local
Do AI assistants rank local businesses differently?
Worth taking seriously, because a growing share of people asking who to call are now asking an assistant instead of searching.
The map pack runs on proximity
Google's local results weigh relevance, distance and prominence, and distance does an enormous amount of the work. That is why a business appears for people nearby and vanishes across town.
It is also why the map pack has a natural ceiling for anyone who travels to their customers.
Assistants do not know exactly where you are
An assistant answering a question about a city is working from text rather than from a precise location. It has no equivalent of standing in a specific postcode.
So what gets named tends to be businesses that are described in readable text as serving that place, and that other sources corroborate.
What that changes
Saying where you work becomes much more important. A page that names the towns you actually serve, in plain language, is directly usable. A vague claim about serving the surrounding region is not.
Reviews get read rather than counted. A few detailed reviews describing the specific job can carry more weight than a larger number of one-line ratings, because there is something in them to draw on.
Being mentioned elsewhere matters more. An assistant is cautious about a business that only exists on its own website.
The genuine opening
This is the useful part for anyone outside a major centre or anyone who travels.
The map pack will structurally limit how far you can reach. An assistant has no such radius. A business in Edmonton that genuinely works in Red Deer can be named for a Red Deer question if it has said so plainly and somebody else corroborates it.
That is a real opportunity and it is currently uncontested, because almost nobody local is writing for it. It pairs with the hard limits of the map pack, which is the problem it partly solves.
Do not treat it as a replacement
Map results still carry the bulk of local enquiries today. This is an additional lane rather than a substitute, and the businesses doing well in it are mostly the ones already doing the ordinary work properly.
Common questions
Do AI assistants recommend local businesses differently than Google Maps?
They appear to. Map results lean heavily on proximity and profile signals. Assistants have no reliable sense of exactly where you are standing and draw on text sources, so what gets named tends to be businesses written about in ways a machine can read and corroborate.
Does review count matter as much to AI assistants?
Less mechanically than in the map pack. What reviews say seems to matter more than how many there are, because an assistant is reading text rather than sorting by an average. A handful of detailed reviews describing specific work can carry more than many one-line five-star ratings.
Does proximity matter for AI recommendations?
Much less, and that cuts both ways. A business outside the radius where it could ever appear in the map pack can still be named by an assistant, which is a genuine opening for businesses that travel.
How do I appear in AI recommendations for my city?
Say plainly on your own site which places you serve, be listed consistently across sources, and make sure text about you exists somewhere other than your own website. Assistants need something to read and something to corroborate it with.