6% 45%
now use AI to find a local business
One year. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI answers went from a rounding error to nearly half of local searches.
Your best customer just searched for you. Someone else answered.
Show up when and where people are looking for your service.
Bryan, College Station, and the Brazos Valley · month to month · no contracts
What changed
Searching moved.
Most businesses did not.
People still need a barber, a roofer, and a dentist. That part does not change. How they go looking for one, and where the answer comes from, changed fast.
83% 71%
Google's share of local discovery
Still the biggest by a wide margin, but the first real drop. The searching did not stop. It spread out.
That is one year of movement. Whatever got you found in 2024 is already out of date.
How it works
Four places people look.
Same business, four front doors. Most shops around here are only standing in one of them, and usually by accident. You have seen all four a thousand times. Most people have never been told their names.
- The map pack Search for a service near you and Google puts a map at the top with three businesses pinned under it. Most people tap one of those three and never scroll past them.
- Organic results The ordinary list of websites below the map and the ads. Slowest to earn, and the one that scales: your fee stays flat while the traffic keeps growing, so every new customer costs you less than the last one.
- AI answers When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini to recommend a plumber in their town, it names a few. Whether you are one of them comes down to whether those systems can work out what you do and where you do it.
- Paid search The results at the very top marked Sponsored. They start the day you switch them on and stop the day you switch them off.
Some agencies now sell AI visibility as a separate service, or as an upcharge on top of SEO. It is not separate. Showing up in an AI answer and showing up in the map pack come from the same work: making it unmistakable what you do and where you do it. So it is in every plan here, not a line item.
Who this is for
This is built for
a specific kind of business.
Not every business should pay someone to do this. Here is the honest line, so you can work out which side of it you are on before you call me.
Built for you if
- You own it. You probably still do the work yourself, or did until recently.
- One new customer is worth several hundred dollars or more to you, counting the times they come back.
- People find you by searching, not because they already know your name.
- Somebody who does worse work than you is sitting above you on Google.
- You want better jobs, not just more of them.
Not built for you if
- A customer is worth twenty dollars. The math never works at that price.
- All your work comes through your own network. Search cannot help much with that.
- You need to be number one by next month. Nobody can do that.
Does it work
Here is one, with the receipts.
A Bryan barbershop, four years in. The new site went live on 27 May 2026. In the ten weeks after, more people found them than in the eleven weeks before, and that was across the summer, when the 80,000 students next door go home.
Enrollment source: The Eagle, Texas A&M enrollment760 869
clicks from Google
Source: Google Search Console11.1 8.5
average position
Source: Google Search Console180,864 40,535
bytes to load
Source: Internet ArchiveAsked a different way: of the three barbershops in that market, it is the only one ChatGPT and Claude know exists. Both competitors score zero on both.
Source: Waikay, measured 2026-07-22Not a barbershop? The work is the same. The competition is not.
How long
Nobody can make
Google move faster.
Anyone promising you the top spot by next week is selling something. What I can promise you is not waiting any longer than you have to. Here is roughly when each one starts showing up.
- Days Google Ads Live as soon as the campaign is approved. This is the only one that is instant, and it is optional. Some owners run it to keep work coming in while the rest builds.
- About 30 days Google Business Profile Usually the first real movement you can see, and the cheapest place to start for most local businesses.
- 60 to 90 days Map pack Where you land in those three pinned results for the searches people actually run in your town.
- 3 to 6 months Organic The slowest one, and then it keeps building. Month twelve is better than month six without you spending any more.
The slow one is the one that lasts. Ads stop the day you stop paying for them. Rankings do not.
What you have to do
Three things,
then get back to work.
- Access to your Google accounts. I will walk you through it if you have never done it.
- About 30 minutes answering questions about your business, your best customers, and your busiest season.
- A yes or no on a fixed quote. No open-ended hours.
What if it does not work
You leave. There is nothing to cancel.
Month to month, no contract, no setup fee holding you in place. The audit is free and comes before you spend anything.
And if search is not where your next dollar should go, I will tell you that before you spend a year finding out.
Start with the free auditThe work itself
Priced in public.
- SEO Starts at $1,500/month, month-to-month.
- Local SEO Two tiers. $850/month to compete in your city, $1,500/month to compete across the towns around it too. Month-to-month either way.
- Google Business Profile Optimization Flat $250/month, month to month. No setup fee and no larger first invoice.
- Google Ads Management A flat management fee banded by ad spend, never a percentage of it. Ad spend is billed by Google, separately.
- AI Visibility Included in every Local SEO plan at no extra cost. Available on its own as a one-time entity and AI visibility audit.
- Local Services Ads Flat $350/month to manage it, never a share of your lead spend. Your lead budget is billed by Google directly.
- Web Development One-time build: $2,500 on its own, or $2,000 bundled with any monthly plan.
- Workflow Automation Scoped and fixed-priced per project, including whatever it costs to keep running.
Find out where you stand.
A real look at your site, your Google Business Profile, and whether AI assistants can find you. You get the findings whether or not you hire me.