How AI Search Engines Discover and Recommend Local Businesses
I completed How to Get Your Business Recommended by AI Like ChatGPT and Google from BrightLocal Academy, a forward-looking course focused on how businesses can improve their visibility across AI-powered search and recommendation platforms.
The course explores how search behavior is evolving beyond traditional Google results and how platforms such as ChatGPT and Google’s AI-powered search experiences discover, understand, and recommend businesses.
Through the training, I strengthened my understanding of the signals that can help a business become more visible to AI systems, including clear business information, strong online authority, trusted mentions, reviews, relevant website content, entity consistency, and Local SEO signals.
The course also focuses on practical actions businesses can take to make their information easier for search engines and AI assistants to understand, verify, and confidently reference when users ask for local products, services, or recommendations.
Completing this certification expanded my Local SEO knowledge beyond traditional rankings and into the growing field of AI Search Optimization, Generative Engine Optimization, and AI-driven local discovery.
These skills are especially valuable for businesses that want to strengthen their visibility across Google, AI search experiences, ChatGPT-style assistants, local search results, and emerging recommendation platforms.