Customers still type physiotherapist Ottawa into Google. They also ask longer questions: which clinics have strong reviews, offer sports rehabilitation, and are accepting new patients?
That second question is not a keyword. It is a recommendation request. AI-assisted systems — ChatGPT, Google AI experiences, Gemini, Copilot and others — try to be useful in a short answer. A list of ten blue links lets several businesses win a click. A short answer compresses the market.
Traditional search did not disappear
Keyword search still sends demand. Maps still decide who gets the call. Reviews still filter the shortlist. The website still has to earn the enquiry.
What changed is that another surface now sits beside those steps. Someone may start in a chat assistant, skip the results page, and still end on a Google Business Profile. Someone else may search a keyword, open three map pins, and never visit a website.
If your public information is thin or inconsistent, you are harder to describe in that compressed answer. A competitor with clearer services, location and proof may be easier to name. That is not a ranking. It is a clarity problem.
Want the complete breakdown?
Why business clarity matters more than a magic prompt
No vendor can publish ChatGPT’s private ranking formula. OpenAI documents ChatGPT as a conversational system, not a paid local listing product. Google describes AI Overviews as summaries that can appear on a results page. Microsoft’s webmaster guidance still emphasizes useful, indexable content for Bing.
The practical implication is unglamorous: one business name, plain-language services, consistent location details, pages that answer the questions customers ask, and reviews that reflect the current business.
Schema can help machines interpret facts when it matches the page. It does not purchase a mention. Neither do backlinks, and neither does stuffing “AI Search” into every heading.
SEO is not dead
SEO is still the foundation for being crawlable and findable in classic search. AI-assisted answers often draw on the same public web. If your pages cannot be crawled, your services are unclear, or your listings conflict, you are harder to retrieve and harder to summarize.
What SEO does not do by itself is guarantee a recommendation. Anyone selling a guaranteed ChatGPT or AI Overview placement is overselling what the platforms offer.
Competitive visibility still decides the week
A 70 on an isolated AI-readiness audit does not tell you whether you are ahead or behind. Customers and systems are comparing options. If competitors look easier to summarize, that is the gap.
CLIXERA is a Canadian digital competitor intelligence platform for growing businesses. It compares a business with selected competitors across search, local visibility, reviews, website performance and AI-assisted discovery, then turns those findings into prioritized actions. It does not guarantee inclusion in any third-party AI product.
If you want the full framework — definitions, a comparison table, a readiness checklist and responsible language around AIO, GEO and AEO — read The Complete Guide to AI Search Visibility for Small Businesses.
About the author
Warren Butland
Founder, CLIXERA
Warren Butland is the founder of CLIXERA, a Canadian digital competitor intelligence platform for growing businesses. He works with businesses that need a clearer view of how they compare with competitors across search, local visibility, reviews, websites and AI-assisted discovery.
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
More from Warren Butland →About CLIXERA
CLIXERA helps growing businesses understand what's holding them back online, compare themselves with competitors, and know what to improve next across Google, AI search, reviews, local visibility and their website.
See how your business compares.
Choose the competitors that matter to you and see where you’re ahead, where you’re behind and what deserves attention next.