ChatGPT Is Googling Your Business (Why It Matters for SEO)
Something interesting is happening in local search right now. Most business owners haven’t noticed it yet, but our team has!
When users ask ChatGPT for local business recommendations, the information it returns often mirrors what’s listed on a company’s Google Business Profile. Business hours, services, descriptions, and categories are lining up almost perfectly.
Our internal experiments combined with other user reports suggest that ChatGPT and other AI tools are leaning heavily on Google’s local business data when answering location-based queries. That’s a huge win for local businesses that have taken their Google Business Profile seriously.
It means AI search engines are increasingly treating your Google Business Profile as a source of truth. So if you want something to change about the way AI sees your business, now you have some control over that.
Why Google Business Profile Matters in GEO
Not to brag (okay, we’re bragging), but we’ve been saying this for years: your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the second most important SEO asset you own (after your website, of course).
If AI tools are pulling directly from GBP data, optimizing your profile is no longer just about ranking in Google Maps. Now, businesses need to think about showing up accurately everywhere AI displays local recommendations.
That includes making sure you’re optimizing aspects of your profile such as:
Business hours
Services and service descriptions
Products (yes, you can connect WooCommerce to your GBP and sell!)
Categories
Business description
Location and contact details
Service areas
Fresh photos
GBP posts
When those details are incomplete, outdated, or weak, it can now impact whether your business is recommended (or ignored) by AI search tools. This is called generative engine optimization (GEO), and it’s now just as important to have a strategy for GEO as it is for SEO.
How AI Is Changing Local SEO Strategy
AI-powered search is growing fast, but it’s not replacing Google the way so many SEO doomsdayers claim it is. SEO and GEO go hand in hand, you need one to have the other.
Google has long positioned Google Business Profiles as the definitive local data source, and now AI platforms are validating that approach by relying on the same dataset.
Credible sources backing this shift include:
Google’s own guidance on how local business data is surfaced across platforms
https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091Ongoing reporting on how AI tools source local information
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-ai-is-changing-local-search/
AI pulls from structured, trusted data to give users trustworthy responses, and GBP is at the top of the list of reliable places from which to pull data.
What This Means for Your Local SEO Strategy
If your Google Business Profile is:
Fully optimized
Accurate
Actively maintained
You’re positioning your business to win in both traditional local search and AI-powered search results.
But if your profile has:
Missing services
Outdated hours
Weak or generic descriptions
Incorrect categories
You’re limiting your AI visibility and you’re hurting your local SEO opportunity. This is exactly why we emphasize GBP optimization in our SEO services at Emerald Content.
Don’t Want to Manage It All Yourself?
Keeping a Google Business Profile optimized takes consistency (updating services, posting regularly, monitoring changes, and staying aligned with Google’s evolving guidelines).
If you’d rather focus on running your business while someone else handles the strategy, optimization, and maintenance, that’s exactly what we do. Get in touch with us today for a free SEO audit and learn how we’d make your business more discoverable through proven SEO and GEO strategies!
