What Google’s AI Search Engine Means For Your Brand — And Local SEO

Over the past year, we've all witnessed AI models' impact on the way consumers access information. Platforms built on large language models can help write marketing copy, find new recipes, or even generate custom code. Additionally,42% of millennials%20(20%25) have used ChatGPT for business purposes. Now, Google has entered the picture with the launch of Gemini, their most capable AI model to date. For marketers, this creates new opportunities to attract and engage with potential customers — but it also presents a whole new set of challenges. In this blog post, we'll discuss how the introduction of Google Gemini could impact your business, how it relates to local marketing, and what you can do to get ahead of the game. What is Google Gemini? (Full disclosure: we asked Google Bard this question to see what it would say.) Google Gemini is a revolutionary AI model capable of understanding and interacting with multiple formats like text, images, videos, and even code. This allows it to perform complex tasks and answer your questions in a more informative and comprehensive way than ever before. Gemini currently integrates with Bard, Google's AI-powered virtual assistant. How does this impact your business? New large language models appear nearly every week. So, what makes Google Gemini special? There are three main reasons why Google Gemini could have a more significant impact to your business:

1. Consumers are accustomed to starting their search journey on Google. Google currently dominates the search market with 93% market share. Running to Google is already an ingrained habit for consumers – whether that's searching for a product, service, or looking up a business directly – and the launch of Gemini within Google Bard presents another customer journey landscape to understand.
2. Gemini will pull from a variety of data sources, including your Google Business Profile listings, user suggestions, and even business directories from other sites (aka listings on sites other than Google). That means if you are not actively managing your business information everywhere, Google could present consumers with inaccurate information about your business — which can lead to a bad customer experience and broken brand trust. We also asked Google Bard where they source their information from, so you don't have to take our word for it:

If Google introduces its Search Generative Experience with a similar experience in the future, it will have a significant impact on how consumers digitally engage and interact with your business. Optimizing your local marketing strategy for AI So, what should you do about this? We recommend leveling up your listings presence: AI needs to be powered by objective facts that are controlled by your business to avoid hallucinations. With many businesses currently formulating their AI-strategies, companies need a data strategy where any information they allow AI to access should be approved, compliant, and traceable to its origin. With the launch of Google Gemini, powering accurate information about your business is now more important than ever. Use these four key strategies to level-up your listings presence: Manage your listings on Google via Google Business Profile. It's not shocking to hear that Google Bard relies on Google Business Profile as a source to collect business data. That allows Google Bard to swiftly pull data from GBP listings to offer consumers precise answers, which can include contact information, services offered, real-time operating hours, or even customer reviews.**With Yext's direct integration with GBP, managing your data in Yext ensures that Google Business Profiles and Google Bard have the most current and comprehensive information about your listings, giving you the power to control the business information available to Google's AI assistant.

1. Ensure your data is consistent across all digital platforms. Google Bard taps into a wealth of data sources (not just Google Business Profile) to provide users with up-to-date and accurate local business information. Managing your listings on all sites can help ensure that generative AI models only present the most accurate and up-to-date information about your business. Yext's Publisher Network consists of more than 110 direct API integrations, significantly more than any other listings vendor. This gives businesses the power to truly control their listings across the largest network of third-party publishers.
2. Refresh your listings consistently. Which article would you have more confidence in: an article that was written in 2015 or one that was written in 2023? You'd likely pick the article that was written in 2023 because it's more up-to-date, and, therefore, more trustworthy. Well, search engines and AI models work the same way. They have more trust in data that's recent and fresh. Because of this, we recommend refreshing your data regularly. This could include updating your hours for holidays, adding new photos, posting announcements or special offers to your Google Business Profile page, and acting on suggestions that consumers make to your business.
3. Complete your listings profile as much as possible. The more an AI model knows about your business, the more questions they can confidently answer. According to Google, profile completeness is one of the most important strategies that you can implement to help your business rank higher in search results. That's why it's important to fill out as much information, even attributes that you might not consider to be "relevant." These can include accepted payment methods, if your business is women-led, LGBTQ-friendly, and much more. Yext makes it easy to complete your listings profile by providing you with all the attributes that are available depending on your type of business. This includes vertical-specific fields if your business aligns with any of the following industries: food, hospitality, financial services, retail, healthcare, and public sector. As AI continues to evolve, the way consumers interact with and access information online is poised for transformation, requiring your digital experiences to be more seamless and intuitive. As an industry leader, Yext is committed to staying up to date with the latest trends in AI and distilling their impact on businesses and the implications for digital marketers.**