Our method
How we run a search program
We run every engagement through four phases: onboarding, a baseline audit, implementation, and monthly reporting. We measure the work against booked appointments, not vanity metrics, across every surface your buyers actually use. That means classic Google results, the local map pack, and the AI answers people now ask first.
Updated July 2026
The four phases
How an engagement runs
- 01
Onboarding
In week one we get access to your site, analytics, and business profiles. Then we agree on the numbers that define success, before any work starts.
- 02
Baseline audit
In the first weeks we take a full starting-line snapshot of your technical health, search visibility, local presence, and content. It shows exactly where you are leaking leads, and everything after works from this map.
- 03
Implementation
From there the work is ongoing. We move through the backlog in priority order, highest-impact first, and put the changes live.
- 04
Monthly reporting
Every month we re-measure against the baseline and show what moved, with a deeper re-baseline each quarter. No six-month wait to find out whether it is working.
The landscape
How local search actually works in 2026
Local search stopped being a single Google ranking a while ago. Here is what changed, and how we build around it.
Multi-surface, not "rank number one"
Buyers now check around six review sites before they choose. Between 2025 and 2026, Google's share of review reading fell from 83% to 71%, while AI answers rose from 6% to 45% and Apple Maps from 14% to 27% (industry research). We manage your presence across all of them.
The map pack still owns "near me"
Google removed AI Overviews from local provider and "near me" searches. On health "near me" queries that share dropped from 100% to 0% between 2023 and 2025, so the map pack still wins those. AI Overviews instead saturate education and symptom questions, which we own with content and measure by citations, not clicks.
Three surfaces, three playbooks
The local pack, classic organic results, and AI answers each reward different things (Whitespark's 2026 factor study). We run the right approach for each, instead of running one strategy and hoping.
Reviews are the biggest lever, and a legal minefield
Velocity beats volume. But review gating, only asking your happy customers, is now federally illegal, with FTC penalties up to about $51,700 per violation, along with incentives and kiosk asks. We build review flows that are compliant by design.
Schema defines your entity for AI, it does not chase stars
Self-serving star-rating markup risks a manual penalty, and the old FAQ and HowTo rich results are gone. We use structured data to make your business legible to AI answers, not to fake a rating.
The "Google will not index AI content" myth
Google judges quality, not how content was produced. What gets penalized is thin, mass-produced, unedited pages. Everything we publish is reviewed by a person and built on real expertise.
The difference
Three surfaces, three playbooks
| Local pack | Classic organic | AI answers | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rewards most | Google Business Profile and reviews | On-page and links | On-page, reviews, and citations |
| Where you show up | The map and the 3-pack | The organic links | Inside the AI answer |
| How we measure it | Map rank and calls | Rankings and traffic | Citations and mentions |
Weighting drawn from Whitespark's 2026 local search factor study.
What we do not do
The tactics we refuse to run
- Review gating or paid incentives for reviews
- Fake or self-serving star-rating markup
- A thin doorway page for every city
- Keyword-stuffed business profiles
- Mass link and citation blasting
- Chasing "undetectable AI"
We avoid these because they carry real penalties and they do not work.
FAQ
Questions we get
How long until I see results?
Indexing takes days. Ranking is a three-to-nine-month trust window for a newer site. We show monthly movement against your baseline the whole way, so you are never waiting in the dark to find out whether it is working.
How is this different from an agency that just sends a monthly report?
We measure against booked appointments and a real baseline, not a vanity dashboard. Every month you see what moved against your starting line and why, tied to the numbers that actually pay you.
Do you cover local and AI search, or just Google?
All of it. Classic Google results, the local map pack, and the AI answers buyers now ask first in tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Each surface rewards different things, so we run the right approach for each.
Will publishing AI-assisted content hurt my rankings?
No. Google judges quality, not how content was produced. What gets penalized is thin, mass-produced, unedited pages. Our content is reviewed by a person and built on real expertise.
Start here
See where you stand
Tell us where you are leaking leads today. We will run the starting-line snapshot and send back a prioritized roadmap at no cost.
No cost · No contract · Roadmap in 7 business days