The Lighthouse

Get recommended when customers ask AI

Plain-English guides on showing up when your customers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI who to hire.

More guides

A branded AI visibility audit results page for a roofing company showing six category scores and a captured lead

What Is a White-Label AI Audit? One Prospect, Start to Finish

Follow one roofing company through a white-label AI audit, from a cold email to a scored report to a lead in your inbox, and see where the audit stops and the tracker starts.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 9, 202610 min read
For Agencies
A dashboard showing AI referral visits converting 60 percent higher than other traffic, with visit volume trending upward over six weeks

AI Search Visibility Is a Revenue Channel. Here's How to Earn It.

AI answers already send buyers who convert better and spend more. Here's the 2026 research on how the assistants pick what to cite, a worked revenue calculation you can copy, and the order to fix things in.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 8, 202611 min read
AI Visibility
An AI visibility scorecard showing a 35 percent mention rate, a rising twelve-week trend, and tiles for share of voice, citations, and accuracy

How to Track Your Brand's Visibility in AI Search Results

Ask an assistant the same question twice and you can get two different businesses. Here's how to track your brand's AI visibility as a rate instead of a snapshot, with four metrics and a scorecard.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 7, 20269 min read
Guides
A sitemap health dashboard for Ridgeline Roofing showing fourteen URLs discovered, twelve indexed, zero errors, and a Success status

Do You Need an XML Sitemap? What It Does for Your SEO in 2026

An XML sitemap is the page list you hand search engines. Here's what Google reads in it, what it ignores, whether a local business site needs one, and how to check yours in two minutes.

Saihajpreet Singh
Saihajpreet SinghSep 4, 20269 min read
Guides
A white-label agency dashboard listing client sites with their AI visibility scores and a monthly report ready to share

AI Visibility Tools for Agencies, Compared for 2026

Agencies don't need the tracker with the most engines. They need one a client can see under the agency's brand, at a price that still leaves a margin. Twelve tools, five axes, one table.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 3, 202611 min read
For Agencies
A dashboard ranking the sources AI assistants cite when recommending local businesses, Google and Yelp far ahead of a short tail of directories

Where AI Gets Its Data About Your Local Business (2026)

Nearly 2 million logged citations show exactly where AI assistants pull local business facts from. The list is shorter than you'd guess, and you can claim every spot on it.

Saihajpreet Singh
Saihajpreet SinghSep 2, 202613 min read
AI Visibility
A dashboard panel tracking a 4.8 rating, 214 reviews, verified hours, and rising AI mentions, the profile signals AI assistants read

Do You Need a Google Business Profile for AI Visibility?

Every major assistant reads Google Business Profile data somewhere in its answers, even ChatGPT. Here's what your profile feeds them, and what to do if Google won't let you have one.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 1, 20266 min read
Local SEO
A page speed card comparing a slow 2.4 MB page loading in 6.1 seconds against a fast 0.9 MB version loading in 1.8 seconds

How to Speed Up Your Website, Biggest Wins First

Most slow sites are slow for the same few reasons, and images top the list. Here's how to speed up your website in order of impact, the biggest wins first, and how to hand the whole list to AI.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisAug 30, 20268 min read
Guides
A dark card showing a 4.9 star rating with 213 reviews beside a snippet of AggregateRating JSON-LD code

AggregateRating Schema, and Why Your Star Ratings Might Not Show

AggregateRating is the schema that puts your star rating in code machines can read. Here's how it works, the reason your own stars often won't show in Google search, and how to write one that holds up.

Saihajpreet Singh
Saihajpreet SinghAug 30, 20267 min read
Local SEO
A dark Search Visibility dashboard with organic rankings on one side and AI answer results on the other, the business named on three assistants

SEO vs. AEO, and Why You Now Need Both

Ranking on Google and getting recommended by AI are two different games. Here's the difference between SEO and AEO, why you can win one and lose the other, and how to cover both.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisAug 29, 20267 min read
AI Visibility
A website performance dashboard showing a 92 score with speed metrics like Total Blocking Time and Largest Contentful Paint, trending up

Core Web Vitals in Plain English, and How to Improve Yours

Someone told you your site "fails Core Web Vitals" and it sounded like a foreign language. Here's what LCP, INP, and CLS actually mean, how to measure them in Chrome, and how to fix them with AI.

Saihajpreet Singh
Saihajpreet SinghAug 27, 20268 min read
Guides
A Structured Data dashboard showing a LocalBusiness entity marked valid, with green checks on its detected name, address, phone, hours, and rating

What Is Local Schema Markup, and How Do You Add It?

A few lines of code can tell Google and AI exactly what your business is, where it works, and when it's open, no guessing required. Here's how local schema markup works, and how to add it in one sitting.

Saihajpreet Singh
Saihajpreet SinghAug 26, 20267 min read
Local SEO
A browser at lighthouselocal.ai/llms.txt showing the short markdown file, a heading, a one-line summary, and a Pages list, marked readable by AI

What Is an llms.txt File, and Do You Need One?

More AI models read your site before they recommend anyone. An llms.txt file hands them a clean summary instead of your raw code. Here's what it is, whether you need one, and where it goes.

Saihajpreet Singh
Saihajpreet SinghAug 26, 20266 min read
Guides
The Lighthouse Local dashboard showing where AI platforms mention a business

How to Get Your Business Recommended by AI

When a customer asks AI for a business like yours, only a few names come up. Here's how AI decides who to recommend, how to check where you stand, and what to fix to get named more often.

Saihajpreet Singh
Saihajpreet SinghAug 25, 20267 min read
AI Visibility
The Lighthouse Local dashboard showing a business's AI visibility score

How to Check If AI Recommends Your Business

Your customers are asking AI for a business like yours. Here's a simple way to check whether the major assistants name you, read the answers like an auditor, and turn it into a habit.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisAug 19, 20266 min read
Guides
The Lighthouse Local dashboard showing off-site reputation across reviews and profiles

How Reviews Shape AI Recommendations

The assistants that recommend businesses lean heavily on your reviews, how many, how recent, how good, and what they say. Here's how reviews feed AI recommendations, and how to make yours work harder.

Saihajpreet Singh
Saihajpreet SinghAug 12, 20266 min read
Local SEO
A white-label Lighthouse Local dashboard for agencies and their clients

AI Visibility Is the New Service for Agencies

AI answers are where more of your clients get found or filtered out. For agencies, that's a new service line that extends the local SEO work you already do. Here's how to package, price, and report on it.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisAug 5, 20267 min read
For Agencies
Your AI visibility

See where AI recommends you, and where it doesn't

Lighthouse Local tracks all five platforms, shows who's getting named instead of you, and turns every gap into a plain-English fix.