Why I'm Bullish On Local SEO

AI isn't coming here, at least not yet.

One of the questions I get asked most often is, “Isn’t AI killing SEO?”

In some ways, yes. But in other ways, not at all.

Today, I’ll show you why I believe local search will still be dominated by Google.

*Note - Lesson 4 of the 7 Figure Google Business Agency course is live. Incubator members can watch it now.

LFG. 🔥

First Off, Just See for Yourself

Before I get into the technical reasons why local search is going to stay in Google’s hands, I want to invite you to use some common sense.

Google doesn’t display AI results when you search for a local business. Let’s look at a few examples.

When I search “plumbers in Boulder CO,” I get two Google Business Profile ads and another ad. If you keep scrolling, you’ll see all local organic results.

Let’s try another one. How about “sushi in Boise”?

Once again, it’s a direct Google Business search result. There are no AI snippets at the top of the search results.

Google Owns All the Local Business Data

In the world of online business, things change fast. Any day, a new AI product could emerge that focuses solely on serving local business results. The problem is that Google owns all the local business data.

Google Business is different from other information displayed on search results. When you see a list of websites, Google is allowed to crawl those sites and determine which ones should show up.

But the local business listings are different, because Google would never open the database up to let LLM’s crawl it.

For example, if you go to Perplexity and search for “plumbers in Boulder,” you’ll get a few bullet points of results. But the information lacks the richness and detail of Google Business listings. That’s because Google owns that database and has spent decades collecting information directly from business owners.

Research Shows AI Search Isn’t Close to Google’s Capabilities

One of the most fascinating things about business is the gap between what we think will happen and what actually happens.

Sometimes, there’s no real rhyme or reason why certain products take off while others don’t. People adopt products in ways no one predicts.

AI and search is a perfect example.

For whatever reason, people just aren’t using AI to replace certain search intent. Yes, AI is a powerful research tool and it’s clear Google is losing ground there. But when it comes to discoverability, people still go to Google.

Rand Fishkin released a great video on this exact topic. Twitter doesn’t let me embed into Substack, so I downloaded the video. You can read the original tweet here.

It’s all very fascinating.

I think in a future issue, I will spend more time digging into this. I realize this post is very high level and I didn’t give examples with empirical evidence. However, everything I see, read, and observe tells me that Google owns local and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

The Google Business database has such a moat around it that it’s not worth the time and money it would take to take them down.

At least not yet.

Love you guys. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tim.

P.S. - Lesson 4 of the 7 Figure Google Business Agency course was published yesterday. Subscribers can view it now. I’ll hopefully have lesson 5 done by today.

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