Neighborhood relevance

How neighborhoods appear in questions

Bay Area AEO's city pages each list the neighborhoods customers mention and sample questions that use them. The San Francisco page includes “Best burrito in the Mission District” and “Plumber in the Sunset for an older home”. The Oakland page includes “Ethiopian restaurant in Temescal”. The real estate page includes “Who's a good listing agent in Willow Glen, San Jose? We're selling a 3-bedroom this spring.” Each of these names a place smaller than a city, and in each case the assistant has to decide which businesses belong to that place.

It decides from what it can read: the address on the listings, the service area, the neighborhoods named on the website, the places mentioned in reviews, and the local guides and articles that name the business. Bay Area AEO's San Francisco page describes the work in those terms: helping businesses earn the spots in the answer with neighborhood relevance, consistent listings and coverage in the local guides and publications AI cites.

Storefront businesses

For a business with a front door, the address does most of the work, but only if the address is consistent and the neighborhood name appears where an assistant can read it. Many listings show only the street address and city. Customers say “in Temescal” or “in Japantown”. Close that gap by naming the neighborhood in the website's opening paragraph, on the contact page, in the listing descriptions and in the page title of the home page: “Ethiopian restaurant in Temescal, Oakland”.

Landmarks help too. Bay Area AEO's boba shop page notes that people mention nearby landmarks such as campuses, plazas and transit in their prompts, and its San Francisco page includes a question about a restaurant near Oracle Park before a Giants game. A sentence such as “two blocks from the Caltrain station” or “across from Lake Merritt” gives the assistant a match for questions that use the landmark in place of the neighborhood.

Service-area businesses

For a business that travels to customers, the address says little about where it works. The service area does, and it should be specific. List the cities in the listings and on the website. For the main cities, name the neighborhoods worked in most and say something true about the work there.

That last part is what separates useful neighborhood content from filler. Bay Area AEO's city pages are full of local context a business can respond to. The Oakland page mentions customers asking for a contractor in the Oakland hills for a seismic retrofit. The San Francisco page mentions a plumber in the Sunset for an older home and the Victorian homes of the Haight, Noe Valley and Bernal Heights. A painter who writes “We repaint Victorian and Edwardian exteriors in Noe Valley and Bernal Heights, including lead-safe preparation of original trim” has said something specific to those neighborhoods that an assistant can match.

When a neighborhood deserves its own page

A neighborhood or city page earns its place when there is something specific to say: different housing stock, different regulations, different customer needs, real projects completed there. A property manager in Oakland has something distinct to say about Oakland's rent rules that does not apply in Walnut Creek; Bay Area AEO's property management page names city-specific content on rent control and tenant protection rules as a signal. A real estate agent has market context for each area served; the real estate page asks for in-depth neighborhood pages with market context, housing stock and what buyers should know.

When there is nothing distinct to say, a neighborhood belongs in a list on the service-area page and in the listing settings, with no page of its own. Twenty near-identical city pages with the name swapped are doorway pages; search engines discount them, and an assistant gains nothing from reading the same paragraph twenty times.

What to write on a neighborhood page

• The services offered there, and any that are not
• Something true and specific about the work in that area: housing types, rules, common problems, customer needs
• Real projects or customers from the area, described in text with permission
• Practical details: response times, parking, travel fees, nearest location
• Reviews from customers in that neighborhood, quoted with their consent
• Links to the main service pages, so the neighborhood page is a doorway to substance

Reviews that mention places

Customers often mention their neighborhood without being asked: “the best dim sum we've had in the Richmond”, “fixed our 1920s bungalow in Willow Glen”. Those mentions tell an assistant where the business works and who it serves. Bay Area AEO's home services industry page lists review detail as a signal: reviews that mention the job, the city and the experience, which AI quotes directly. When asking for reviews (chapter 32), it is fair to invite customers to describe the job and where it was, as long as the wording is theirs.

Local guides and neighborhood media

The strongest neighborhood signal is usually a third party: a neighborhood blog, a local newspaper, a merchants' association, a community guide. These are the sources Bay Area AEO's San Francisco page describes as the local guides and publications AI cites. A coffee shop named in a Rockridge guide or a bakery in a Fourth Street merchants' directory in Berkeley has been placed in the neighborhood by someone else. Chapter 34 covers how to earn those mentions.

Businesses with several locations

A business with locations in more than one neighborhood or city needs a page for each location, with its own address, hours, phone, staff and something specific about the place. Each listing links to its own location page. This lets an assistant answer a neighborhood question with the right branch, and it avoids the confusion of one page trying to represent three addresses.

Community and cultural place names

Some of the place names customers use describe communities more than boundaries. Bay Area AEO's city pages list several: Little Saigon in San Jose, Little Kabul in Fremont, Fruitvale and Chinatown in Oakland, Japantown in San Jose. A business that serves one of these communities, in its language or with its food, has a real connection worth stating. Say it plainly on the site and listings, in the community's own terms, and note the languages spoken. A question such as “dentist in San Jose who speaks Vietnamese” (one of the sample questions on Bay Area AEO's dentist page) is answered from exactly that kind of detail.

Regional words

Bay Area customers also use regional names: the Peninsula, the South Bay, the East Bay, the North Bay, the Tri-Valley, wine country, the Delta, the coast. Bay Area AEO's sample questions include “best croissants in the East Bay”, “best gelato on the Peninsula” and “Mohs surgeon in the South Bay”. If the business serves a whole region, say so in those words as well as listing the cities. Part 6 of this handbook covers each region in turn, starting with San Francisco in chapter 41.

Checking neighborhood relevance

Add neighborhood questions to the prompt panel: the service plus the neighborhood, for each of the business's main neighborhoods. Watch for two changes over the months: whether the business starts being named, and whether the assistant's description mentions the neighborhood. The second is a good sign that the place has become part of how the assistant understands the business.

Related chapters41. San Francisco · 17. Service pages an assistant can quote · 34. Local press and guides · 8. The master business record