Local business guide
AI visibility tools for local businesses
Most of these platforms are built for marketing teams, not for one local business. This guide sorts them by the job, and covers which run competitor intelligence on the businesses AI recommends nearby instead of you, with claims taken from each vendor's own pages on a stated date.
Last reviewed: Vendor pages checked
Illustrative. Not a screenshot and not real data.
The short answer
Which tool should you choose?
If you run one local business and want to know whether AI assistants recommend you to the people looking for you, GetRanked AI is built for exactly that. A free scan gives you the first answer, and a one-off Professional AI Report covers one business: whether leading AI assistants recommend you, who they name instead, what they could and could not find about you, and a prioritised list of fixes in plain English. There is no platform to learn and no prompts to write.
If you want ongoing tracking and you have someone doing your marketing, the low-entry trackers are worth a look. Otterly AI, AnswerRank and AIclicks all publish small entry plans with a trial. If you already pay for an SEO tool, the suites now include AI tracking on their smaller plans: Moz Pro includes AI Visibility from its Standard tier upwards, SE Ranking includes daily AI prompts on its base plans, and Semrush's smallest plan is described for freelancers and small businesses.
Be honest with yourself about the effort, though. Most trackers are built for marketing teams who choose and maintain a set of prompts, and that work does not do itself. For a single-site local business, the useful question is usually not which dashboard to buy, but whether the assistants name you at all and what is missing when they do not.
Start here
Measure the outcome before you choose a tool
Most AI visibility platforms are built for brands with a marketing team, priced per seat and configured per prompt. For a local business that is a lot of setup for a question that should take minutes.
The question is simple: when somebody nearby asks an assistant who to use for what you do, does your name come back? And if it does not, whose does?
You should not need to buy a platform to find that out. Run the free scan, get the answer for your own business, and only then decide whether ongoing tracking is worth paying for. Where GetRanked AI differs is the competitor intelligence: the GetRanked Algo names the businesses the assistants recommended in your place through Competitor Capture, builds a dossier on each with Competitor Radar, and prints the reason and sources with Decision Trace, all from the answers themselves rather than a list you supply. Staying ahead is the ongoing half: tracked competitors are re-read on the ongoing plans and Recommendation Delta measures which answers you gained and lost between two comparable readings, so you can see whether the gap to the businesses AI names is widening or closing. Those plans are listed on the pricing page and are not open for self-serve purchase yet.
The category
What AI visibility means when your customers are local
A local buyer no longer types five words into a search box and scrolls. They ask an assistant a whole question. "Which emergency plumber can come out tonight in Chester?" or "Where should I take my parents for Sunday lunch near Kendal?" The assistant writes an answer, and that answer names two or three businesses. Everyone else is invisible for that question, whatever their website ranks for.
There is no ranking in the search engine sense here. ChatGPT does not publish positions, and asking the identical question twice can produce different businesses. So AI visibility for a local business means presence and position inside an answer, measured across many attempts rather than checked once. If a tool promises you a rank number for ChatGPT, ask what that number is actually counting.
The terms are unsettled too. GEO, generative engine optimisation, and AEO, answer engine optimisation, are both used for the work of getting named in AI answers. They overlap heavily and neither is a standardised discipline with an agreed method, so two vendors using the same word may measure different things. Read what a product says it measures rather than the label above it.
What decides the answer, for a local business, is usually evidence. The assistant is working from what it can find about you: your own pages, the places you are listed, what other sources say. Say a fictional practice, Marlowe Street Dental, has a smart website that never states which treatments it offers or which town it serves. An assistant asked for an emergency dentist has nothing to go on and names a rival that spells it out. That is the gap most local businesses need measured first.
- AI visibility
- How present a business is in the answers AI assistants give, usually measured over repeated questions rather than a single check.
- GEO and AEO
- Generative engine optimisation and answer engine optimisation: overlapping labels for the work of getting named and cited in AI answers. Neither is a standardised discipline.
- Recommendation Gap
- GetRanked AI's term for the moments where an assistant should name a business to a prospective customer and does not.
- Evidence Coverage
- What the assistants could and could not find about a business, which is where most fixes for a local business start.
How we evaluated
What we looked at, and what we did not
We read each vendor's own website on the date shown and recorded what it advertises: purpose, AI platforms named, what it measures, who it says it is for, and its published prices and per-plan limits. We did not run paid trials of every product and we do not give scores. Where a vendor's pages do not mention a capability, the table says "not publicly advertised", which is not a claim that the capability is missing.
GetRanked AI appears in the shortlist and the table under the same criteria as everyone else. We own this site and you should know that before you read it; every row links to a comparison page carrying the vendor's own sources so you can check us.
- Principal purposeWhat the product is built to do, in its own terms.
- Recommendation outcomeWhether it tells a business that AI recommends it, rather than counting mentions.
- Starts from your businessWhether you can begin with your website instead of building a prompt project.
- Recommendation GapWhether it shows the buying questions where a business could be named and is not.
- Competitor CaptureWhether it names the businesses the assistants recommend instead.
- Competitor discoveryWhether competitors surface from the answers, or must be known and added first.
- Evidence CoverageWhether it shows which sources shaped the answer and what was missing.
- What to do firstWhether it produces a prioritised list of things to change.
- Plain-English verdictWhether the output is a decision a business owner can act on, not only analytics.
- Try before committingWhether a business can learn something real before paying for a subscription.
- Traditional SEO suiteKeyword research, rank tracking, site audits, backlinks.
- Keyword researchA keyword database and research workflow.
- Backlink databaseA link index and link analysis.
- Content productionWriting, briefs and on-page optimisation.
- Technical auditingCrawling and technical site health.
- Multi-client dashboardsManaging many sites or clients in one place.
- Enterprise integrationsAPIs, warehouses and BI connectors.
- Prompt managementBuilding and maintaining a tracked prompt set at scale.
- Intended customerWho the vendor says the product is for.
- Public pricingWhether prices are published, so a buyer can size a plan before a sales call.
The shortlist
Grouped by what each one is, not by a score
These products are not substitutes for each other. They are grouped by the kind of tool they are, so you can see which group you are actually shopping in. There is no ranking, no rating and no paid placement.
Recommendation-first intelligence
SEO suites with AI visibility added
AI Visibility is included from the Standard plan upwards with a set number of dashboards and tracked prompts printed on each card, beside keyword research, rank tracking and a site crawl.
Read the Moz Pro comparisonBest for one subscription across search and AISE RankingThe base plans include daily AI prompts for tracking and research alongside rank tracking, keyword research, audits and backlinks, with a fourteen-day trial that needs no card.
Read the SE Ranking comparisonBest if you already work in an SEO platformSemrushThe smallest plan is described for freelancers and small businesses, and AI search tracking is listed on the plan cards with published daily prompt limits.
Read the Semrush comparisonLightweight AI monitoring
The entry plan covers a small set of prompts across four engines with unlimited team members, daily tracking, audits and recommendations, and a seven-day trial that needs no card.
Read the Otterly AI comparisonBest entry plan with a person attachedAnswerRankThe Standard plan is described for smaller teams new to AEO, and an AI search expert reviews and selects prompts after setup, with scheduled expert sessions on the higher plans.
Read the AnswerRank comparisonBest for seeing the full answer behind a findingAIclicksA low entry plan for individuals and small teams, with the homepage FAQ stating you see the full AI answer behind every data point and that prompts run through the platforms' own interfaces.
Read the AIclicks comparisonThe platforms
What each one is, and who it fits
GetRanked AI
GetRanked AI is AI Recommendation Intelligence, our term for measuring whether AI assistants recommend one specific business to its prospective customers. Enter a website and it measures how leading AI assistants respond when customers are looking for a business like yours, then reports an AI Trust Score, the Recommendation Gap, Competitor Capture and Evidence Coverage with a prioritised list of fixes. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI are named on the pricing page.
Fits: One local business with one website and no marketing team, who wants the answer and the fix list rather than a tool to run.
Worth knowing: It covers one business per scan and is not an SEO suite, and the ongoing Monitoring plan is listed on the pricing page but is not yet open for self-serve purchase.
Otterly AI
Otterly AI tracks brand mentions, share of voice, rank, sentiment and cited URLs daily for the prompts you choose, then audits your pages and queues ranked recommendations per engine. Citation tracking records every cited URL, whether it names you and which rival it names instead, and gap analysis surfaces prompts where competitors get named and you do not. The entry plan is small, with unlimited team members and a trial that needs no card.
Fits: A local business with someone doing marketing regularly, or a freelancer looking after it, who wants daily tracking without a large commitment.
Worth knowing: You choose and maintain the prompts yourself, four engines are included on the entry plan and three more are sold as paid add-ons.
AnswerRank
AnswerRank tracks how often a brand appears in AI answers, benchmarks it against competitors you choose, and adds a human AI search expert plus content built to earn visibility. Its changelog says answers are read from the live AI interfaces rather than requested through APIs, because interfaces personalise results and cite differently. The entry plan covers a small prompt allowance with unlimited markets and collaborators.
Fits: A local business owner who wants ongoing tracking but also wants a person to tell them what to do with it.
Worth knowing: Pricing lives on the homepage rather than a pricing page, and the pricing URL did not load on the day checked.
AIclicks
AIclicks tracks AI visibility across ten or more platforms, identifies the sources driving citations and turns the data into a ranked action list with agents behind it. Its entry plan is described for individuals and small teams and covers one website, a small prompt allowance, three models and one country per project. Visibility data can be connected to actual traffic through Google Analytics.
Fits: A small local business that wants a low monthly commitment and the option to pay for the work to be done separately.
Worth knowing: The entry plan is limited to one country per project and a three-day trial, and yearly figures were not captured from the pricing page.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro bundles keyword research, rank tracking, site crawl and link research with an AI Visibility dashboard that tracks prompts across four AI models. The homepage says you can track whether you are the first recommendation or buried behind competitors, and the Prompt Performance module shows the AI response and the pages it referenced. Plan cards print the number of dashboards and tracked prompts, with extra capacity sold as add-ons.
Fits: A local business that still wants the SEO basics covered and treats AI tracking as one more report inside the same subscription.
Worth knowing: The pricing page lists the prompt tracking frequency as once a week and states that AI Visibility requires the Standard plan or higher.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking combines rank tracking, keyword research, audits and backlinks with an AI Search Toolkit that monitors brand mentions and links in AI answers, with separate trackers listed for AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Its base plans include a daily allowance of AI prompts for tracking and research. A fourteen-day trial is offered with no card, and the AI Visibility Tracker page also offers a limited free checker with a small daily allowance.
Fits: A local business or its freelancer that wants one subscription covering both search and AI rather than two tools.
Worth knowing: The fuller AI Results Tracker sits in an AI Search add-on priced apart from the base plan, and prices were shown in pounds to a UK visitor.
Semrush
Semrush is a full SEO platform with an AI Visibility toolkit that tracks mentions, citations and recommendations across AI platforms, plus sentiment, cited media and an AI search health audit. Its smallest plan is described for freelancers and small businesses with AI search tracking listed on the card, and the AI Search plans print a daily prompt limit. A seven-day trial is offered on the listed plans.
Fits: A local business already reporting on rankings, or a freelancer who works in Semrush all day and wants AI answers in the same place.
Worth knowing: Prompts come from a database or are entered by the user, so the view is of a prompt set rather than of your own customers' questions, and the plans that add AI Search are priced above the SEO-only plan.
The buying question
Which of these is built around the recommendation outcome?
Read from each vendor's own pages on the date shown on its comparison page. "Not publicly advertised" means the pages we read do not mention it, not that the capability is absent.
| Product | Recommendation outcome | Starts from your business | Recommendation Gap | Competitor Capture | Competitor discovery | Evidence Coverage | What to do first | Plain-English verdict | Try before committing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly AI | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Yes | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| AnswerRank | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial | Not publicly advertised |
| AIclicks | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Yes | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| Moz Pro | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial |
| SE Ranking | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial |
| Semrush | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| Ahrefs | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial |
| Peec AI | Partial | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| GetRanked AI | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Everything else
Broader platform capabilities
Broader does not mean better for every job. Several of these platforms are far wider than GetRanked AI, and where they are, this table says so plainly. GetRanked AI deliberately does not recreate an SEO suite: it specialises in the measurement above.
| Product | Traditional SEO suite | Keyword research | Backlink database | Content production | Technical auditing | Multi-client dashboards | Enterprise integrations | Prompt management |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly AI | Different focus | Different focus | Not publicly advertised | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| AnswerRank | Different focus | Different focus | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| AIclicks | Different focus | Different focus | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| Moz Pro | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| SE Ranking | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| Semrush | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| Ahrefs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| Peec AI | Different focus | Different focus | Different focus | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| GetRanked AI | Different focus | Different focus | Different focus | Different focus | Different focus | Yes | Different focus | Different focus |
Which fits which buyer
Match the tool to the situation
One local business, no marketing team
Run the free scan first. If the answer matters to you, the one-off Professional AI Report covers one business and tells you whether the assistants recommend you, who they name instead and what to fix, without a prompt list to maintain.
A local business already paying for an SEO tool
Check what you already have before buying anything new. Moz Pro includes AI Visibility from its Standard tier, SE Ranking includes daily AI prompts in its base plans, and Semrush lists AI search tracking on its smallest plan card.
That is a lot of setup for one question. The free scan answers it for your business in minutes.
A small team that wants ongoing tracking
Both publish low entry plans with a trial and daily tracking. Both expect someone to choose the prompts and read the results each month, so budget the time as well as the fee.
Run the free scan first, then decide whether ongoing tracking is worth a subscription at all.
An owner who wants a person to help, not just data
AnswerRank lists a human AI search expert who reviews and selects prompts after setup, with scheduled sessions on its higher plans. It is the closest thing on this page to being told what to do next by a person.
Use GetRanked AI for the answer, and only buy a tracker if the answer says you need one.
A freelancer or agency looking after several local clients
Once it is more than one business, the shopping list changes to client workspaces and reporting. Peec AI publishes an agency operating model, and our agencies guide covers that comparison properly.
That is a lot of setup for one question. The free scan answers it for your business in minutes.
Where GetRanked AI differs
Built for the moment a customer asks AI
AI Recommendation Intelligence is our term for measuring whether the assistants recommend one business when its customers are looking for one.
One business, not a prompt list
You do not research prompts or name competitors in advance. The report is produced from your website and reports the moments where a customer is looking for a business like yours.
Competitor Capture names who got the recommendation
When an assistant recommends somebody else to your customer, the report names the businesses it recommended instead. Those names are discovered, not chosen by you in advance.
Evidence Coverage explains why
The report shows what the assistants could and could not find about your business, which for most local businesses is where the fix list actually starts.
Free first, then buy once
A free scan and a one-off Professional AI Report for one website, with no subscription needed for either. Ongoing monthly plans are listed on the pricing page but are not yet open for self-serve purchase.
Questions
Questions buyers ask about this category
How do I get my local business recommended by ChatGPT?
Start by finding out what happens today when a customer asks, then fix the evidence gaps behind the answer. Assistants name businesses they can find clear information about: what you do, where you do it, who you do it for, and corroboration from sources beyond your own site. A GetRanked AI report measures whether you are named, who is named instead, and what the assistants could not find about you.
What is GEO, and does it matter for a local business?
GEO stands for generative engine optimisation: the work of getting named and cited in AI answers rather than ranked in a list of links. It overlaps almost completely with AEO, answer engine optimisation, and neither is a standardised discipline with an agreed method. It matters for a local business only in as much as your customers are asking assistants instead of searching, which is increasingly common for finding a trade, a clinic or somewhere to eat.
Can I rank number one in ChatGPT?
There is no ranking in ChatGPT the way there is in a search engine. An assistant writes an answer and names a few businesses inside it, and asking the same question twice can produce different names. What can be measured is presence and position inside those answers over repeated attempts, which is what the tools on this page do in different ways.
Is there AI visibility software for a small business budget?
Yes. Otterly AI, AnswerRank and AIclicks all publish low entry plans with trials, and Moz Pro, SE Ranking and Semrush include AI tracking on their smaller plans if you also want SEO tools. GetRanked AI offers a free scan and then a one-off report, so there is no subscription to hold. Prices for every product are on the linked comparison pages.
Do I have to choose the prompts myself?
With most trackers, yes. They are built for marketing teams who research and maintain a set of prompts, and the quality of the result depends on that list. GetRanked AI works the other way round: it starts from your website and the customers looking for a business like yours, so there is nothing for you to configure.
Does this replace local SEO?
No, it sits beside it. Rank tracking, keyword research and site audits are still the job of an SEO tool, and Moz Pro, SE Ranking and Semrush cover both. GetRanked AI measures only the AI side and does not do keyword research, rank tracking or backlinks.
Can a tool guarantee an AI assistant will recommend my business?
No. Nobody can guarantee what a model will say. Every product here measures and reports; earning the recommendation still means improving the evidence a customer and an assistant can find about you.
What if I have more than one location or more than one business?
GetRanked AI reports on one business per scan, so a second site means a second report. If you are looking after several businesses, the tools with client workspaces and reporting are a better fit, and our agencies guide compares those.
How did you evaluate the tools?
We read each vendor's own pages on the date at the top of this guide and recorded what they advertise against nine buyer-relevant criteria, then read the plans from the point of view of one business with one website. We did not give scores and we did not run paid trials of every product. Where a page does not mention something, the table says not publicly advertised.
How current is this guide?
The vendor pages were read on the date shown at the top. Plans, limits and prices change often; confirm on the vendor's own site before buying.
Keep reading
Related guides and comparisons
Sources and trust
Every third-party claim on this page comes from the vendor's own website, read on the date shown, and is repeated with its sources on the linked comparison page. Business names used as examples are invented. Nothing here is a paid placement and no vendor has been scored.
Vendor sources for every product on this page are listed on its comparison page: Otterly AI, AnswerRank, AIclicks, Moz Pro, SE Ranking, Semrush.
What this guide deliberately leaves out
- Any claim that a tool improves local rankings or map placement: none of the pages read make a measurable claim we could repeat.
- Multi-location and franchise tracking: one vendor's blog title mentions it but the feature page was not read, so no vendor is credited with it here.
- Per-engine coverage on the smallest plans: several vendors include a subset of engines at entry level and sell the rest as add-ons, and the split was not stated consistently enough to compare.
- Ratings, review counts and customer numbers printed on vendor sites: this page carries none about anyone, including us.
- Any ranking or score across vendors: these products do different jobs for a local business and we did not test them all under one protocol.
Find out for free
See what the assistants say about you.
Choosing a tool is the easy part. Enter your website and see whether the assistants recommend you, and who they name instead.
Free. No card needed.