By Pascal Fintoni, AI & Digital Marketing Strategist
The new AI Mode first Internet starts on the map, not on your website.
I recently tested out a new masterclass called AI Overviews: The New Rules to Website, SEO and Blogging, and there was one practical group activity that proved a major breakthrough for the participants. We opened up their Google Business Profiles together, and they quickly realised how much was sitting there unused.
Once they’ve had a proper look, they stopped treating it as a directory entry they filled in once and forgot about. They started running it like a second website: adding photos, updating hours, posting the odd bit of news, completing the FAQs. Clients tell me they genuinely enjoy it once they get going. It’s one of the few marketing jobs that gives you a result that same afternoon.
Why it matters more than it used to
I’ve always been a massive fan of Google Maps for swift online visibility, but even more so now as the Profiles that are kept in good order are the ones turning up inside AI Overviews, inside Google’s AI Mode, and in answers from other large language models too. That’s not a coincidence. If your Profile is thin or out of date, the AI has nothing to lift from it. If it’s rich and current, you become one of the sources it draws on.
There’s good data behind this as well. BrightLocal’s research this year has Google Business Profile signals as the single biggest factor in local search rankings, ahead of your website’s SEO, your reviews, and your backlinks put together. Google’s own figures show a complete profile earns seven times more clicks than an unfinished one, and the businesses sitting in positions one to three on the map tend to have far more photos and far more reviews than everyone below them.
Google Maps wants to be your front door
Google is spending heavily on Maps, particularly on voice. Ask it a question out loud rather than typing it, and you get a sense of where this is heading. More people, and soon, will open Maps the way they currently open a browser to access the Internet.
For a good chunk of your future customers, that Profile could be the first thing they meet. Not your homepage. Your Google Business Profile. Leave it half done, and you’ve lost them before your website gets a look in.
Nearly half of all Google searches now have local intent, and most people check a business online before they ever walk through the door. Verified, fully completed profiles bring in far more direction requests, calls and website visits than the ones left unfinished, and businesses that post regularly and reply to their reviews see a genuine lift in engagement. This isn’t a fringe habit. It’s increasingly how people decide who to call now.
Let’s get ready for the new Internet
Treat your Google Business Profile the way you treat your website, because for a lot of your customers, it is your official online presence. Rather than me listing every field and setting here, go to your favourite LLM and add this AI brief:
“Acting as my expert Google Business Profile consultant and local SEO advisor, I would like you to help me with the following: I need to understand what is possible, please provide a comprehensive list of all the sections and details that I can add and edit on my Google Business Profile. What are the key strategies to have my Google Business Profile ranking highly on Google Maps? Please provide a list in a table format highlighting the benefits and clever tactics for each strategy.”
Run it, work through what comes back, and start editing.
To your success!
One last thing. Share this article with your network. As a business community, the North East needs to be well represented in this new search era. We’ve been here before. Let’s not repeat the early 2000s.
www.pascalfintoni.com