Category: SEO Management
Ask Google for “a good electrician near Salisbury” and, more and more often, you won’t get a list of websites. You’ll get a few paragraphs written by Google’s AI, naming two or three local businesses, with their star ratings and opening hours tucked underneath.
So, when someone asks for a business like yours, are you in that answer?
For local searches, those AI answers are built largely from Google Business Profiles and the reviews on them, not just from websites. That means a half-finished profile, which used to cost you a few places in the map results, can now cost you the whole enquiry. The good news is that the fixes are mostly free and mostly things you can do yourself.
What has changed
A few things have changed in the last year or so.
Google’s AI answers arrived properly in the UK. AI Overviews (the summary that appears above the normal results) have been around for a while, and AI Mode, a separate tab that answers your question like a conversation, launched in the UK in summer 2025. At its I/O conference in May 2026, Google said AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users.
Questions and answers disappeared from Business Profiles. Google has removed the old Q&A section, where customers could ask a question on your listing and you or anyone else could answer it. In its place, people can ask Google Maps a question about your business and get an answer written by AI, pulled from your profile, your reviews and your website.
UK customers are using AI to find local businesses. A survey by Yext in June 2026 found that just over a third of UK consumers had used an AI tool to search for a local business in the past month, and three quarters of those said they were using it more than a year earlier.
None of this means the normal map results have gone away. They haven’t. But there are now more places where a customer can find you, or not find you, and most of them are reading from the same source.
Where AI answers get their information
Google’s own AI leans heavily on what it already knows about your business through Google Maps. That means your Business Profile: your categories, services, description, opening hours, photos and, above all, your reviews. It also reads your website, which is why the two need to agree with each other.
Other AI tools work a little differently. ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and the rest don’t have Google’s Maps data, so they piece together a picture from websites, directories and review sites. Copilot is worth a mention here, because the same Yext survey found it is used more in the UK than in many other countries, and it draws on Bing. If you’ve never claimed your Bing Places listing, now is a good time.
Whichever tool someone uses, the pattern is the same. The AI is looking for evidence that you’re a real business, that you do the thing being asked about, that you cover the area being asked about, and that other people have been happy with you.
Why a half-finished profile costs more than it used to
A few years ago, a thin profile meant you appeared a bit lower in the map results. A customer who scrolled could still find you.
An AI answer doesn’t scroll. It names a handful of businesses and moves on. If your profile doesn’t give it enough to go on, it simply picks someone else.
Some of the ways this shows up are surprisingly ordinary. If your hours are wrong, the AI tells someone you’re closed on a Saturday when you’re not. If you haven’t listed your services, then when someone asks who does boiler servicing in Amesbury, the AI has nothing to match you to.
Reviews matter in the same way. If they’re all three words long (“Great service, thanks”), the AI can’t tell anyone what you’re actually good at. And if your website gives one phone number and your profile gives another, it may not be sure which business is which.
And if you used to fill your Q&A section with your own questions and answers to cover common queries, that trick has gone with it.
What to tidy first
You don’t need to do all of this in one afternoon. But if your profile hasn’t had any attention for a while, this is the order we’d go in.
1. Check your categories
Your primary category is one of the biggest clues Google has about what you do. Make sure it’s the most accurate one available, not just the closest one you found when you set the profile up. Add secondary categories for the other things you genuinely do, and leave out the ones you don’t.
2. Fill in your services and description properly
List your services one by one, in the words your customers would use. Write a description that says plainly what you do and which towns you cover, for example Salisbury, Amesbury, Wilton and Downton. Write it for a person, not for a search engine. Stuffing in keywords won’t help, and adding them to your business name can get the profile suspended.
3. Get your hours and service area right
Check your opening hours, and add special hours for bank holidays and Christmas, which is coming up fast. If you go to your customers rather than them coming to you, set your service area to the towns you actually cover.
4. Ask for reviews, and ask for detail
Reviews are the most useful thing an AI has to go on, because they’re the only part of your profile written by someone else. Ask every happy customer, ideally soon after the job is done. A review that says “Fitted a new consumer unit in our cottage in Wilton, turned up on time and tidied up after” tells the AI far more than “Great service”.
Reply to your reviews too, the good and the not so good. It shows anyone reading them that you’re paying attention.
One warning. Buying reviews, writing your own or offering discounts in exchange for five stars has been against the law in the UK since April 2025, under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. Google removes fake reviews and can restrict profiles that collect them. It isn’t worth it.
5. Add real photos
Photos of your work, your van, your premises and your team are more convincing than stock images, to customers and to Google. They also show up inside AI answers. Add a few new ones every month or so rather than twenty in one go and then nothing for two years.
6. Make your website agree with your profile
Your business name, address and phone number should be exactly the same on your website, your profile and any directories you’re listed in. We wrote about this in our local SEO tips, and it matters more now than it did then.
Now that the Q&A section has gone, it’s also worth adding a frequently asked questions page to your website. Answer the questions customers actually ask you on the phone: do you cover my village, how soon can you come out, do you charge for quotes. That gives the AI a proper answer to work from, instead of a guess.
7. Claim your other listings
Claim your Bing Places and Apple Business Connect listings if you haven’t already, and keep them matching your Google profile. It’s a one-off job and it helps the AI tools that don’t use Google’s data.
Check what the AI is already saying about you
This is the bit most people never do, and it only takes ten minutes.
Search for a business like yours near Salisbury, or near the towns you cover, using Google’s AI Mode. Ask ChatGPT or Copilot the same thing. Are you mentioned? Who is, and what does their profile have that yours doesn’t?
Then ask questions about your own business by name. Are you open on Saturdays? Do you cover Downton? Do you do emergency call-outs? If the answers are wrong or vague, the fix is almost always in your profile or on your website, not in the AI itself.
No hype, please
You’ll probably start getting emails offering to “get you recommended by ChatGPT” for a monthly fee. Be careful. Nobody can promise that any AI tool will mention your business, any more than they can promise you the top spot on Google. These tools change how they work all the time, and they don’t tell anyone how they choose.
What does work is the same thing that has always worked for local search, just with less room for a sloppy profile. Be clear about what you do and where you do it, keep your information accurate everywhere, and earn good, detailed reviews. When we wrote about using ChatGPT for your marketing, our advice was to use it but not depend on it. The same goes for AI search.
Where to start this week
Open your Google Business Profile and check three things: your primary category, your opening hours (including Christmas) and whether your services are listed. Then search for your own business in AI Mode and see what comes back.
If you’d like a second opinion, the friendly, experienced team at Spire Digital help businesses in Salisbury and the surrounding area with search engine optimisation (SEO). Give us a call on 01722 320 500 and we’ll happily take a look at your profile.