How Will AI Change The Way Customers Find Local Businesses?

Tim is the founder and owner of Blueworks Pro, where he works with clients to reach their revenue and growth goals through content-based marketing strategies

I was determined to find the answer to the question on top of local business owners minds

I’m sure you’ve heard that AI is going to take people’s jobs, crush small businesses, and take over the world, but that’s not entirely true. I’m not sure about the last part, but I was able to determine how it is going to impact how customers find local companies.

Let’s quickly summarize how AI works

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a technology that enables machines to mimic human intelligence and learn from experience. It’s like having a virtual assistant that can analyze data, recognize patterns, make predictions, generate lists, and improve its performance over time. For a small business owner, AI could automate routine tasks, help identify trends in sales or customer behavior, offer personalized recommendations, and improve decision-making. It’s not about replacing human effort, but enhancing it, making processes more efficient, and offering insights that might otherwise be missed.

So how does AI work as a search engine?

If you were trying to find a roofer in your area to work on your house, you might type into Google, “roofer near me”. Google would then show you roofers in your area that it has determined are worthy of being on the front page of the search results. Similar to how you use the current form of Google, a user could use Google’s AI search engine, Bard to answer the same question.

The difference is in the way that Bard is going to determine and present the results to you. Instead of giving you results in the form of endless pages of companies, Bard generates you a list of what it has determined to be the best roofers based on its knowledge of the entire internet.

I’ll show you what that looks like

I searched, “what are the 5 best asphalt shingle roofing companies in Annapolis, MD” in the traditional Google search engine and was taken to the first page of the results

First, the sponsored “Google Guaranteed” companies appeared at the top of the page:

Next was a another sponsored listing from a Google PPC Campaign:

This was followed by a Yelp page of the best roofers and then the local Google Maps:

Below the Google Maps were the rest of the results including Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, roofing companies, and some blog posts

So what happened when I typed, “what are the 5 best asphalt shingle roofing companies in Annapolis, MD” into Google’s AI search engine, Bard

Bard generated a list of the 5 best asphalt shingle roofing companies based on it’s entire knowledge of the internet including the local area

The list ranked the companies from 1 to 5 and generated a short description of the roofing companies and a reason why they were chosen

So how does your company get on the list?

I had a theory based on my knowledge of digital marketing, search engines, and artificial intelligence, but I had to check myself before I announced it to the world. I checked my hypothesis by going straight to the source.

I asked both Google Bard and ChatGPT how they rank local companies when they generate these lists. My theory was correct, customer reviews.

This makes sense when you think about it

Traditional search engines love customer reviews because it feeds them positive and negative content about the companies that they are listing. Reviews allow the search engines to learn about companies from the people they trust the most, the customer.

Since AI tools like Google Bard and ChatGPT rely on the internet to generate accurate responses, they too go first to customer reviews to rank companies on their lists. When you think about it, this is the most efficient, accurate, and fair way to generate lists of the best local companies in an area.

In addition, if the prompt to the AI search engine is precise, such as “asphalt roofing company”, the AI search engine has to rely on reviews to determine which companies fit that criteria.

What does this mean for your local company?

It’s obvious, get more reviews. A large volume of high-quality reviews feeds the traditional and AI search engines content about the type of work you are helping your customers with. It also builds a positive reputation with the machines. But, most importantly, reviews build trust with new customers.

So what do you do now that you have been enlightened by this information?

Blueworks Pro specializes in reputation management for local businesses. We don’t have a software to sell you, but a service that gets positive reviews from your past and present customers. You can leave it to us to save you from the AI takeover and excel your company to the top of the lists on both traditional and AI search engines.