u/socialdude

A few of the findings surprised me:

1. Business websites still dominate. 60% of citations went to the businesses' own websites — more than directories, forums and review platforms combined.
2. AI didn't create a new quality bar. AI-recommended businesses averaged 4.75 stars, while the regular Google search baseline was actually higher at 4.84.
3. Reddit matters. It statistically outcited Angi, Thumbtack and HomeAdvisor combined.
4. There isn't one AI optimization playbook. Lawyers, dentists and auto shops had very different citation ecosystems.
5. Geography matters. Some national sources appeared everywhere, while other directories and chains varied significantly by region.
6. The same prompt doesn't produce the same sources. Asking the exact same question twice resulted in only about 40% source agreement.
7. Individual businesses still make up the long tail. We found 3,611 unique cited domains and 4,410 unique businesses, with most appearing only once or twice.
8. This instability seems specific to AI. Google's Local Pack returned the same #1 business about 90% of the time in repeated tests. Gemini returned the same recommendation only about 7% of the time.
9. Gemini and ChatGPT don't agree much either. On the same 1,487 queries, their cited sources overlapped only 8% of the time, and they recommended the same top business just 4.2% of the time.

The biggest takeaway for me is that AI visibility doesn't behave like a traditional ranking.

You can run the same query twice and get different sources. You can run the same query through two AI engines and get different businesses.

That makes measuring “AI rankings” much more complicated than checking a single prompt and recording the answer.

Curious if anyone else testing local queries has seen the same level of volatility.

I've been working on a side project that tries to measure overall Google Business Profile suspension activity using public signals and historical patterns.

This week, it reached its highest level in several weeks, moving into what I label "Storm Warning."

Before anyone asks—this isn't Google's actual suspension data, and it doesn't predict whether an individual profile will be suspended. The goal is to identify periods where the overall GBP ecosystem appears more or less volatile, similar to a weather forecast.

Current observations:

• Suspension Index: 54 (Storm Warning)
• Today's activity: +86%
• Weekly activity: +46%
• Monthly activity: +12%

I'm curious whether this lines up with what others are seeing.

For those who work with GBP every day:

• Are you seeing more suspensions this week?
• Is this concentrated in certain industries?
• Or does your experience not match the index?

Is this report useful to you?

Prefer company-domain Google Accounts or Google Workspace accounts where practical. Use personal-name accounts for individual accountability; a role account such as marketing@company.com can be appropriate when continuity and shared notification responsibility are essential. Avoid unnecessary owner access and accounts entangled with unrelated advertising operations when a cleaner business-controlled account is available.

Keep a minimum of two trusted owners: the person or organization responsible for the business and a carefully chosen backup. Owner access is powerful. Give it only to people you trust with the business's livelihood.

Do you have two owners just in case?

Ran into this one again last week and it seems worth putting somewhere people will see it.

Two different Google rules get mixed up constantly.

Three days: if someone submits an ownership request for your listing, that is how long the current owner has to respond. Miss it and the person who requested it may be offered a path to claim or verify the listing. If a request is not legitimate, actively deny it rather than letting it expire.

Seven days: when a new owner or manager is added, they are restricted for their first week. They cannot remove other users, cannot transfer primary ownership, and cannot delete the profile. This is why a listing cannot be sorted out on closing day when a business changes hands. It has to start about a week earlier.

A few other things that cause the same headaches:

Whoever built the listing is usually still on it. Old marketing companies, the employee who set it up in 2019. Worth actually opening People and access and looking at who is there.

Manager access covers essentially everything day to day. Very few outside vendors need to be an owner, and almost none need to be the only owner.

One owner is a single point of failure. Two, both with 2-Step Verification and current recovery phone and email.

One compromised Google account can change the name, address, phone, and website on every location it controls, not just one.

If you are locked out right now: do not create a second listing. That usually gets flagged as a duplicate and you end up with two problems instead of one. Submit an ownership request and keep the confirmation email Google sends, because that email is how you continue the process after the three days are up.

Happy to answer questions. I also have a long write-up on this.