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Guides

Step-by-step how-tos for making your business easier for AI to find and recommend, from checking where you stand to fixing the technical gaps.

6 guides

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 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 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 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 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
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.