Is Uncle-G AI the Perfect Local SEO Consultant?

Hi everyone,

I was playing around with Google’s AI in incognito mode and asked some very specific questions, such as, “I’m ranked #3 in the Local Pack for the search term XY”, what happens if I change the company name to XYZ? Or what happens if I add an additional keyword? Some of the results were very specific, and it seemed confident about what would happen. Even when I asked for clarification, it said, for example, that XY would happen if I did Z. In my case, the issue was that I’m using a common abbreviation for a term (ranking #1) in Google Business Profile, and I wanted to know what would happen if I wrote it out in full, specifically, how my rankings for both search terms would change. The same issue applies to reviews, etc. Of course, I didn’t use my own GBP data.

Have any of you tested this to see if the information is accurate, or can we trust Uncle G on this topic? I always try to find reviews and experiences from other users here in the forum, but since G’s AI is the source, there should actually be potential to actively use it, right? Or what do you think?

Best regards,

OldS

I'd use Google's AI as a source of hypotheses rather than as a source of reliable predictions as to how a GBP edit would impact ranking. Local Pack rankings are based on relevance, proximity, prominence and all sorts of other factors so a confident answer doesn't necessarily mean that Google can accurately predict the outcome of a particular GBP edit.

The best approach is to test one change at a time, monitor the rankings for both search terms across the same locations and allow sufficient time to see what happens. Be careful with business name changes though as the name should be the actual business name (not a name with keywords tacked on for SEO purposes).

AI can help us to explore the possibilities, but it's the actual GBP data and control that will validate them.

Having the keywords in the business name surely does have an impact but why would you mess your ranking when you are already in the local map pack?

OldSeo said:

Have any of you tested this to see if the information is accurate, or can we trust Uncle G on this topic? I always try to find reviews and experiences from other users here in the forum, but since G’s AI is the source, there should actually be potential to actively use it, right? Or what do you think?

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Any LLM, including Google's models, only 'knows' what it's been trained on, or what it can retrieve via RAG. Google will of course have included all their end user docs as part of their model training, but there is no way Gemini etc is hooked in to exactly what is going on under the hood of G's algorithms. So at best you're just getting regurgitated 'best practices' which are usually phrased well enough to sound confident and real. YMMV.

Thunder Digitals said:

Having the keywords in the business name surely does have an impact but why would you mess your ranking when you are already in the local map pack?

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My plan was to rank first in the Map Pack with both versions; right now, I'm ranked 1st and 2nd. According to the AI, changing both keywords would put me in first place without risking my current top ranking. But I don't really trust that.

Steptoe said:

Any LLM, including Google's models, only 'knows' what it's been trained on, or what it can retrieve via RAG. Google will of course have included all their end user docs as part of their model training, but there is no way Gemini etc is hooked in to exactly what is going on under the hood of G's algorithms. So at best you're just getting regurgitated 'best practices' which are usually phrased well enough to sound confident and real. YMMV.

Click to expand...

Thanks, that's what I was thinking, too. Based on all publicly available information, the AI is recommending the best practice, but it made me suspicious that it was so damn sure my change wouldn't have any negative impact on the existing ranking.

The ai models like google gemini can give meaningful information about how to rank..... i think a youtuber like ross said that also but i do follow some of the suggestion and kinda helped. So for example i give my url ask to improve the ranking and what can i do and he really help me..... worth trying i guess you have nothing to lose