Geo-local: Key Strategies to Dominate AI Responses

Structured Data and AI-readable Store Locators

Artificial intelligences do not perceive the visual interface of a website, but only raw data. Thibault Renouf explains that AIs do not see graphical elements like buttons or colorful calls to action; they focus on data. For instance, hours written in free text, such as "Monday to Friday from 10 AM to 7 PM," are not usable by a language model (LLM). These models require structured metadata to distinguish hours, addresses, or services offered.

A study conducted by Meteoria on 15,000 geolocated queries shows that store locators—pages linking an agency or store to a city—are the primary category of sources used by AIs to respond to local queries. The better structured and richer in content a store locator is, including products, FAQs, reviews, and practical information, the more likely it is to be selected by AIs. The study also indicates that language models frequently add "2026" in their derived queries, highlighting the importance of content freshness. Regular updates, news, and promotions significantly increase the chances of being scraped.

An important technical point is that the text of Google Maps reviews is not directly readable by ChatGPT and most language models, which only access the overall rating and the number of reviews. To make this information accessible to AIs, it is advisable to integrate the verbatim text of reviews directly into the store locator pages, in the form of marked text blocks. AIs particularly appreciate this information.

Omnipresence: Multiplying Mentions to Strengthen the Entity

AIs do not think in terms of websites but in entities, which are structured representations of a business, place, or person, with attributes such as address, hours, services, and reviews, as well as their relationships with other entities. Thibault Renouf summarizes this by saying, "A website is backlinks. An entity is mentions." The more consistently an entity is mentioned across multiple sources, the stronger the signal sent to AIs.

Participants highlighted the unexpected role of directories in this process. Platforms like Mappy, 118 000, Petit Futé, or Pages Jaunes, although their direct human traffic has decreased over the years, are massively scraped by AIs for local queries. The consistency of information between the brand's website, Google listings, directories, and social media becomes a determining factor for visibility in generated responses.

Comparators are also a preferred source. By scraping a single comparator page, the language model retrieves information from dozens of brands simultaneously, reducing its processing cost. As Idriss Khouader points out, the selected sources vary significantly from one language model to another, reinforcing the importance of being present on as many platforms as possible.

Online Reviews Define What AIs Think of a Brand

The third lever identified concerns customer reviews, whose role now goes beyond mere social proof for consumers. "Reviews define what AIs think of you," emphasized Thibault Renouf. Language models use reviews, including ratings, volumes, and content, to assess the quality of a point of sale and guide their recommendations. For example, if a restaurant received a review mentioning a hygiene issue three years ago, this information may resurface in a generated response, even if no human user would have gone back to read such an old review.

Review comparison features, already being tested in the United States, will amplify this trend. Users will be able to select multiple establishments, describe their criteria, and let the AI analyze thousands of reviews to formulate a personalized recommendation. "You can imagine that the AI will read the thousands of reviews and say, 'you should go to this one because that one, apparently, is a scam,'" anticipated Thibault Renouf. In this context, the active management of reviews, including collection, systematic responses, and handling negative reviews, is no longer just about e-reputation. It directly conditions visibility in AI responses, adding an additional dimension to the ongoing evolution of local SEO.