Guide
Google Business Profile and AI answers: what matters
Your Google Business Profile is the single most important listing for Google’s own AI: Gemini uses Google Maps information for addresses, hours and ratings, and AI Overviews and AI Mode build on normal Google Search. Keep it complete, accurate and full of fresh reviews. But ChatGPT and Perplexity lean on other sources, so Google alone won’t get you into every AI answer.
How Google’s AI uses your profile
- Gemini uses public Google Maps information to find businesses and give their address, website, rating and hours.[1]
- AI Overviews and AI Mode have no special requirements: Google says a page only needs to be indexed and eligible to appear in normal search.[2] For some local tasks, like restaurant bookings, AI Mode draws on Google Maps and Google’s Knowledge Graph directly.[3]
- Google Maps’ “Ask Maps” answers questions by analyzing more than 300 million places, including reviews from over 500 million contributors.[4]
In other words: what your profile says is what Google’s AI says about you.
What Google says matters
Google’s own guidance is that local results depend on relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance and prominence (how well known you are, including links and reviews). Google says “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”[5]
Your profile checklist
- Verify it, so you control what your profile says.
- Pick the right primary category, then add secondary ones that describe what you actually do.
- Hours, including holidays. AI assistants repeat whatever hours they find, and wrong ones send customers to a locked door.
- Phone and website exactly as they appear everywhere else.
- Services or menu, with plain descriptions. This is how AI knows you do “emergency plumbing” or “gluten-free”.
- Photos of your storefront, work and team.
- Reviews: ask, and reply. A steady flow of recent reviews matters to customers: in a 2026 survey, 74% focused on reviews from the last three months.[6]
Why Google alone isn’t enough
The other big assistants lean on different sources:
- ChatGPT: Yelp ratings and reviews now power its local results in many categories, plus web search.[7]
- Perplexity: integrates Yelp data for local searches, and partners with Tripadvisor for travel.[8]
- Apple: Apple Business (which replaced Apple Business Connect in 2026) controls your place card across Maps, Safari and Spotlight.[9]
- Microsoft: Bing Places relaunched in 2025, feeding Bing search and Maps, with deeper Copilot integration planned.[10]
Consumers are moving the same way. BrightLocal’s 2026 survey found the share of people using AI tools for local recommendations jumped from 6% to 45% in a year, while Apple Maps’ use as a review source nearly doubled.[6]
See where you stand. A free check compares what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say with your Google profile, flags wrong hours or phone numbers, and shows which listings you’re missing. Or read how the three assistants differ.
Sources
- Google, Gemini Apps Help: Google Maps. support.google.com/gemini/answer/16622866
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website (updated Dec 10, 2025). developers.google.com
- Google, AI Mode agentic features, Aug 21, 2025. blog.google
- Google, Ask Maps, Mar 12, 2026. blog.google
- Google Business Profile Help, “How to improve your local ranking on Google.” support.google.com/business/answer/7091
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US adults). brightlocal.com
- Yelp Q2 2026 shareholder letter, Aug 6, 2026 (SEC filing). sec.gov
- Perplexity × Yelp, Mar 2024 (maginative.com); Tripadvisor × Perplexity, Jan 9, 2025 (tripadvisor.mediaroom.com)
- Apple, “Introducing Apple Business,” Mar 24, 2026. apple.com
- Microsoft Bing, new Bing Places for Business, Oct 3, 2025. blogs.bing.com