Platform by platform

The platforms that matter

Bay Area AEO optimizes for ChatGPT, Google Gemini and AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot and the voice assistants that draw on the same data, like Siri. That list covers nearly all of the AI answers a Bay Area customer is likely to read. The platforms overlap, and they also differ in ways that decide where a business should spend its first hours of work.

What follows describes how each platform generally finds local businesses. The platforms change their products often, so the useful habit is to check the description against real answers during the monthly test in chapter 47.

Google AI Overviews and Gemini

Google's AI Overviews appear above the ordinary search results for many questions, and Bay Area AEO's published estimate is that about 60% of adults read them. For a local question they draw on the same material Google uses for search and Maps: indexed web pages, Business Profiles, and the reviews and photos attached to those profiles. Gemini, Google's assistant, uses Google Search and Maps in a similar way when a question needs current local information.

For a business, this makes the Google Business Profile the first listing to get right (see chapter 9), and it means ordinary search health still counts: pages Google can crawl and understand are pages its AI features can draw from. The overlap with traditional SEO is greatest here, which chapter 6 covers.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is the assistant most customers mean when they say they “asked AI”. It can answer from what its model learned in training, or it can search the web and read pages live, which it does for most questions about local businesses, current hours or recent openings. When it shows local results it has drawn on listing and review data from outside providers as well as on websites. OpenAI publishes the names of its crawlers, including OAI-SearchBot for search and GPTBot for training, and a site that blocks them limits what ChatGPT can read (see chapter 27).

Because ChatGPT pulls from many places at once, the most useful thing a business can do for it is consistency: the same facts on its website, its Google and Bing listings, Yelp and its industry directories. A conflict anywhere shows up as hesitation in the answer.

Perplexity

Perplexity searches the web for nearly every question and shows its sources as numbered citations beside the answer. That makes it the easiest platform to learn from. Run a customer question through Perplexity and the citations show exactly which pages it trusted: often a local guide, a directory, a Reddit thread or a business's own service page.

Those citations are a map of the sources worth earning. If Perplexity keeps citing a neighborhood blog's “best brunch in Rockridge” list, a restaurant that wants the brunch question knows where its trusted mention needs to come from. Its crawler is PerplexityBot.

Claude

Claude, made by Anthropic, answers from its model knowledge and can search the web when that feature is turned on, citing the pages it read. Its crawlers include ClaudeBot and Claude-SearchBot. For local questions it behaves much like the other search-backed assistants: it needs pages that state facts clearly and sources that agree. Claude tends to describe businesses carefully and to qualify what it is unsure of, so specific, checkable facts on a page help it name a business with confidence.

Microsoft Copilot

Copilot runs on Bing. Its local answers draw on Bing's index and on Bing Places, Microsoft's business listing service, which many businesses have never claimed. That makes Copilot the platform where a small amount of listing work produces the clearest change. Bing Places can import a Google Business Profile, so claiming it is quick once the Google listing is correct (chapter 10).

Bing's index also feeds other products, so a business that is correct in Bing is correct in more places than Copilot alone.

Siri and voice assistants

When someone asks Siri for “a coffee shop open now near me” from an iPhone or a car, the answer comes from Apple Maps. Apple Maps carries its own business listings, managed through Apple Business Connect, and has long shown ratings and reviews from Yelp. Voice answers are short, often a single business, so the facts that decide them are hours, location and category, all of which live in the listing.

Bay Area AEO covers this group in its platform list as the voice assistants that draw on the same data. Chapter 11 covers Apple Business Connect step by step.

What to watch for on each platform

Each platform has habits that show up quickly in testing, and knowing them makes the monthly results easier to read.

Google's AI Overviews often sit above a map block, and the businesses in the overview and the map do not always match. Record both. An overview that names a business the map does not usually means the overview found strong text on a web page; a map listing missing from the overview usually means the profile is thin on the detail the question asked for.

ChatGPT sometimes names a business that has closed or moved, especially when it answers from model knowledge without searching. When that happens to a competitor it is a reminder to check what ChatGPT believes about your own business, using the direct question in the callout below. When it happens to your business, the fix is consistent current facts in the places it searches.

Perplexity cites community sources more often than the other platforms: Reddit threads, local forums, neighborhood blogs. For trades where customers discuss providers openly, such as coffee shops, contractors and therapists, those citations show which conversations shape the answer.

Claude and Gemini tend to give more cautious answers to health, legal and financial questions, often with a suggestion to check credentials. Businesses in those trades benefit most from license numbers and credentials stated plainly and matching official records, which chapter 20 covers.

Copilot answers often carry Bing's map card with the business's hours and phone number. A wrong phone number there is costly, and it is usually fixed in minutes in Bing Places.

What every platform has in common

For all the differences, the platforms reward the same underlying things. All of them read the business's website when they can reach it. All of them use listings, though different ones. All of them repeat language from reviews and articles when they describe a business. All of them favor facts that agree across sources. That is why the five signals in chapter 4 work across platforms, and why a business does not need a separate strategy for each one.

The platform-specific work is mostly listings: claim and correct the profile each platform leans on. Everything else (answer-ready pages, structured data, specific reviews, trusted mentions) helps on every platform at once.

Setting priorities

A business with limited time can order the platform work by where its customers are. A restaurant or coffee shop sees many voice and map questions, so Apple Maps and Google come first. A professional services firm sees longer, considered questions in ChatGPT or Perplexity, so its website content and directory profiles carry more weight. A home services contractor sees urgent phone questions, so Google, Apple Maps and Bing listings with accurate hours and service areas come first.

The prompt panel in chapter 46 should include every platform regardless, because customers do not tell a business which assistant they used. Bay Area AEO's monthly testing covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews for exactly that reason.

Related chapters3. How an assistant builds an answer · 9. Google Business Profile · 10. Bing Places and Copilot · 11. Apple Maps and Siri