Why local search matters more than it did five years ago

Most of us now choose a local business before we ever reach its website, and that's why being found locally matters more than it used to.

Five years ago a search gave you a list. You clicked one, and the business's website did the persuading.

Today a local search often ends on the results page. The map, the opening hours, the phone number, the reviews and, more and more often, a written summary are all there, and you can ring or set off without clicking anything. A business's website still matters, but it now works out of sight, feeding the box people actually read. If the site is vague about what the business does and where, the box will be vague too.

Then there are the AI assistants. People ask them whole questions: who services bikes near me this week, which framer in town does conservation work, who is open on Sunday. The assistant stitches an answer together from whatever it can find, which means the business's listing, its site, its reviews, old directory entries and the local news, and then names two or three businesses. If you run one, ask an assistant yourself about your own trade, and see who it names.

That stitching is why small inconsistencies now cost business. If your listing says you close at five, your website says half past and a directory from 2019 says four, search engines and assistants have three sources that disagree. They have every reason to trust none of them and name the competitor whose details line up instead. It's also why your listing on Bing needs to match the one on Google.

So the work is plain, and mostly free:

1. Finish your Google listing: the right categories, real hours including bank holidays, genuine photographs, and each service listed on its own. Work through it in the order our guide to your Google listing sets out, then pick up the rest from the checklist for being found locally.
2. Name the towns you actually work in, in the words on your service pages rather than only at the bottom of the page. "Serving the South West" tells a search engine nothing, and our area pages show what to write instead.
3. Ask for reviews and reply to them. Recent reviews in customers' own words are the richest thing these systems know about a local business.
4. Search your own name, note every listing with an old number, address or opening time, and correct them one by one. It's a dull afternoon that pays for years.

None of it involves posting more. A business whose basic facts are right, in the same form everywhere, gets recommended by systems it never signed up to. For a small firm that's an odd position to be in, and a good one.