Four AI tools, four different local winners
Ask four AI engines for the best local business and nearly half the time you get four different answers. The one thing the agreed-on winners had in common was their own website.
Read the whole week in one goRank trackers were wrong all week. Check Search Console.
Why your traffic moved
Top search spots may be frozen for days at a time
One SEO says Google is not only serving fake results to scrapers but also locking the top one or two spots in place for 7 to 10 days, which makes results look oddly static. Charles Floate says @tehseowner raised it publicly first and that it has been happening for at least a few weeks.
Just another way Google is messing with results to target scrapers and AI competitors and SEOs end up getting caught in the crossfire.
Who this affects: Anyone who watches a rank tracking tool.
- Judge movement by Search Console clicks and sales, not trackers.
Getting into AI answers
Your own website decides if AI tools recommend you
A study of 491,972 local searches found four AI engines picked the same top business only 4% of the time, and picked four different winners in 48% of cases. In the rare cases where all four agreed, the winning business's own website was among the cited sources 91% of the time, says Alex Groberman.
Being the top choice in one AI system does not mean the others agree - at all.
Who this affects: Any business with customers who search for services near them.
- Add pages for each service and each area you serve.
- Check how you appear in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity separately.
Google says you do not need special code for AI answers
Google published its own guide on getting mentioned in AI features, and it calls several popular tactics myths. It lists over-focusing on structured data (extra code describing your page), llms.txt files and other special markup, chunking content and rewriting content just for AI as things you do not need, per Edward Sturm.
The best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because generative AI features on Google Search
Who this affects: Anyone being sold AI optimization work for their website.
- Do nothing new. Keep writing pages that answer real questions.