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June 18, 2025

Local Memo: How ChatGPT Ranks Local Businesses and Meta’s Latest Visibility Shifts

Kelly Settino

Kelly Settino

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Summary

This week's memo highlights important shifts affecting digital visibility, including insights on ChatGPT’s handling of local business queries, the latest study on AI information sources, Facebook’s new link guidelines, and Instagram’s grid posts soon appearing in Google searches.

How ChatGPT “Ranks” Local Businesses

The News: While ChatGPT doesn’t use traditional “rankings” like Google’s search algorithm, it often displays results in ranked-style lists. Joe Youngblood analyzed numerous ChatGPT queries and identified key factors affecting business visibility:

  • Consensus: Frequent mentions in credible lists, reviews, and media coverage boost visibility.
  • Bing Places: A complete, verified Bing Places profile improves the likelihood of appearing in ChatGPT responses.
  • Bing Rankings: ChatGPT often incorporates real-time Bing search results into local answers.
  • Profile Completeness: Listings missing reviews, logos, or detailed descriptions may be excluded.
  • On-site Reviews: Authoritative on-site testimonials can positively influence ChatGPT responses.
  • Google Reviews: Freshness of Google reviews appears to impact visibility, with outdated or absent reviews negatively affecting rankings.
What This Means: Marketers must prioritize thorough, updated profiles and strong local consensus to remain visible in ChatGPT’s results, especially given its reliance on Bing and authoritative external signals.

Where AI Tools Get Their Information

The News: A new study from Profound, cited by Search Engine Roundtable, analyzed 30 million citations across major AI platforms from August 2024 to June 2025, revealing significant source preferences:

  • ChatGPT: Primarily cites Wikipedia (48%), followed by Reddit (11.3%).
  • Google AI Overviews: Prefers conversational content like Reddit (21%), YouTube, and Quora, with Wikipedia at just 5.7%.
  • Perplexity: Heavily leans on Reddit (47%), suggesting a preference for crowd-sourced, experiential content.

What This Means: Content placement is crucial. Leveraging platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and Quora could significantly boost your content’s visibility on major AI-driven platforms.

The News: Social Media Today reported new guidance in Facebook’s Professional Dashboard recommending that links directly in posts could lower reach. Instead, placing links in the first comment is advised to maintain visibility. Meta’s data shows posts without external links capture 97% of U.S. post views, signaling a shift toward content keeping users within Facebook.

What This Means: To maximize Facebook reach, avoid embedding external links in posts. Experiment with placing links in comments and consider using engaging media such as images or videos.

Instagram Posts Headed to Google Searches

The News: SheldonSocial shared a screenshot of a notice from Instagram that public grid posts from professional accounts will appear in Google search results starting July 10.

What This Means: This shift significantly broadens content discovery opportunities for Instagram professional accounts. Brands and creators should optimize captions and engagement strategies for Google visibility, essentially making “Instagram SEO” a necessary practice moving forward.