AI can help a small website compete with major brands by improving content relevance, authority, and visibility. But can AI truly give smaller sites an edge when search engines often favor established brands?
I’ve been testing the same local searches with slightly different wording and the results are way less stable than I expected.
For example, I tried variations along the lines of:
“best roofer in Dallas”
“reliable roofing company in Dallas”
“who should I call for an emergency roof leak in Dallas?”
I expected mostly the same businesses with maybe a different order.
That’s not what happened.
Some businesses appeared across several versions, while others only showed up when the prompt described a specific problem.
It made me wonder if we're making a mistake by talking about “AI rankings” like they're equivalent to Google rankings.
Maybe the more useful thing to measure is how consistently a brand appears across different intents and prompt variations, rather than asking whether it ranks for one particular query.
I’m still testing this, so I don't have a strong conclusion yet.
Has anyone here tested this at a larger scale? I'm especially curious whether you've found certain types of prompts to be more stable than others.