Local Search & AI Visibility
AI and Your Business Website:
What's Actually Happening and What to Do About It
You've heard the noise. Here's the plain-language version - written for Wenatchee business owners, not tech people.
If you've opened a browser in the last two years, someone has told you that AI is going to change everything. Maybe it already did, and you missed it. Maybe it's all hype. You're probably not sure which.
That uncertainty is reasonable. The actual impact of AI on a local business website is real, but it's not what most of the headlines are about. It's not about robots taking over. It's about a quieter shift in how people search - and what shows up when they do.
This page covers what that shift actually means for your business, what's worth paying attention to, and what you can do about it right now without overhauling everything.
How People Find Businesses Is Changing
Not long ago, someone looking for a roofing contractor in Wenatchee would type "roofing contractor Wenatchee" into Google, scroll through a list of results, and click a few links to compare.
That still happens. But increasingly, people are skipping the list entirely. They're asking questions - in Google, in ChatGPT, in Perplexity - and getting a direct answer with a short list of businesses or a single recommendation. No clicking required.
These are called AI answer engines, or AI overviews. Google has them built in now. ChatGPT answers business questions. Perplexity summarizes local service providers. The list is growing.
The businesses that show up in those answers aren't random. They're the ones whose websites are built in a way that AI systems can read, understand, and trust. That's the shift worth paying attention to.
A customer asking ChatGPT "who's a good electrician in Wenatchee" will get a specific answer. Whether your business is in that answer depends on how your website is structured - not just how it looks.
The Difference Between AI Website Builders and Real Custom Development
The other AI conversation that comes up constantly: "Can I just use Wix or Squarespace or one of those AI site builders? They're pretty good now, right?"
Sometimes, yes. If you need a simple online brochure and you're comfortable maintaining it yourself, a template builder can get you there.
But there's a meaningful gap between a site that looks fine and a site that's actually built to work - to rank in search, to load fast, to handle customer inquiries, to connect with other tools your business uses, to represent you accurately in AI-generated search results.
AI website builders generate generic structure. They produce the equivalent of a furnished apartment: fine for temporary use, difficult to make your own. The technical scaffolding underneath - the schema markup, the page structure, the performance tuning, the local signals - that's where the real work happens, and it's not something a template tool handles for you.
The honest answer: AI tools have made some parts of web development faster. They haven't replaced the judgment required to make a website actually perform for a specific business in a specific market.
What "AI Visibility" Actually Means for a Local Business
You don't need to understand how AI works to benefit from this. What you need is a website and a Google Business Profile that are built the right way.
Specifically, that means:
- Structured data (schema markup). This is code that tells search engines and AI systems exactly what your business does, where you're located, what your hours are, and what services you offer. It's invisible to your customers but critical for machines reading your site.
- Clear, specific content. AI answer engines favor content that directly answers questions - who you are, what you do, where you serve, how to reach you. Vague brand copy doesn't surface well. Specific, honest descriptions do.
- A well-maintained Google Business Profile. For local businesses, this is still one of the highest-leverage things you can keep up to date. AI systems pull from it directly.
- FAQ-style content. Content structured as questions and answers is picked up by AI overviews at a significantly higher rate than standard page copy. If your site answers the questions your customers are actually asking, it gets surfaced.
The short version:
AI visibility is less about doing new things and more about making sure the fundamentals are done right. Most local business websites aren't.
Why Experience Matters More as AI Tools Get Better
Here's the part that surprises people: the better AI tools get, the more important it is to work with a developer who has deep experience - not less.
AI tools are very good at generating things that look right. Code that looks correct. Content that sounds professional. Designs that seem polished. What they're not good at is knowing whether what they generated actually works for your specific situation, or whether it introduced a problem that won't show up for six months.
The developers who understand what's underneath - the systems, the databases, the logic that makes a web application actually function - can use AI to move faster while catching what AI gets wrong. The developers who learned to build websites through AI prompts, without that underlying foundation, often can't tell the difference.
For your business, that distinction matters. A website that looks fine but has broken schema, slow load times, or a checkout process that silently fails during high traffic - those problems are invisible until they cost you money. An experienced developer working with AI tools delivers speed without sacrificing accountability.
What to Actually Do Right Now
If you're a Wenatchee or North Central Washington business owner and you want to make sure your website is positioned well for how search works today and where it's heading, here's what to focus on:
Audit your Google Business Profile
Make sure your business name, address, phone, hours, services, and photos are accurate and complete. This is free and high-impact. If you haven't updated it in over a year, start here.
Check what your website actually says about you
Is it clear what you do, who you serve, and where you're located? Is that information in plain text - not just in images or in vague brand language? If someone asked your homepage a direct question, would it answer it?
Ask about schema markup
If you're working with a developer, ask whether your site has LocalBusiness schema markup in place. If they don't know what that is, that's useful information.
Search for your own business in AI tools
Go to ChatGPT or Perplexity and search for your type of business in your city. See what comes up. If competitors are showing and you're not, that gap is fixable - and most local businesses in this region haven't addressed it yet.
This Is What I Do for Local Businesses in North Central Washington
I'm Patrik Hertzog - I've been building websites professionally for 25 years, based in Wenatchee. Local Search and AI Visibility is one of five services I offer, and it's increasingly where I spend the most time with new clients.
Most local businesses in this region are still running websites that were built for how search worked five years ago. That gap is an opportunity - but it closes as more businesses catch on.
If you want to know where your site stands and what it would take to close the gap, I'm straightforward about what's worth doing and what isn't. No pitch decks. No mystery.
Let's talk about your site