What is local AI visibility?
Local AI visibility describes whether a business is named when someone asks an AI for a service in a specific place, for example a dental practice in a city. It depends more on directories, reviews and map services than on the business’s own website.
For trades, restaurants, practices and local service providers, questions tied to a location are the most common way customers come across them in AI answers. Engines rely on sources that reliably connect place and offer: industry directories, review platforms, city guides, local press and map data. A business that is missing there or has inconsistent details gets named less often, even if its own site is good.
Measurement is harder than for nationwide questions. Answers to local questions can depend on where the query comes from, on phrasing and on timing, and the list of named businesses changes noticeably between runs. Being shown in a map view is also a different quantity from being named in the text of an answer.
A single run therefore shows who was named at that moment, not who is reliably recommended in that city.
What it means for your website
Check the basics first: consistent name, address and phone number on your site and in key directories, maintained review profiles, and a page that clearly states service and location. Then ask typical customer questions with a location several times and note which businesses are named. A frequency across several runs tells you more than a place in one answer.
Sources
This entry contains no figures and relies on generally documented terms.
Terms help you understand. Whether AI crawlers can reach your site is something you measure.
Check your website for freefree · no signup · no credit card