Ai question: Curious thoughts on how we now navigate local SEO in the new Ai era.

[Kaycie Smith]

My main GBP for a client (Dentist) is the brand GBP, this is the listing we optimized and made sure there were industry directories and citations under the Brand. There is a practitioner listing but...it has only 3 reviews and isn't ranking at all. My co-worker feels the client should start focusing more on the practitioner listing because it will work better for Ai searches then the brand listing.

Curious thoughts on how we now navigate local SEO in the new Ai era. I feel google is smart enough to know the dentists name is connected to the brand, but I have seen some comments regarding searches asking "who is" are generally pulling practitioner listings over brand.

Anyone played around with this enough to share insights?

 

[fisicx]

Structured data is really important for AI SEO - this means making sure the proper schema is on each page. You also need to use heading, paragraphs and lists correctly. view the page in plain HTML (no CSS, JS, images or anything else) as this is how the crawlers view the page.

Make sure you have lots of 'how to' articles on the site along with localised content. In the case of a dentist this could mean writing a 'we fixed the teeth of a smalltown resident' type post. Include pictures and ideally a testimonial from the client. The more of these the dentist writes the bigger the corpus of content there is for the crawlers to index.

This is not just good for AI but also basic SEO techniques.

 

[Kaycie Smith]

Structured data is really important for AI SEO - this means making sure the proper schema is on each page. You also need to use heading, paragraphs and lists correctly. view the page in plain HTML (no CSS, JS, images or anything else) as this is how the crawlers view the page.

Make sure you have lots of 'how to' articles on the site along with localised content. In the case of a dentist this could mean writing a 'we fixed the teeth of a smalltown resident' type post. Include pictures and ideally a testimonial from the client. The more of these the dentist writes the bigger the corpus of content there is for the crawlers to index.

This is not just good for AI but also basic SEO techniques.

Excellent information. Thank you. Any thoughts on which GBP to focus on?

 

[Glass]

Structured data is really important for AI SEO - this means making sure the proper schema is on each page. You also need to use heading, paragraphs and lists correctly. view the page in plain HTML (no CSS, JS, images or anything else) as this is how the crawlers view the page.

Make sure you have lots of 'how to' articles on the site along with localised content. In the case of a dentist this could mean writing a 'we fixed the teeth of a smalltown resident' type post. Include pictures and ideally a testimonial from the client. The more of these the dentist writes the bigger the corpus of content there is for the crawlers to index.

This is not just good for AI but also basic SEO techniques.

Which schema is most important for AI?

Is scheme just as important for all of those “how to” articles pages and the individual testimonial pages?

 

[fisicx]

Which schema is most important for AI?

Is scheme just as important for all of those “how to” articles pages and the individual testimonial pages?

Schema is important for every page. The problem is most automation tools do a very poor job of creating your schema data. There are thousands of options and variants in the specifications almost all of which get missed as the tools often can't even get the 'Thing' right. And it goes downhill from there.

For @Kaycie Smith this would be her starting point:

https://schema.org/Dentist

 

[fisicx]

Excellent information. Thank you. Any thoughts on which GBP to focus on?

Not sure. I don't think you would get much AI traction from a GBP because it's not really structured data. But GBP isn't my area of expertise so hopefully others more informed than I will be able to help.

The AI summaries you see are almost always generated from website data.

 

[Kaycie Smith]

Not sure. I don't think you would get much AI traction from a GBP because it's not really structured data. But GBP isn't my area of expertise so hopefully others more informed than I will be able to help.

The AI summaries you see are almost always generated from website data.

Hey @fisicx Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I would love to hear if others also believe that Ai summaries are typically generated more from the website! Very interesting!

 

[fisicx]

If you want to appear in the AI summaries or overviews it's your website not GBP that you need to work on:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features

"To be eligible to be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, fulfilling the Search technical requirements. There are no additional technical requirements."

Your dentist client needs a website. And they need to put in a lot of of effort if they want to appear in both local searches and the AI overview.

 

[Kaycie Smith]

If you want to appear in the AI summaries or overviews it's your website not GBP that you need to work on:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features

"To be eligible to be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, fulfilling the Search technical requirements. There are no additional technical requirements."

Your dentist client needs a website. And they need to put in a lot of of effort if they want to appear in both local searches and the AI overview.

hi @fisicx I understand all that you are saying! We do have a website with Schema and it is completely optimized. It is also ranking well. My question is about Google Business Profile and its impact on Ai's like Chat and Gemini. I understand that you think GBP doesn't play a role in those overviews- and maybe thats where the confusion is coming in. I am more concerned with the LLM's. I think GBP's do play a role- albeit maybe not as much as the website. I also think directories and citations are impacting local questions in Ai overviews.

My original question is geared toward asking how much does a brand GBP listing play over a sole practitioner listing. In my particular instance the brand listing is the listing that we have been focused on and optimizing. We mention the dentist name and all the specialties in the local JSON on the website so the dentist name is connected to the practice name.

Curious if people are seeing info being pulled from the sole practitioner listing in Ai's over the brand listing. I suspect - like everything- it depends but curious if anyone has seen this happen.

Appreciate your insights!