Search is no longer just about traffic and clicks – it’s about visibility, representation and exposure to your target audience, regardless of the platform you use. In an AI-driven world, a growing share of your customer base is likely to ask an AI assistant for a summary rather than using a traditional search engine. A year ago I predicted how the future of local search might unfold, and three of those predictions have come true in the last 12 months.
How local search has evolved in the last year:
Prediction: AI chat interfaces continue to increase in popularity, giving users an additional entry point beyond traditional search engines.
Result: AI chat interfaces have not just become an entry point for users, but have become a primary starting point on some platforms. Google has merged the AI mode experience into default search emerge globally, combining traditional search expertise with an AI-powered ecosystem.
What this means for local businesses: Your company’s public footprint needs to extend far beyond just search engines. Adoption of AI assistants is growing rapidly, and if you’re not part of the conversation prospects are having with LLMs, you’re letting your competition have the upper hand.
Prediction: LLMs will continue to improve and surface the most relevant recommendations based on prominencecustomer sentiment and contextual clues.
Result: LLMs have gotten better at surfacing relevant recommendations and will continue to get better as data licensing agreements shape the future of local marketing (OpenAI + Yelp).
What this means for local businesses: Optimizing your business across as many relevant listings as possible is more important than ever. As the battle for AI supremacy continues to unfold between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others, the likelihood of future licensing deals could skew how customers find local businesses with AI assistants. As with social media, meet your customers where they are and focus your efforts on the review platforms that matter most in your industry.
Prediction: Brand mentions and user-generated content across the web will become signals, signaling the importance of generating reviews across multiple platforms.
Result: Brand mentions became signals, and the tip tracking industry exploded, prompting marketers to report on new metrics like AI brand visibility, mention rates, and more.
What this means for local businesses: Over the past 18 months, brands’ visibility into AI responses has gone from an intuition to a science, driven by the boom in timely monitoring. Now you can determine your position relative to competitors, analyze the sentiment of brand mentions, and even identify which sources are most critical in shaping LLM recommendations.
The future of local search may see further changes as the World Wide Web becomes increasingly integrated with artificial intelligence. Recommendation engines will eventually convert into full-funnel transaction engines. For example, Google launched agency booking for restaurants eight additional markets in April 2026 and followed by announcing the ability to order food, book hotels and secure event tickets inside Ask Maps in August. Google isn’t the only tech giant bridging the gap between discovery and transactions; Square introduced an integration in July 2026 that allows restaurants to accept orders placed directly in ChatGPT and Claude, allowing users and restaurants to avoid potentially expensive aggregation fees that make online ordering cumbersome.
Ultimately, local SEO won’t disappear. Platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude simply provide new interfaces for users to conduct research, and it’s critical to optimize the sources they’ll use most to recommend local businesses.
