--- title: "AI Visibility Guides for Local Business | The Lighthouse" description: "How ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI decide which businesses to recommend, and how to show up when your customers ask." source: "https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/category/ai-visibility" --- [Blog](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog) › AI Visibility # AI Visibility How ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI decide which businesses to recommend, and how to show up when your customers ask. [All](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog) [AI Visibility](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/category/ai-visibility) [Local SEO](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/category/local-seo) [For Agencies](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/category/agency-growth) [Guides](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/category/guides) ## 5 guides [![Tracker dashboard for Ridgeline Auto Repair showing it named in four of ten AI answers, with per-assistant tiles for named and missing](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/blog/blog-ai-search-visibility-tools-for-small-businesses.webp)

Top-Rated AI Search Visibility Tools for Small Businesses in 2026

Ten AI search visibility tools, 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](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/authors/will-colachis.webp)Will Colachis Sep 10, 2026 • 11 min readAI Visibility](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/ai-search-visibility-tools-for-small-businesses) [![A dashboard showing AI referral visits converting 60 percent higher than other traffic, with visit volume trending upward over six weeks](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/blog/blog-improve-brand-visibility-in-ai-search.webp)

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](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/authors/will-colachis.webp)Will Colachis Sep 8, 2026 • 11 min readAI Visibility](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/improve-brand-visibility-in-ai-search) [![A dashboard ranking the sources AI assistants cite when recommending local businesses, Google and Yelp far ahead of a short tail of directories](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/blog/blog-where-ai-gets-local-business-data.webp)

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](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/authors/saihajpreet-singh.webp)Saihajpreet Singh Sep 2, 2026 • 13 min readAI Visibility](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/where-ai-gets-local-business-data) [![A dark Search Visibility dashboard with organic rankings on one side and AI answer results on the other, the business named on three assistants](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/blog/blog-seo-vs-aeo.webp)

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](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/authors/will-colachis.webp)Will Colachis Aug 29, 2026 • 7 min readAI Visibility](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/seo-vs-aeo) [![The Lighthouse Local dashboard showing where AI platforms mention a business](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/blog/blog-how-to-get-your-business-recommended-by-ai.webp)

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](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/authors/saihajpreet-singh.webp)Saihajpreet Singh Aug 25, 2026 • 7 min readAI Visibility](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/blog/how-to-get-your-business-recommended-by-ai) 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. [Start for free ](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/for-business) [Run a free audit](https://audits.lighthouselocal.ai/?utm_source=lighthouselocal&utm_medium=marketing-site&utm_campaign=blog-category-ai-visibility&utm_content=blog-category-closer-audit) ## Sitemap - [Markdown sitemap](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/sitemap.md)