Discovery is a system, not a single ranking.

Customers learn about businesses across websites, search, maps, reviews, directories, press, social networks, and AI assistants. The durable work is publishing accurate information and earning credible corroboration.

What the evidence supports

Google says local results are primarily based on relevance, distance, and prominence, and that Business Profile information can come from the owner, the official website, licensed third parties, users, and Google’s own interactions. That makes an accurate, consistent business record a practical control—not a guarantee of rank.

For AI-assisted search, Google, OpenAI, and Perplexity document indexability or crawler controls. They do not publish a universal recipe that guarantees a citation or recommendation. BizFacts treats visibility claims as testable observations and records the product, date, location context, prompt, output, and citations.

Guide

The Online Presence Checklist for a New Business

A prioritized checklist for publishing accurate business information across websites, search, maps, reviews, directories, social platforms, and AI-assisted search.

12 min read
Research plan

Can AI assistants find your business?

See the preregistered design for our first local-business AI visibility study.

Planned · no findings yet