In this Drive-By SEO short, Joshua Albanese, founder of Spearleaf, films from the parking lot of Lou's Total and Metro Concepts, which do collision work in Fort Myers. They rank first on Google Maps from there, but when he asks Perplexity for the best auto body shop in Fort Myers, they don't appear, and he explains why AI chat looks for who is best in the area rather than who is closest, the shift behind AI search optimization.
Read the full guide: ChatGPT vs Google: How Each Picks a Local Business →
Video Transcript
Welcome to another episode of Drive-By SEO, where we check the SEO of businesses and improve them on the fly. So in this business, I'm literally in the parking lot for Lou's Total and for Metro Concepts. They do collision, and what shows up on Google Maps is we have the sponsored post. We'll go and scoot down. They're ranking number one. Of course they should, because we're literally in their parking lot.
But this is where it gets interesting. When I go over to Perplexity and I search for "best auto body shop in Fort Myers," and I'm in their parking lot, they literally don't show up at all. Zero.
So what we're looking at is, their map SEO is good, right? They're ranking number one if you're in their parking lot. But isn't it interesting that with chat, it doesn't actually do any of that stuff? So with AI search, they're missing a massive opportunity right now with AI chat, and that's essentially being able to be the best in their area. You get that chat doesn't look for geographic locations anymore. It looks at who's the best in the area.
So Lou's Total has a little bit of work to do, because they're not even showing up in the top five. And then it shows more boutique options right here, and they're not even in the boutique options as well.
So this is one thing that I would tell Lou's Total: immediately start creating content around being the best in Fort Myers, and you need to not just have it on your website but on other websites as well. And that's really the big thing for AI: making sure that you get the signal that they are the best, not just geographically.
Read the full guide on why a Google Maps ranking does not carry over to AI →