Core Skill

AI Local Search: Visibility Where Search Is Heading

Measure visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. Platform-by-platform diagnosis. Signal-specific action plans. The metric your competitors aren't tracking yet.

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The AI Local Search Skill: Visibility Where Search Is Heading

A client calls. Someone asked ChatGPT for their service in their city. A competitor was named. Your client wasn’t.

The client wants to know what to do.

You know GBP. You know citations. You know reviews. But you’ve never audited AI visibility before. You don’t know which signals drive ChatGPT inclusion vs. Gemini vs. AI Overviews. You have no tool to measure where your client actually stands.

You give general advice and hope it helps. “Make sure your Bing Places is claimed.” “Build more citations.” You’re guessing because you have no measurement.

AI search is the fastest-growing dimension of local search, and it’s the dimension where most practitioners are flying blind.

What Changes With the AI Local Search Skill

You run an AI visibility audit. You see exactly which platforms your client appears on, which queries surface them, and which don’t.

You see what competitors have that your client doesn’t — platform by platform.

You get a signal-specific action plan: claim Bing Places (feeds ChatGPT), add FAQPage schema (feeds AI Overviews), build three authoritative web citations (feeds Perplexity).

Specific, not generic. Measurable, not theoretical.

The skill turns AI visibility from a vague concern into a scored metric with platform-level diagnosis and actionable fixes.

See It Work: Platform-by-Platform Visibility Audit

Prompt: "Check Glow Med Spa's AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini,
and AI Overviews for 'med spa Austin'. Where are we and what do we fix?"

Skills that fire: dispatch → ai-local-search + localseodata-tool
Data pulled: ai_visibility, ai_mentions, ai_llm_response, ai_overview, business_profile

AI VISIBILITY AUDIT: Glow Med Spa — Austin Med Spa
Overall AI Visibility Score: 23/100

PLATFORM BREAKDOWN

ChatGPT (Browse): NOT APPEARING
  Root cause: Bing Places unclaimed — ChatGPT uses Bing index for local
  Fix: Claim and complete Bing Places (30 min, highest leverage)

Google AI Overviews: PARTIALLY APPEARING
  Appearing for: "what to expect from a med spa treatment" (informational)
  Not appearing for: "med spa Austin" (local intent)
  Root cause: GBP entity signals insufficient for local AI Overview inclusion
  Fix: GBP completeness to 90%+, FAQ content for local queries

Gemini: NOT APPEARING
  Root cause: GBP completeness 61%, no Knowledge Graph entry
  Fix: GBP optimization (same path as map pack improvement)

Perplexity: PARTIAL — cited once in 4 test queries
  Source cited: Yelp profile (not website)
  Fix: Build authoritative web presence — local press, vertical directories

COMPETITOR COMPARISON
[Competitor A] AI Visibility Score: 71
  Why: Bing Places claimed + 340 Google reviews indexed in Bing +
       4 Austin American-Statesman mentions (authoritative web signals)

PRIORITY ACTION PLAN
1. Claim Bing Places today (30 min) — direct ChatGPT fix
2. Add LocalBusiness schema with sameAs for all profiles
3. GBP completeness push to 90%+
4. Target 2 local press mentions in next 60 days
5. FAQPage schema on 5 informational service pages

One prompt. Platform-specific diagnosis. Signal-specific fixes.

Why AI Visibility Is a Separate Dimension

AI platforms don’t use the same ranking signals as Google’s map pack. Each platform has different data sources and different selection criteria:

ChatGPT (Browse Mode)

When users enable Browse mode, ChatGPT queries Bing in real-time.

Data sources: Bing index, Bing Places, Yelp, directories that Bing crawls.

The implication: Google dominance doesn’t guarantee ChatGPT visibility. A business ranking #1 in Google’s map pack might be invisible to ChatGPT if their Bing Places is unclaimed or inaccurate.

What drives ChatGPT inclusion:

  • Claimed and complete Bing Places profile
  • Yelp presence with reviews
  • Citation consistency across Bing-indexed directories
  • Web content that Bing crawls and indexes

Gemini

Google’s AI assistant pulls directly from Google’s ecosystem.

Data sources: GBP data natively, Google’s full index, Google Maps.

The implication: GBP completeness directly affects Gemini visibility. What’s on your GBP profile is what Gemini knows about your business.

What drives Gemini inclusion:

  • GBP completeness and activity
  • Review volume and recency
  • Knowledge Graph entity recognition
  • Website content indexed by Google

AI Overviews

Google’s AI-generated summaries appearing above traditional results.

Data sources: Google’s index, GBP profiles, structured data, authoritative web content.

The implication: AI Overviews prioritize answerable content. FAQ pages, how-to content, and clear answers to common questions are more likely to be cited.

What drives AI Overview inclusion:

  • Structured data (FAQPage, LocalBusiness)
  • Content that directly answers questions
  • E-E-A-T signals (expertise, authority)
  • GBP completeness for local entity confirmation

Perplexity

AI search engine that cites sources transparently.

Data sources: Web crawl emphasizing authoritative and recent content.

The implication: Perplexity shows where it gets information. If your website is cited, users see that attribution. If a directory is cited, your directory presence matters.

What drives Perplexity inclusion:

  • Website content quality and authority
  • Citation presence across authoritative directories
  • Recent, well-structured content
  • Press mentions and authoritative links

Voice Assistants

Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa — voice search for local queries.

Data sources:

  • Google Assistant: GBP and Google index
  • Siri: Apple Maps and Apple Business Connect
  • Alexa: Yelp and Bing

The implication: Voice typically returns one result. Being #2 means you weren’t mentioned.

What the Skill Measures

AI Visibility Score

A composite score (0-100) based on presence across tested platforms and queries. The skill probes multiple platforms with multiple query variations and calculates a visibility percentage.

Score interpretation:

  • Below 30%: Largely invisible to AI search
  • 30-49%: Appearing on some platforms, missing others
  • 50-69%: Moderate presence with gaps
  • 70%+: Strong AI visibility

Platform-by-Platform Breakdown

For each platform (ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, Perplexity), the skill reports:

  • Whether the business appears
  • For which query types (informational vs. local intent)
  • What sources are being cited instead
  • Root cause for non-appearance

Competitor AI Visibility Comparison

What’s the AI visibility score of the businesses currently ranking in the map pack? If they have visibility and you don’t, that’s a competitive gap that will compound as AI search grows.

Signal Gap Analysis

The specific signals driving competitor visibility that your client lacks. Not generic advice — specific gaps:

  • “Bing Places unclaimed” (not “consider Bing optimization”)
  • “No FAQPage schema on service pages” (not “add structured data”)
  • “Zero local press mentions vs. competitor’s 4” (not “build authority”)

Who Uses This and When

Any client asking about AI search. “I heard you can show up in ChatGPT — are we?” Now you can answer with data.

New business pitches where AI visibility is the differentiator. Most competitors can’t run this audit. Including AI visibility measurement in your proposal separates you from practitioners still focused only on map pack.

Monthly audits as AI visibility becomes a standard KPI. Track the score monthly. Report it alongside traditional metrics. Show improvement over time.

Any time a client says “my competitor showed up in ChatGPT and we didn’t.” Run the audit, diagnose the gap, present the fix.

What You Don’t Get Without This Skill

Without the ai-local-search skill, AI visibility is a guess.

You might tell a client to “optimize for AI search” without being able to:

  • Measure their current visibility
  • Identify which platforms they appear on
  • Diagnose why they’re invisible on others
  • Compare their visibility to competitors
  • Provide platform-specific fixes

The skill provides:

  • Numeric visibility score for tracking
  • Platform-specific presence/absence
  • Root cause diagnosis per platform
  • Competitor benchmark
  • Prioritized action plan with signal-specific fixes

That measurement is what turns AI visibility from theory into an actionable metric.

The Data Behind the Audit

The ai-local-search skill calls these LocalSEOData endpoints:

  • ai_visibility — composite visibility score across platforms
  • ai_mentions — where the business is mentioned in AI answers
  • ai_llm_response — probe specific LLMs with test queries
  • ai_overview — Google AI Overview appearance for target queries
  • ai_mode — AI mode testing across platforms
  • ai_top_sources — which sources AI platforms are citing
  • business_profile — GBP data for context and completeness reference

The skill interprets this data through the platform-specific signal framework and produces the diagnosis.

Get This Skill — It’s Free and Open Source

The ai-local-search skill is part of the LocalSEOSkills library. MIT licensed.

Installation:

  1. Download LocalSEOSkills from GitHub
  2. Upload to Claude.ai or configure in Claude Code
  3. Connect LocalSEOData for AI visibility measurement
  4. The skill is active immediately

First prompt:

"Check [Business Name]'s AI visibility for '[service] [city]' across ChatGPT,
Gemini, and AI Overviews. Where do we appear? Where don't we? What's the fix?"

The audit will show platform-by-platform visibility, competitor comparison, and a prioritized action plan. That visibility measurement is the foundation for improving AI search presence.

Skill Documentation

For technical details on how this skill works, what data it pulls, and complete prompt reference, see the full skill documentation.

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