Only 1.2 percent of local businesses get recommended when someone asks ChatGPT for a local service. That’s not a rough estimate. SOCi analysed 350,000 business locations across 2,751 brands in their 2026 Local Visibility Index and that’s the number they found. Ninety-nine percent of local businesses are completely invisible to the most-used AI tool on the planet.
At the same time, 45 percent of consumers now use AI tools to find local services. That figure comes from BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, up from 6 percent just twelve months earlier. The speed of this shift caught most of the industry off guard.
I’ve been tracking this through client work at DotComSecrets Birmingham for the past 18 months. The gap between what consumers are doing and what local businesses are optimised for is the widest I’ve seen in over a decade of search marketing. Halesowen is no exception. If anything, the gap here is wider than average.
What does AI SEO actually mean?
AI SEO makes your business visible in answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and voice assistants when people search for local services.
The industry uses a few different terms for this. Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) describes structuring content so AI tools extract and cite it as a direct answer. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) describes optimising a brand’s overall presence so AI-generated answers include it. Both terms describe overlapping work. The outcome is the same: your business appears in the answer when a potential customer asks an AI tool a question about your service.
This is different from traditional SEO. Traditional search optimisation gets your website ranking in Google’s organic results and the local map pack. AI SEO gets your business recommended when someone asks ChatGPT “who’s the best plumber near Halesowen?” or tells Alexa to find a restaurant nearby. The two systems use partially overlapping but distinct signals, and only 13.7 percent of the sources they cite are shared between them (Ahrefs, December 2025).
How big is AI search right now?
AI platforms generate 45 billion sessions globally every month. That figure equals 56 percent of all traditional search engine volume combined, and it’s growing.
That number comes from Graphite’s March 2026 study, which combined web and mobile app data. This matters because 83 percent of AI usage happens inside mobile apps. Previous estimates only measured web traffic, which is why the industry spent most of 2025 underestimating how big AI search had already become. Web analytics tools miss four to five times the actual AI usage.
ChatGPT alone accounts for 89 percent of global AI sessions. It processes 2.5 billion prompts daily and has 800 million weekly active users, doubled from 400 million in February 2025. ChatGPT’s search function handles 1.8 billion queries monthly, growing at 340 percent year on year (AuthorityTech / First Page Sage, early 2026).
Google’s own AI features are equally significant. AI Overviews now trigger on 25 to 48 percent of all Google searches depending on the query type. Google AI Mode has 75 million daily users and over 100 million monthly users. Google’s share of total search-related activity fell from 89 percent in 2023 to 71 percent by the end of 2025. But the total search market grew 26 percent globally. AI search is adding to the pie, not just taking from it.
Why are local businesses particularly affected?
ChatGPT regularly invents fake business names when it lacks enough verified data, making AI invisibility the biggest risk for local businesses.
I’ve tested this across client projects in Merseyside, the Black Country, and the wider West Midlands. Ask ChatGPT to recommend a specific trade in a specific town and it will often invent business names that don’t exist, or recommend businesses that closed years ago. The only businesses that get reliably recommended are the ones with consistent, verifiable information spread across enough platforms that the AI can confirm they’re real.
The numbers back this up. SOCi’s 2026 research found 83 percent of restaurants don’t appear in AI recommendations at all. Gemini only recommends brands 11 percent of the time for local queries. And there’s less than a one in 100 chance that ChatGPT gives the same brand list in any two responses for the same query (SparkToro, January 2026). The answers rotate. Businesses with stronger signals catch more of those rotations.
Here’s the other side of this. When AI does recommend a business, the traffic is worth more. ChatGPT-referred visitors convert at 11.4 percent compared to 5.3 percent for organic traffic, more than double the rate (AuthorityTech / First Page Sage, early 2026). And 60 percent of people who see a business recommended in an AI answer make their decision without clicking through to any website at all. Being in the answer is becoming more important than being clicked.
What does this mean for Halesowen specifically?
No local business or agency in Halesowen is doing AI search work yet. That creates a genuine first-mover advantage for businesses that start now.
I audited the SEO competition targeting Halesowen in April 2026. Every agency page ranking for “SEO Halesowen” is running pre-2025 tactics. Generic content. No structured data. No mention of ChatGPT, AI Overviews, or how search has changed since AI tools went mainstream. At DotComSecrets Birmingham we’ve been mapping this gap across Black Country towns for the past year. Halesowen is one of the widest.
The town has roughly 60,000 people in its catchment area across the Dudley Metropolitan Borough. Over 150 traders in the town centre, the Cornbow Shopping Centre with 52 retail units, the Plaza Indoor Market, and a spread of trade and service businesses along Hagley Road, Queensway, and the industrial estates near Coombs Wood and Mucklow Hill. These businesses compete not just within Halesowen but against rivals in Stourbridge, Dudley, Oldbury, and across the wider Black Country.
Right now, most of those businesses are on Google and maybe Facebook. That’s about it. When a potential customer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a recommendation, those two platforms aren’t enough for the AI to verify a business exists and confidently recommend it. The AI needs consistent signals across multiple sources. Without those signals, it either skips you entirely or invents a competitor that doesn’t exist.
Is AI search just a trend or is this permanent?
AI search is structural, not cyclical. The infrastructure, the user behaviour, and the business models behind it all point to permanent growth, not a temporary spike.
Google has committed to AI Overviews across 200 countries with 2 billion monthly users. OpenAI is monetising ChatGPT through ads and premium subscriptions. Perplexity raised $500 million in January 2026. Every major tech company is building AI into their search and discovery products. Apple Intelligence is integrating AI answers into Siri and iOS. The investment is too deep and too broad to reverse.
The consumer behaviour shift is equally permanent. People who start asking ChatGPT for local recommendations don’t go back to scrolling through ten blue links. It’s faster, it feels more personal, and it gives a direct answer. The 45 percent usage figure will only grow. BrightLocal’s data shows AI is already the third most-used local discovery channel, behind only Google and Facebook, and ahead of Yelp and TripAdvisor.
For a business in Halesowen, the practical question isn’t whether to pay attention to AI search. It’s how quickly you build the signals that get you into those answers before your competitors do. We cover the specific tactics in separate guides on www.seowebgeek.com, but the first step is understanding what you’re looking at. That’s what this piece is for.
FAQ
What is AI SEO in simple terms? AI SEO makes your business show up when people use AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, or voice assistants to search for services. It’s about being recommended in AI-generated answers, not just ranking on a Google results page.
Is AI SEO different from regular SEO? Yes. Traditional SEO targets Google’s organic results and local map pack. AI SEO targets citations and recommendations inside AI-generated answers. Only 13.7 percent of sources overlap between the two systems. You need both working.
How many people actually use AI to find local businesses? Forty-five percent of consumers used AI tools for local discovery in 2026 according to BrightLocal’s annual survey. ChatGPT alone has 800 million weekly active users. AI platforms globally generate 45 billion sessions per month.
Does AI search affect my business even if I’ve never used ChatGPT? Yes. Your potential customers are using it whether you are or not. Sixty percent of people who receive an AI recommendation make their decision without visiting any website. If you’re not in the answer, you’re not in the consideration set.
Can small businesses compete in AI search or is it only for big brands? Small businesses can absolutely compete. Research shows 40 percent of YouTube videos cited by AI had fewer than 1,000 views. Channel size and brand recognition matter less than having consistent, verifiable information across multiple platforms. The signals are buildable regardless of business size.
Is anyone in Halesowen already doing AI SEO? Based on our April 2026 audit, no. Every agency and business page targeting Halesowen SEO is running traditional tactics only. No AI visibility work, no structured data beyond basics, no multi-platform citation strategy. That’s the gap and it won’t stay this wide for long.
