How to Show Up on Google (and in AI Answers) in 2026

I opened my talk at VentureX Fort Mill with one question. When someone searches for what you do, are they finding you, or your competitor?

Then I asked our host how people find the space.

Four or five new members had walked in and said the same thing. ChatGPT told them VentureX was the best co-working spot around.

Nobody clicked a link. They asked a question, read the answer, and showed up.

That is the shift every local business owner needs to understand. The full 31-minute talk is above, and the complete transcript is at the bottom of this post.

Where the clicks went

69% of Google searches now end without a click.

Only 1% of people click the link inside the AI summary.

People read the answer and trust it. So ranking on page one isn't enough anymore. You need to be in the answer.

How AI decides who to name

Ask AI for "the best roofer near me" and it runs a dozen searches you never typed. It reads what everyone says about you: reviews, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Yelp, the local paper. Then it counts the mentions.

Mentions are the new links.

The good news is you don't need a new playbook. Good SEO is AIO. Do what already works, more often and more consistently.

The seven moves

1. Own your Google Business Profile. Hours, holidays, photos, services. If you're listed as closed at 2am, AI is less likely to name you at 2am.
2. Same name, address and phone everywhere. LLC on one site and an old address on another, and AI can't trust you. So it skips you.
3. Fresh reviews every week. 74% of customers only care about reviews from the last three months. Reply to every one yourself.
4. One page per service. Give each service its own page with your city in it.
5. Titles that get the click. If your homepage title says "Home," that is what Google shows. Put the answer at the top of the page.
6. Get mentioned. Local press, the chamber, best-of lists, Meetup, Nextdoor, and a 60-second YouTube tour of your place.
7. Real proof. It can't be faked. Swap the stock and AI photos for real ones, and use real names, real numbers and real dates.

Ask a few questions. Fix a few listings. Repeat.

Try this tonight

Ask every AI you can find: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok and Google AI Mode. Type "Who's the best [what you do] near [your town]? Why?"

Write down who they name and which sites they cite. That list is your homework.

I turned the whole talk into a one-page Monday checklist. Grab the free checklist here.

If you want a second set of eyes on your business, reach out to me.

When you asked AI about your business, who did it name instead of you?

Full transcript

This transcript was generated from the recording and lightly cleaned up. Audience questions are included.

Are they finding you? (0:00)

I'm here to talk about showing up on Google, so if I start off and ask a quick question, right out the gate here, when someone searches for you and what you do, are they going to find you? To play right now? Hopefully. Or are they finding your competitor? I'm just curious if you search for co-working near me. We've had people come in, probably four or five people, and they specifically said that ChatGPT, whatever, they suggested us and came here. Interesting.

That's good. They're like, oh, I just put it in AI, and they said that you guys are the best. Oh, okay. So we do know that AI is giving us those AI overviews now everywhere. Yeah. You know, so that's really a big question. You know, this is just a roofing example, but this isn't search results. This is the AI overview. Scroll down a little bit, and you'll actually get the search results, right? So the question really is, like, are you on the right lists?

So today, I really want to focus on how we can get you on the list.

Who I am (1:14)

So I am Bryan, Bryan Dennstedt. I do a lot of fractional CTO work, and I am a chief AI officer at quite a few companies and a host of the AI with Bry podcast. So you can help me get a few more subscribers, hopefully. But I grew up in Rochester, New York, really far away from New York City. It looks beautiful in the summertime. It has a really nice skyline. It's one of the few rivers that flow north into Lake Ontario. But it's not the most fun place in the wintertime.

But it is the home of Kodak way back when. I grew up playing with Legos a whole bunch and learning how to build a lot of cool stuff. And then I transitioned into video games and played all sorts of old school video games on that front. And then my dad bought a gateway computer. If you remember the cow boxes from way back when. But a cow box showed up at our house, and it was kind of all downhill. I actually got into the QBasic and four-part nibbles, if you remember this game.

And then I wound up going to Rochester Institute of Technology in the snow some more. And that's where I built my first webpage. So pretty cool to see. I've got a lot more gray hair now. But through college, I built my webpage, worked on a couple of volunteer websites, and then got my first job at Xerox. So I worked on Xerox.com way back when. And then IBM stole me away, and I got to work on websites all over the United States, and even a few in Canada and internationally.

For a lot of the big players, probably one of my favorites was Home Depot and the Chicago Tribune. But I've done a lot of the Fortune 500 websites throughout the years. So I'd like to say I got 28 years in product and engineering, and I've worked for some of the most amazing companies. Probably my claim to fame was I was the CTO at MD Live Telemedicine that got sold for a few billion dollars about 10 years ago before right around COVID time on that front.

So I've been a fractional CTO for about 10 years now, and Sight Labs is down in Greenville, Art Pharmacy is in Atlanta, Goldie is over in Charlotte. But a few key, cool, fun clients here. So bottom line is I have helped build hundreds, if not almost 1,000 websites over my career. Built them, rescued them, whatever you call it, on that front. So I've seen it all. So I started my podcast, and you can learn a whole bunch more about AI and some of the cool stuff I talk about there.

From the phone book to page one (4:01)

But I want to just go back and kind of look at the paradigm shifts of how this has evolved. So if you remember these things, do you remember these? I'm so sorry. This is the year I was born. I sat on these to take my driver's test right back when, because I was still too short. But this is how you got found in 1995. Yes, the internet was out, but not very many people were using it yet. So you still had two volumes delivered to your house with the beautiful skyline on the cover again.

And that's how you did it. You got in the book. And then if you wanted to get more leads, you'd get in the book in a couple different places or buy a bigger ad. So if you fast forward about halfway through my career, you have Google, and it's one keyword, you know, pop in pizza, and Domino's was beating Wikipedia. You know what I mean? Like, that's how it started. And if you came up first, you would pay for the ads. Pizza Hut couldn't beat SEO. So it had to buy an ad, and then Domino's was paying for its ad just in case.

And then you came up first, and, you know, Wikipedia was the king of everything, right? And that really showed that 87% of all the clicks were made from that first page of Google search results. So you had to get on page one. That was the bottom line. So if you fast forward to today, what I'm seeing, like we talked about, is the ads at the top, and then the AI overview. There's not even search results unless you scroll down. So the map sometimes shows up first.

Sometimes it's AI overview. So make sure you've got a really strong map presence because that's a really big, important thing. But the bottom line is very, very few people are actually clicking because the answer is on Google. So I don't think you'd need to generate the clicks. Clicks are not worth counting anymore. So walk us through the new math, right?

The new math of search (6:06)

There are still about 5 trillion Google searches every single year, and 90% of those searches are still happening on Google. So bottom line is, you know, OpenAI, Anthropic, all these people, you can say, cool, but Google's still king. It's trillions and trillions of searches, right? And Google's rolling out its own AI as well. 2.5 billion people every month are seeing these AI overviews. So we've got to get your business listed in these AI overviews.

1 billion people are using Google's AI mode, you know, when you can see the AI overview and then finish chatting with it and refine your search a little bit. And if you look at that, 900 million are using ChatGPT, right? So people are, and that's every week, right? So it's trending in the right direction in a big way towards ChatGPT too, but Google's still by far king. 44% from all the statistics I could find are using ChatGPT. So the bottom line is there's a lot of people talking to robots, a whole bunch, every single day.

Where the clicks went (7:19)

So what did happen to those clicks, right? We'd say that they are down big time. They aren't clicking. When there's an AI overview especially, I'm not going to click. I'm going to read the AI overview and get my answer. 69% of searches end in zero clicks, right? They aren't clicking through to the next site. So we can't rely on that as much. 1% click the link inside the summary. So even they're getting their answer in the AI overview of I liked your place, I didn't like your place, it's a good place, it's a bad place.

Whatever that question they asked, they aren't clicking the link to validate it themselves, right? They're just trusting the AI overview. That's the answer. So bottom line, fewer clicks, they are choosing right up front there. So if you're local, on the map side of it, 93% of local searches still wind up with the map. So that's good for VentureX here as a local business. 15% of local searches show an AI overview. So it's a much lower percentage on local AI overviews.

So the bottom line is the map is still really much so the king, right, of local searches versus the older. But they are using AI more and more and more, right? So consumers are finding the local businesses and that is going up drastically in a big, big way. So if you look at it, the AI is not naming businesses as much, right? It's naming businesses a lot less than just giving you some general advice. So we have to figure out how you can get found and get chosen.

How AI picks who to show (9:06)

And so I wanted to walk us through how AI picks what to show. So we have to think of it a different way. It's a different paradigm, right? Like we all kind of search in a very similar fashion as the humans, but AI doesn't. We might search for best roofer near me. And when you do that, you can see ChatGPT or Claude or any of these going off and executing a bunch of other searches. And it's trying to figure out it a completely different way. It's searching for emergency roof repair, roof replacement, metal roof.

It's looking for all these weird searches, which you may or may not come up first for, right? And it's going to read all of those webpages and figure out what everybody's saying about you. So what we have to figure out is that AI visibility is really geared towards the number of mentions you get on all these websites that it might find. So how do we get mentioned more? Way more than backlinks. So mentions are really the new links. And 38% of the AI overview citations are coming from Google's top 10 search results.

So you still have to come up in the top 10 because you'll get pushed into that AI mention in some fashion. But ranking number one isn't enough anymore. It's the bottom line.

Where AI looks: reviews, Reddit, YouTube, the press (10:29)

So where is the AI looking? Primarily, it's looking at reviews. That's a big, big thing because reviews are still done by the humans. So what are the reviews on Reddit? Because Reddit is kind of this neutral Switzerland-like territory to a certain degree. So go check out your reviews on Reddit and see what's going on there. YouTube. How many videos have you posted? How many likes did you get? How many cool things on YouTube, on Google Maps, reviews, all the Google properties, right?

So we've got to do that. And then there's all the other ones. I could sit here and list off the 50 other ones. But Facebook and Yelp are still very, very prominent sources of information that could have good or bad reviews about you. But I think the hidden one that people forget about is those old school places. They're looking at the magazines, websites, the newspaper websites, the Charlotte Business Journal website. Whatever those things are that might mention you in some fashion and mention you in a positive, good way will help drive the AI overviews.

And then obviously, last but not least, is your actual website. Making sure your website is good, polished, working well, and says amazing things about you. Because you might have reviews on your website. And I think it's tricky with VentureX because, for example, you've got a bazillion locations all across the USA. But I care about the reviews of this location, right? I don't care about Atlanta or someplace else that you might be. But the good news is you don't need to have a five-star perfect review session.

Good SEO is AIO (12:12)

You can just be most of them that are being recommended at 4.3 or above. So I don't think there's any extra special things that we need to do with AI. We just need to do the same things that we're already doing, just probably more of it and consistently. So good SEO is really AIO, Artificial Intelligence Optimization. So all of these robots are pouring through your website on a regular basis. And if you look at Cloudflare's radar, it says, I think, 57% of all internet traffic is bots.

So that's pretty interesting to see that in 2026, the bots do more traffic than the humans do, right? But it's heading that way. And you can see all the bots. And some of these you've never even heard of. But they are crawling your site. So I want to break this down into a really nice playbook for how we can help you.

Move 1: Own your Google Business Profile (13:22)

Number one, obviously, own your Google business profile. That should be yours, I believe. And hopefully you guys have control over that. And I love seeing you got 92 amazing reviews. So I think anything above 50 is awesome. And you've got nothing but five stars, which is amazing as well. So well done, VentureX Fort Mill. But that is really your new homepage. You know, you should celebrate that with your boss and get a raise. But that's your new homepage.

It's not so much the website anymore. Like, that's really your key king property. And it's probably why you're seeing AI mention you. Because you've got some good authority out there, right? So I just wanted to point that out. But it's everything. It's which category you chose on your Google business profile. It's the address. It's your hours of operation. It's the photos. Everything has to come together and be perfect on every level, right? So whatever category you chose is the number one thing you're going to try and get mentioned for in AI mentions, right?

So that's probably one of the key factors. When they're searching, are you open? Because if I'm searching for a co-working place at 2 a.m., I probably want to go to a co-working place at 2 a.m. because the baby's awake or whatever that is. But if you're open 24-7, great. If you're not, like, Google and the GPTs of the world are going to show you in the mention, depending on what time of day that search is happening. And if you're open at the same time they're searching, it's a higher probability you might get mentioned.

Make sense?

Move 2: Same name, address and phone everywhere (15:10)

Same name, same address, same phone number everywhere. You have to really look at this. These are the same company. But on different websites, they have different information. They were not consistent. They did LLC in one place. They did a different address in another, a different phone number. I can't trust you as much if I can't find consistent information about you, right? We all know Elon or Bill Gates or any of the big guys in AI that are talking about it a whole bunch because consistently we've seen them over time just talking about stuff.

So we have to search every place on the planet, any place you find something wrong, log in, claim that account somehow, and fix it because we want to have consistent authority across every directory, every magazine, website, everything we possibly could. So the confused AI is really just going to say, ah, I don't trust that one. I have to skip it.

Move 3: Fresh reviews every week (16:11)

And then it's the reviews again, going back to those reviews, like it's awesome you have 92 of them, but if they were from three years ago, it matters a lot less. So we probably all have two, three hundred friends. Like we should be asking one friend every day or every week at least to go post a review for us or something like that to help make sure you're getting some fresh, amazing reviews. Or if somebody could come in and take a review from three years ago and update it.

Say, hey, you know, it's been a couple of years since I did my review. Let me update it and say, boy, they swapped out the coffee here and it is way better. Whatever that little perk is that they might talk about on that front. So, but 97% people read the reviews for a local business. They really want to see that trust factor. 68% are only using businesses with four plus stars. If it's in that three-star category, it's probably slightly a red flag at this point.

74% only care about the reviews from the last three months. So you might have 92. I don't know how many are in the past three months, right? Which is tough for every business out there. 89% expect the owner of that small business to be the one replying. So an example of that is to make sure you customize every single reply. Don't copy and paste the same old thing. And mention that you are the owner in that reply. They don't like, just like we don't like talking to the AI we know as an AI trying to pretend to be a human.

Same kind of a thing here. Make sure they're real. So make it super, super easy. I saw the cute little QR code you had in the bathroom here, which is awesome. But like how else do we trigger the reviews? Put the little tab or scan every place you possibly can to put that review out there. Buy them a sandwich if you need to bribe them. Whatever we need at the end of it.

Move 4: One page per service (18:17)

The other thing is try to really move number four is really to get one page per service. So I see that a lot. Most local sites are quietly hiding this fact. So an example is like they just list, here are the services. Come check out our service page. We have meeting rooms and we have co-working. And it's all just listed on one page. Well, as an AI, I'm looking for the very detailed, specific information. So again, build it out that way. Build out a separate page for every single service that we offer.

And put as much information as you can about that particular service out there for that particular page. One service, one city, one page.

Move 5: Titles that get the click, answers up top (19:07)

Move number five, the titles of your web pages that you and I only see as a little snippet in our browser tab are really, really key. And that pushes your answer up at the top. So if you look at it, my homepage title says home, that's what's going to show up in Google. But if I change my website page title to roof repair in Fort Mill, same day, that's like a little snippet of advertising you can do in the title tag. Because they may or may not click because off to the side is your call button on the map.

And they can just click call. You know what I mean? But if they see that, that triggers that same day storm inspection. Yeah, cool. I just had the storm. I need to get somebody out here. I'm just going to call them. So use the title tag because it's a really underutilized thing I see on a lot of pages. So again, you have that service, you have the city, and then you have that reason to click in your title tag. Answers first. Frequently asked questions are one of the key things.

You get phone calls all day long about what's going on here, what questions they have. Anytime you get a question, make sure it's on your frequently asked questions page. If it isn't, go at it because the AI is going to get asked that same question ten times more than they actually called you. So we just have to make sure you do that. So again, make sure the front desk staff or whoever is answering the phones is tracking those questions and getting them in there.

Move 6: Get mentioned (20:45)

Move number six is obviously get mentioned. We really want to focus on that. So reach out. Check out your local Fort Mill newspaper, the Fort Mill magazines, Chamber of Commerce, look for sponsorship opportunities, everything you possibly can do to get a slight little mention there. And that will drastically help. There's a lot of the best of. You want to be the best of co-working in Fort Mill and all that kind of stuff. And there's some industry directories.

There's probably a directory someplace of co-working in Fort Mill or co-working in Charlotte and nearby. And then don't underestimate Meetup and Nextdoor and these community groups. And just figure out a consistent way to show up for five minutes or ten minutes every day on some of those groups and be a human and answer a question or two and not be an ad. But I think the other thing you can do as a secret little gem is to take your frequently asked questions, answer them with the nickel tour of the place, put it all out there for 60 seconds and post it on YouTube.

And then you can put that video on your website, but YouTube is getting indexed by Google Gemini, which is putting up an AI recommendation at the top of the search results. So that's a hidden little gem to make sure you're doing the YouTube videos. Don't, if you put a list of the best co-working in Fort Mill, don't put yourself number one per se, because that is going to penalize you if you're being a little bit too bold to sort of say that. Unless it's a third party that's kind of validating that, you're doing it to say, here are a whole bunch of co-working places in Fort Mill, and we just happen to be one of them.

You know, so that's just one.

Move 7: Real proof (22:35)

And I think our last move is, is the real proof can't really be faked. So take photos. I hate the stock ones. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So replace, replace the AI photos with the real ones. Like people are looking for authenticity now. It's okay to have the little scrap of paper on the floor. It's okay to have that little doorknob that wiggles a little bit or something. Like we're looking for that authentic kind of thing. Post those pictures. Real names, real numbers, real dates of the events, whatever those kinds of things are.

And that's going to help you move the needle. Because I think your expertise in this, in co-working, for example, is going to be any AI version of whatever it is, day in, day out.

Myths: SEO is dead, llms.txt, AI content (23:27)

So if we talk about just some myths. Because I think there's a lot of misinformation happening out there as well. SEO is dead. I think that is a myth. Because Google is still handling 90% of search. Right? AI answers are there. And they are built from the search results. So we have to keep that in mind. So I don't think SEO is dead. It's SEO plus the AIO model of what we talked about today. llms.txt file. If you have a robots.txt file that almost every website has, you can go to your domain name slash robots.txt and see what that is.

A lot of people are adding llms.txt. I don't think people are using that yet. I think it's coming, but I can't guarantee that every AI is using llms.txt yet. Direct the LLM on how to use it. Rank number one, and you're going to pop up in the AI answer. I don't think so. If your phone number is not matching across 17 websites and all the other evidence factors we talked about, I think you don't have a very good chance. I think that's a myth. Showing up number one doesn't guarantee you an ad.

It gives you a good 25% chance. Pump out that AI content. We can do it. We can do it so quick. I promise you the AI is smart enough to know that its own content was generated, and it's going to filter it out. I think it just goes back to that trust and authenticity again.

Try this tonight (24:58)

But I would say try this out tonight. This is your question to ask the AI, and I'd say you should ask all of the AIs. Go ask Muse. Go ask the new one is Instinct. Ask Grok. Ask Google. Ask Claude, GPT. And see what the answer is. Who's the best co-working near Fort Mill? And why? And see what it comes back with. And every AI will be slightly different.

Your Monday checklist (25:30)

So, with that, I'll leave you with a Monday checklist, and this is it. You're going to fix your profile. You're going to double check your name. You're going to ask some happy customers for a review. You're going to give your top service its own dedicated page. You're going to rewrite your page titles with the service, the city, and the reason, like we talked about. You're going to get mentioned in one local site this month, and you're going to ask your AI about your business every single month.

And I really, really want to drive that forward in a big way and say you need to ask your AI every single month what that is. So, track your calls, directions, branded searches, not just the traffic. So, you want to be really looking at all the metrics that you possibly can get, because it's not about clicks anymore. So, I want you to get found and get chosen. I want you to be open for business and be the obvious answer. And I did put that checklist together as a little PDF file.

So, if you scan that or go to bry.net, it's my website, and click slash showup, you can download that PDF file, print it out, hand it out to everybody here at the co-working. It has some great insights on just some common sense things that we all should be doing as business owners. So, I have a whole bunch of sources for everything that I referenced, statistic-wise. Obviously, AI helped me put a lot of these things together, but I double-checked a lot of it myself.

So, questions?

Q&A: How do you actually get reviews? (27:16)

And then, I am curious. You mentioned reviews, of course, getting those up there and making sure that people have fresh reviews. Do you have any tips that you've heard people or have experienced yourself with ease of access to get people to actually do those reviews, right? Because you can ask all day long. But sometimes I feel like I have to pull teeth to get people to leave me a review. I think it's three things in my mind. It's really ease. And so the QR code is kind of a pain in the butt, in my opinion, but you can actually go online on Amazon or even have some custom printed ones where they have the little chip, just like in our credit card, embedded in the sticker.

And you can just tap, and the link will just pop onto your phone. Like a doc card. Oh, okay. A doc card, yes. I'm going to wear that kind of a thing. So I would say you want to make sure everybody knows the lifeblood of our place is reviews. And put that sticker in, hey, you're going in the bathroom, leave us a review while you're on the john, right? I like that idea, though. I do, too. But I think, so making it super easy, and I think people need to hear it 15 or 20 times every month.

Like, have you left us a review? You know what I mean? Yeah. So, but at the same time, I also think it's like sticks and carrots. So, you know, I think you're in an easy industry to get reviews. Imagine a lawyer or a doctor asking for reviews. Right. Yeah. But I do think it's, it's, hey, if you leave us a review, you get 10 bucks off your co-working bill. You have to decide what's the value of those reviews, right? There is a monetary value for the reviews, and it's worth something.

A few bucks off their bill, every, you know, only once a year eligible kind of a thing, but you want them to update their reviews. Or, you know, we'll buy you lunch. Right. You know what I mean? Whatever. Whatever those little perks are that you can, you can't attend this webinar unless you've left us a review. Right. Like, make it exclusivity of some sort. Like, you want to come to our after-hours mixer with a fancy wine, you've got to leave us a review.

That's your entry ticket. Like, on, like, the all-company sales call before this, is, like, how they're getting being incentivized. Yeah. Or the second thing is sticks, right? So, like, okay, cool, your yearly membership is up for renewal. We're increasing your price 10%. If you leave us a review, I can get it down to 8%. You know what I mean? So, it's carrots and sticks, so, like, what do they need from you, and how do you penalize them without the review?

Yeah. So, think of that as a way to drive it forward. Okay. So, hope those tips help. But, the review is our key. Yes. Great question.

Q&A: How do you build a strong map presence? (30:07)

I did also want to ask you. I mentioned a strong map present. Do you have any tips on, like, increasing that? Is there anything, I guess, just that we can do? It's just, it's the hidden world of, you would be surprised how many corporate environments I walk into where the default browser is Microsoft and the default search is Bing. So, are you on Bing Maps? That's a great question. Yeah. I know 90% of the traffic is Google, so that's great. But you still have 10% that's using Bing, Yahoo Maps, MapQuest.

I think MapQuest sells around. Yeah. They all, yeah. The Apple Maps actually uses Yelp. So, if you don't have a strong Yelp listing, you're not going to show up good in Apple Maps. There's one of them that we get where people sometimes get confused on where we are. And I don't know if it's Google Maps or Apple Maps. I think it's Google. I have apps, but, like, there's people that are, like, you couldn't find your building when you're driving around for five minutes in the QT parking lot.

Went to the postcard. Yeah, I would put a picture on my Google Photos that shows the map thingy. That's, okay, that's very good. But you have to think of Google Maps as another place for social media posts. On Google Maps, you can go and you can add a photo, you can add a video, you can add a post, just like you would on Facebook or TikTok. Yeah. So, that is a social media platform, Google Maps.