AI search and audiences, explained

AI search

What it is: People asking ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, or a similar tool for a recommendation instead of scrolling a list of links.

What it does for you: If the model names you, you skipped the entire competition for that customer.

How fast this moved: BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, run with 1,002 US adults, found consumer use of AI tools for local business recommendations went from 6% to 45% in a single year. A year ago you could ignore this. You cannot now.

AI Overviews

What it is: The AI-written summary Google puts above the normal results.

What it does for you: When it names local businesses, it takes the top of the page. Getting named comes from the same things that drive everything else here: a complete Google Business Profile, real reviews, and pages that can actually be read and cited.

ChatGPT ads

What it is: Real advertising inside ChatGPT, in clearly labeled sponsored boxes at the bottom of an answer. OpenAI opened self-serve access in 2026.

What it does for you: Almost nobody in this industry is there yet. Being early in a channel is worth more than being good in a crowded one.

What it is not: Ads cannot change what the assistant says. They sit alongside the answer. Anyone telling you they can get you written into the AI's response is selling you something that does not exist.

Context hints

What it is: How you tell ChatGPT's ad system what situation a person is in when your ad should appear. Written as full sentences describing a real scenario, not as keywords.

What it does for you: Instead of bidding on the words "pool service," you describe the moment. Somebody in Carlsbad whose pool has gone green and is asking how to fix it. That is a different kind of targeting and it needs a different kind of writing.

A note on Perplexity

Perplexity ended advertising in early 2026. If an agency is offering you Perplexity ad placements, they have not checked in a while. We do not sell what does not exist.

Retargeting (remarketing)

What it is: Showing ads to people who already visited your website and did not call.

What it does for you: These are the warmest people you can reach. They already looked. Something stopped them.

Without a website: You cannot do it at all. There is nothing to tag them with.

Lookalike audience

What it is: You give the platform a list of your actual customers, and it goes and finds more people who resemble them.

What it does for you: It is the strongest targeting available on Meta, because it is built on who really bought rather than who you guessed would buy.

Why it takes time: A lookalike built from 50 customers is weak. From 500 it is a weapon. This is one of the things that compounds and cannot be rushed, which is why system three matters.

Customer match

What it is: Uploading your customer list, securely, so platforms can target or exclude those people.

What it does for you: Two uses. Reach people like your best customers, and stop paying to advertise to people who are already on your route.

Audience signal

What it is: A hint you give an automated campaign about who to start with.

What it does for you: Performance Max learns on its own, but it learns faster and wastes less if you point it in roughly the right direction on day one.

In-market audience

What it is: Google's classification of people it believes are actively shopping for a category right now.

What it does for you: Lets you reach somebody researching pool service before they have typed a specific search.

Audience exclusion

What it is: Telling a platform who not to show your ads to.

What it does for you: Underused and valuable. Exclude current customers, exclude job seekers, exclude people who already called. Every impression you do not waste is one you can spend on somebody new.

Review velocity

What it is: How steadily you get new reviews over time, as opposed to how many you have total.

What it does for you: Steady beats a burst. Google reads twenty reviews in one week as a campaign, and it is usually right. Two or three a week, every week, is worth far more than sixty at once.

Review responses

What it is: Replying to reviews, good and bad.

What it does for you: BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 19% of consumers now expect a response the same day they post, up from 6% a year earlier. Google also reads engagement as an activity signal. A profile with fifty reviews and no owner responses looks absent even when the reviews are good.

Review count, and why we do not chase it

What it is: How many reviews you have.

What we found: Review count does not predict operator size in this industry. When we built our list of Southern California pool operators, confirmed multi-truck companies had a median of about fourteen reviews.

What that means for you: Do not let anybody tell you that you need two hundred reviews to compete locally. In this vertical, recency, response rate and consistency do more work than raw count.