What is known
For Google's own local results, the company says the ranking is mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your Business Profile matches the search, distance is how far you are from the person, and prominence is how well known you are. It lists reviews and ratings among the signals of prominence and says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
For Google's AI answers, the company says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode and no special optimisation is needed. A page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet. That is the same bar as ordinary search.
What is not known
How other AI assistants choose which business to name is not something their makers have explained in a way we can cite. Anyone who says they know the formula, or who sells a promised place in AI answers, is guessing.
We also cannot see which businesses an assistant has recommended to other people, so we cannot tell you how often a given business is named. The honest way to find out is to ask the assistants yourself, in the language your customers use, and write down what they say each month.
What you can control
These are the same things Google asks for, and they cost nothing:
- Keep your Business Profile complete, accurate and verified, because Google lists current profile information among the basics.
- Let search engines in: do not block your pages, link your pages to each other, and keep important information as text, not only inside images.
- Write pages for people. Google asks that readers can see who made the content, how it was made, and why. If you use AI to help write, say so where readers would wonder.
- Do not use tricks. Google says using automation mainly to manipulate rankings breaks its spam policies.
- Reply to reviews and ask for them in the allowed way, since reviews are a signal of how well known you are.
A simple monthly check (our advice)
Once a month, ask two or three assistants a question your customer would ask, such as the best place for a service in your city, in Hindi and in English. Note whether you are named, what they say about you, and whether it is correct. If something is wrong, fix the source: the Business Profile, your website, or a listing. Do not expect the answer to change overnight, and do not pay anyone who promises it will.
Ask two assistants about your own business this week and write down what they say.
How this post was made: an AI drafted it from the official pages listed under Sources, every figure was checked against those pages, and the Reveaxa team approved it before it was published. Our own advice is marked as such. If a source changes, we update the post and its date.
Reveaxa guide reference: RVX-B-how-ai-assistants-pick-local-businesses