How to appear in Google AI Mode for local searches

Google AI Mode is built for the questions that used to take several searches. Google's Search Central documentation describes it as "particularly helpful for queries where further exploration, reasoning, or complex comparisons are needed." Local buying questions fit that well: "which dentist in Haarlem is good with nervous kids and open on Saturdays?" is a comparison with two constraints attached.

Google's documentation also says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. That's the same baseline we covered for AI Overviews, so this post focuses on what changes when the question is local.

What Google has actually said

A few lines in Google's AI features documentation matter for local businesses.

AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a query fan-out technique, "issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources." A local question can break into several narrower searches, and the pages that get linked are the ones that answered those. We go into the local version of this in local query fan-outs.

AI Mode and AI Overviews "may use different models and techniques," so the responses and links differ between them. Don't assume that winning an Overview means you appear in AI Mode for the same query, or the other way round.

The best practices list includes allowing crawling "in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure", making important content available as text, keeping structured data consistent with the visible text, and "checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date."

On location itself, Google's Search help says it estimates where a searcher is from device location, saved home and work addresses, past activity, and IP address, and uses that to show nearby results even when the search doesn't name a place. That page covers Search in general. Google doesn't document AI Mode's handling of location separately, so we test it rather than assume.

Step 1: choose the local prompts AI Mode is likely to get

Since AI Mode is aimed at nuanced, comparative questions, write prompts that look like that: a service, a place, and a condition or two. "Best family lawyer in Eindhoven for a cross-border divorce." "Which bike shop near Utrecht Centraal does same-day repairs?" Include implicit ones without a city, which only make sense when run from the right location.

A set of twenty or so per city is enough to see patterns.

Step 2: look at what gets cited

Run each prompt in AI Mode from a session in the city, note the businesses named and open every linked source. Sort the sources: business sites, local news and guides, review and listing sites, forums.

Then check two things for each prompt. Is your location page among the links? If a competitor's location page is linked instead, what does it say that yours doesn't? Often the difference is concrete: they list the specific services at that branch, state opening hours as text, name the neighborhoods they serve, or answer the obvious follow-up questions.

Step 3: make each location page answer the comparison

AI Mode builds a response from passages that answer parts of the question. A location page that only carries an address, a map, and a generic paragraph about the brand gives it little to work with.

For each branch, write what a local buyer would compare on. What does this branch do, and what doesn't it? Who is it for? When is it open, and how quickly can someone get seen? What's the price structure, if you publish one? Put each answer under a plain heading, in text, near the top. Google's own advice is that important content should be available in textual form, so hours inside an image or a script-rendered widget work against you.

Structured data such as LocalBusiness markup is reasonable hygiene. Google says markup should match the visible content. It doesn't say schema gets you into AI Mode, and we don't sell it that way.

Step 4: confirm Google can crawl and show the page

Google says robots.txt directives for Googlebot are how site owners control crawling for Search, including AI features. Google-Extended doesn't govern this.

Check the location templates in Search Console's URL Inspection: indexed, rendered HTML contains the content, and no snippet controls are limiting it. A nosnippet tag, a tight max-snippet value, or data-nosnippet on the main section restricts what AI features can show. Check that your CDN isn't challenging Googlebot on the locator subdomain. Our post on whether crawlers can read your location pages has the full list of location-page traps.

Step 5: keep the Business Profile in sync

Google names Business Profile information in its AI features guidance, so it plainly matters. Managing listings is local SEO work, and it isn't what we do. If someone else runs your listings, make sure the hours, address, and services they publish match your location pages. Conflicting facts between the two give the engine a reason to trust neither.

Step 6: measure AI Mode from the right place

Search Console counts AI Mode appearances inside your normal Web search data. It won't show you the AI Mode answer, the businesses named in it, or the competitors linked next to you.

We track that in Promptwatch, which monitors Google AI Mode through its real interface alongside AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and the others. City-level monitors start on the Business plan ($579/mo) and are on every agency plan. For street-level competition, local GEO/SEO targeting pins a monitor to exact coordinates between 20 m and 5 km, so AI Mode answers as if the question came from that spot. It's on Business, Agency Scale, and Enterprise. Citation analytics shows which URLs AI Mode linked for each prompt, and query fan-outs per model show the narrower searches behind the answer.

Ads Radar covers the paid side. It captures sponsored ads that appear inside Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, and ChatGPT Search answers to your tracked prompts, with the advertiser, ad copy, target URL, and the prompt that triggered it. For local categories, that tells you which competitors are buying their way into the answers you're trying to earn. Ads Radar is on Business and every agency plan.

If you'd like us to set up AI Mode tracking for your locations, write to hello@visiblyrank.com.