Local decisions happen fast — and mistakes cost bookings
72% of people look at three businesses or fewer before choosing, and 75% decide within half an hour. Often, when it comes to local search, whichever business looks most relevant and closest when someone searches holds a strong advantage.
It also means small errors can be expensive. 62% of people avoid a business after finding incorrect information about it online, and 96% simply expect an up-to-date online presence as standard. As Brad puts it: they won’t just lose rankings, they’ll lose covers. A wrong phone number or a stale opening time doesn’t just look untidy; it sends a real customer to a competitor.
Two different competitions: the map vs. the list below it
When you search locally, you’ll see a map with three pinned businesses, and a regular list of links underneath, ranked in completely different ways, so improving one won’t move the other. The map section (the Local Pack) is driven by your Google Business Profile: freshness, photos, reviews, and proximity to the searcher. The list below (Local Organic) behaves like traditional SEO: website content, backlinks, page speed, and dedicated pages per location.
Profile signals drive 32% of map ranking but only 7% of organic, while website signals drive 33% of organic but only 15% of the map pack, so both need attention separately. It’s worth the effort either way: businesses in the map pack get 126% more traffic than organic-only listings, and for a lot of local searches, the map pack is the result people act on.
Local SEO isn’t just a marketing job
Whilst the SEO team is largely responsible for implementing optimisations, each digital team has its part to play when it comes to contributing to the local SEO of a site.
- SEO — dedicated pages per service/location, neighbourhood-level keyword targeting, an up-to-date Google Business Profile, and local backlinks.
- Design — address, hours and a clear next step above the fold (the #1 decision factor); mobile-first design; menus as real text, not PDFs, for increased website accessibility and so AI tools can read them.
- Development — mobile speed (a 3-second load time costs over half of visitors); clean URLs across locations; schema markup so search engines and AI tools know exactly what a business is.
- Paid advertising — Local Services Ads visibility has nearly tripled this year; ad schedules that are matched to real opening hours.
- Email — timely review requests; consistent contact details everywhere; reviews encouraged beyond just Google.
From ranking to being recommended
Local search is being reshaped by AI. 45% of people have used ChatGPT for a local recommendation; it’s roughly 30 times harder to get recommended there than to land in Google’s map pack, and fewer than half of Google’s top performers also get recommended by AI. Ranking well on Google no longer guarantees showing up when someone asks an AI the same question.
Google’s own answer is Ask Maps, a conversational AI layer added to Maps in March 2026, its biggest Maps update in over a decade. The update lets people ask a full question and get one personalised answer instead of a list of pins. As Google put it: this isn’t about ranking any more; it’s about being recommended when the AI interprets what you actually want.
Local search moves fast, punishes inconsistency, and now has an AI layer with its own rules on top. It starts with the same basics: accurate information everywhere, a current Google profile, and a site people — and AI tools — can actually use quickly.
