Will Colachis

Will Colachis

Head of Growth, Lighthouse Local

Somebody in your category is getting recommended by AI today, and most businesses have no idea if it's them. That's what Will tracks. Where you show up, who's getting named instead, and what you should fix next. At Lighthouse Local, he helps local businesses and the agencies that serve them turn AI-visibility data into their next concrete move.

Articles by Will Colachis.

All articles
Dental Practice AI Visibility dashboard showing 89 percent of healthcare searches with an AI Overview and 34 percent of adults asking AI about health

AI Search and SEO for Local Dentists

Do they take my insurance, can they see me today, what will it cost, and what do other patients say? Those are the questions patients now put to AI assistants, and this field guide shows where on your site and Business Profile each answer has to live.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisOct 23, 202611 min read
Local SEO
A dashboard comparing monthly AI visibility tool cost for 25 clients, with per-domain billing far above a flat plan

How AI Visibility Tools Charge Agencies, Per Client vs. Flat Pricing in 2026

AI visibility tools bill agencies in one of three ways, per client, per question, or one flat fee. Here's what each one costs at 5, 10, and 25 clients, with 2026 vendor pages as the source.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisOct 21, 20268 min read
For Agencies
An example tracker scorecard passing four of five criteria, with the named rate climbing week by week

How to Evaluate AI Visibility Tracking Tools in 2026

A single AI answer is a coin flip, so a tracker's number is only as good as how it was collected. Five questions to ask any vendor, the 2026 studies behind each, and a scorecard you can fill in during a trial.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisOct 14, 202610 min read
Guides
An AI visibility audit report showing an overall score of 70 out of 100 with six category scores and sixteen findings

How to Resell AI Visibility Audits to Your Clients

The scan behind an AI visibility audit adds little cost per client, and the readout can sell for a real fee. Here's how to price it, scope it, and pitch it, shown on a real site that scored 70 out of 100.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisOct 9, 202610 min read
For Agencies
A multi-client AI visibility roll-up with three client rows, named in 79.7 percent, 54.7 percent, and 0.8 percent of answers over 30 days

How to Track AI Visibility for Multiple Clients in One Dashboard

Five steps to track every client's AI visibility from one account, with one roll-up you sort each week. Includes a prompt template, the six columns to watch, and a real three-client example.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisOct 7, 20267 min read
For Agencies
A tracker panel showing 475 of 2,095 AI answers named a rival and not the business, with Gemini carrying most of the losses

How to Tell If AI Recommends Your Local Competitors

Twelve AI answers to one question named 24 different rivals, and the owner tracked four of them. Here's how to find out which competitors the assistants are sending your customers to, and what to do once you know.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisOct 6, 20269 min read
Guides
A dashboard panel titled Shopping Answers showing a business named in 3 of 10 AI answers, with one tile per assistant

What AI Shopping Assistants Ask Before Recommending Your Business

Before an AI shopping assistant names a business, it asks five questions in a fixed order. We pulled them from what OpenAI, Google, and Amazon publish about their shopping features, then checked them against ten captured answers for one manufacturer we track. It was named three times, and every miss traces to a question it couldn't answer.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisOct 2, 202610 min read
AI Visibility
A dashboard for a Miami mobile car wash showing 55 percent of AI answers name it, with ChatGPT at 76 percent and Gemini at 6 percent

AI Visibility for Local Business, What It Is and How to Get It

AI visibility for a local business is the share of AI answers to local questions that name you. One Miami car wash gets named in three quarters of ChatGPT answers and six percent of Gemini's. Here's why the gap exists, where the names come from, and the six levers that close it.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 29, 202611 min read
AI Visibility
A white-label client dashboard on an agency subdomain showing an AI visibility score of 31, named in 2 of 39 answers, and 12 competitor wins

White-Label AI Visibility Tracking for Agencies, How It Works

Yes, any agency can offer AI visibility tracking under its own brand. See the four setup steps, what a client sees, and real numbers from an agency running five clients from one dashboard.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 28, 20267 min read
For Agencies
A dashboard titled Press Release Link Check showing zero authority passed, links tagged nofollow, and 47 of 250 releases cited by AI

Do Press Release Backlinks Pass Authority?

No. Google names press release links in its spam policy, and the wire services tag them nofollow before Google ever sees them. Here's what a release still does for a local business, what AI assistants do with wire copy, and when it's worth the money.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 25, 20269 min read
Local SEO
A dashboard titled Internal Link Audit showing 40 pages crawled, 2 clicks maximum depth, 0 orphans, and 6 posts with no in-article links

Internal Linking for Local SEO in 2026, Tested on Our Own Site

We crawled our own site before writing this. Every page was two clicks from home, and six of our 25 blog posts still had no article linking to them. Here's the link map, anchor text, and thirty-minute audit that fix the same gap on a local business site.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 24, 202610 min read
Local SEO
A dashboard titled Pharmacy AI Visibility showing 32 percent of US adults asked an AI chatbot about health and 18,960 independent pharmacies

AI Search and SEO for Local Pharmacies

More than 2,000 pharmacies closed in 2025, and the patients they left behind are asking Google and AI assistants where to go next. This field guide covers the local SEO and AI search work that gets an independent pharmacy found, trusted, and named.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 23, 202611 min read
Local SEO
A tracker panel for Bluebird Heating and Air showing 27 of 40 AI answers accurate, with 6 stale, 3 wrong, and 4 not naming the business

What Does AI Say About Your Business?

Ask an assistant about your business and you get a set of claims, some wrong, some stale. Here's an eight-prompt audit to pull them out, a sheet to trace each one to its source, and the fixes that stick.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 17, 20269 min read
Guides
Dashboard showing 77.6 percent of branded AI answers citing the brand site against 2.2 percent of cited links on category prompts

The Branded vs. Unbranded AI Visibility Gap

Ask an assistant about your business by name and it cites your site almost every time. Ask it who to call in your town and your site nearly vanishes. Here's why the two questions run differently, and what the businesses that get named anyway have in common.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 15, 202610 min read
AI Visibility
Tracker dashboard for Ridgeline Auto Repair showing it named in four of ten AI answers, with per-assistant tiles for named and missing

10 AI Visibility Tools for Local Businesses in 2026

Ten AI visibility tools for local businesses, scored on five things a one-location business cares about. Free snapshots, trackers under $50, the band where coverage fills out, and the prompts to load on day one.

Will Colachis
Will ColachisSep 10, 202611 min read
AI Visibility
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?

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

How to Improve Brand Visibility in AI Search

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

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 white-label agency dashboard listing client sites with their AI visibility scores and a monthly report ready to share

12 AI Visibility Tracking Tools for Agencies in 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 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 Slow Website

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 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 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
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
A white-label Lighthouse Local dashboard for agencies and their clients

How to Become an AI Visibility Agency

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