https://page2pod.com - Local SEO for AI search: Andrew Shotland shares the experiments that moved Map Pack, Google AI, and ChatGPT visibility.

Andrew Shotland, founder and CEO of Local SEO Guide, has spent nearly 20 years doing local SEO for everyone from Walmart to single-location businesses. His short answer on what drives local visibility now is proximity, engagement, and reviews. In a Local Falcon study of roughly seven million local queries, a business's first 200 reviews did most of the ranking work across local packs, Google AI, and ChatGPT. After that point, additional reviews mainly expanded the radius where the business ranks.

Andrew also walks through the tests behind his thinking. He had people request driving directions to a business to see if map rankings moved. He recommends opening a legitimate second location instead of producing more content. He explains how review language maps to LLM conversation paths, which is where local SEO meets Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). And he describes a Reddit brand-mention test where AI visibility spiked, then disappeared as soon as the posting stopped.

📍 In This Episode

• Can driving-direction requests move Map Pack rankings?
• Why a legitimate second location can beat months of content work
• Local Services Ads (LSAs): service areas, lead quality, and rising CPCs
• Apple Maps ads: 25-character copy, images as copy, and tracking workarounds
• How many Google reviews do you need to rank?
• Review text, LLM conversation paths, and citation syndication
• The Reddit brand-mention experiment and AI visibility

A practitioner's look at which local SEO tactics hold up once AI systems are answering the "near me" question.

🔔 Subscribe for new episodes with the practitioners actually doing the work → https://www.youtube.com/@thepage2podcast922?sub_confirmation=1

💬 How many reviews does the top-ranked business in your market have? Did reaching that number move your rankings? Tell us in the comments.

Follow Andrew Shotland

✅ Andrew Shotland / Local SEO Guide → https://www.localseoguide.com

✅ Andrew Shotland on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/localseoguide/

🛠️ Tools & Resources Mentioned

🔗 Andrew's Apple Maps ads blog post → https://www.localseoguide.com/everything-i-know-about-apple-maps-ads-so-far/

🔗 Local SEO Guide Reddit study → https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/reddit-is-no-longer-just-a-nerd-forum-its-an-ai-visibility-lever/

🔗 How Reviews Influence AI Overviews → https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.localseoguide.com/how-reviews-influence-ai-overviews-and-local-rankings/

🔗 Yext Local Data Study → https://www.localseoguide.com/yext-research-shares-a-few-billion-data-points-with-seos/

Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media a Full-Service AEO Agency → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

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https://page2pod.com - Your primary Google Business Profile category is the most powerful local ranking signal you control, and most businesses pick the wrong one.

Greg Gifford, Chief Strategy Officer at SearchLab, joins Jon Clark and Joe DeVita to separate what's actually changing in local search from the noise. His position: SEO isn't being replaced, but the foundations now feed a second consumer. AI models pull from the same local directories, reviews, and off-site brand signals that local SEO has always depended on — Yext research found 86% of AI citations for local businesses come from local SEO directory sites — which makes accuracy and off-site presence more valuable, not less.

Greg also gets into why SearchLab reorganized its SEO team around specialists instead of generalists, why customer service became a retention lever, and why AI search is probabilistic rather than deterministic — so the recommendation matters more than the citation link everyone's tracking.

Plus a lot of automotive: OEM content pushdowns, the approved vendor program, and why dealerships consistently misunderstand service and parts search.

📍 In This Episode

- Why SearchLab moved from SEO generalists to specialist teams — and how they ran the re-org without losing people

- Is your primary Google Business Profile category costing you map pack visibility?

- Why dealerships lose service and parts searches to Jiffy Lube

- Separate department profiles for parts and service, and the eligibility rule Google waived for car dealers

- When do city and location pages cross the line into doorway page spam?

- Review gating, the FTC update, and why Google is removing reviews 400 at a time

- Recovering filtered Yelp reviews — a 15–20% return without earning a single new review

- Local citations as the ante, not the win: what directories actually do for AI search visibility

- Digital PR as off-site brand building, not link building with a new name

A practical look at where local SEO fundamentals still hold, where they've quietly changed, and what AI search is rewarding right now.

Subscribe for new episodes with the practitioners actually doing this work.

Comment below: what's your primary Google Business Profile category, and when was the last time you actually questioned it?

Connect with Greg Gifford

✅ SearchLab Digital → https://searchlabdigital.com

✅ Greg on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/greggifford/

✅ Greg on Reddit → https://www.reddit.com/user/BAMFOC

✅ Greg on X: https://twitter.com/greggifford

✅ Greg on Bluesky: ​​https://bsky.app/profile/greggifford.bsky.social

✅ Greg on Slidesshare: https://www.slideshare.net/greggifford?itemsPerPage=16

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Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

Follow the Page 2 Podcast

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Follow Jon Clark

✅ Jon Clark on Twitter → https://x.com/jonlclark

✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlclark

🛠️ Tools & Resources Mentioned

- Culture Index (hiring/personality pattern tool) → https://www.cultureindex.com

- Culture Index (hiring/personality pattern tool) → https://www.cultureindex.com

- Google Business Profile + the GBP Community Forum → https://support.google.com/business/community?hl=en

- Local Search Tuesday → https://searchlabdigital.com/local-search-tuesdays/

- G50 Summit (SEO Oktoberfest) → https://seoktoberfest.net/

- SEO Week Presentation → https://seoweek.org/greg-gifford/

https://page2pod.com - Why social and video now decide whether your brand makes it into AI Overviews — and why your own website is the last place to optimize.

Cindy Krum, founder and CEO of MobileMoxie, argues that video has moved from a digital marketing must to an SEO must. Her case: LLMs are consensus machines. They don't care that your site says you're the best at something — they're aggregating what social, reviews, publishers, creators, and video say about you. If the web can't agree on what your brand is for, you haven't done the work.

She also walks through why a long-form video with real chapters behaves like a set of separate blog posts, each section eligible to answer a different question, and why short-form vertical video still matters for discovery even though it isn't showing up in AI Overviews yet. Plus: entity-first indexing, query fan-out, People Also Ask as the testing ground for AI Overview inclusion, and where Google Discover, Merchant Center, and TikTok Shop collide.

🎥 In This Episode

- Why Google keeps pulling YouTube into AI Overviews

- Do engagement metrics matter for getting cited by AI?

- Scripting video so the transcript contains the actual search phrase

- Turning your help center and FAQ pages into video answers

- Where vertical video ranks today — and where it doesn't

- What should a video chapter structure actually look like?

- Entity-first indexing, MUM, and query fan-out, explained plainly

- Building an entity plus its modifiers into an AEO prompt set

- Who owns SEO when discovery happens on social and Reddit

If search has become a journey that moves across platforms, this is a practical map of where to spend your effort first.

Subscribe for weekly conversations with the practitioners shaping SEO, AEO, and GEO.

Drop a comment: at your company, who actually owns social video — the SEO team or the social team? And has that changed in the last year?

Find Cindy Krum

✅ MobileMoxie → https://mobilemoxie.com

✅ Cindy on X → https://x.com/suzzicks

✅ Cindy on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindykrum

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Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

Follow the Page 2 Podcast

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✅ Page 2 Podcast on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/page2pod

✅ Page 2 Podcast on Tiktok → https://www.tiktok.com/@jonleeclark

Follow Jon Clark

✅ Jon Clark Official Site → https://jonclark.co

✅ Jon Clark on Twitter → https://x.com/jonlclark

✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlclark

Chapters

0:00 Search Beyond the Website

2:16 Cindy Krum and MobileMoxie

5:51 Why Google Cares About Video

8:49 How Social Drives Brand-First Search

11:47 Scripting Video for Keywords

13:56 Turning Support Content Into Video

15:42 Vertical Video and AI Overviews

17:40 How Should You Structure Chapters?

20:12 Sponsor: Moving Traffic Media

20:56 AEO as a Branding Channel

24:15 Journeys, Micro-Moments, and MUM

26:53 Entity-First Indexing Explained

31:44 People Also Ask as Query Fan-Out

33:53 Merchant Center, Discover, TikTok Shop

38:45 Where to Focus for AI Overviews

40:02 Who Owns SEO Now?

44:14 Rapid Fire and Career Advice

🛠️ Tools & Resources Mentioned

- OtterlyAI (Thomas Peham, previous episode) → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJsQ2qJho-M

- All About Fraggles → https://moz.com/blog/fraggles

- Google MUM (Multitask Unified Model) → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQDRL8MwVj0

- See Cindy at the Amaze Conference → https://amazeconference.com/