Reviews in AI search: help your business get recommended

The shift is rapid. In BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 45% of consumers had used AI tools such as ChatGPT to find local businesses during the previous year. A year earlier the share was just 6%. AI tools are already the third most popular source of local recommendations, after Google and Facebook.

Google's own results are changing too: AI Overviews now appear for more than 25% of searches, almost twice the share a year earlier, and the proportion is higher for local searches. People increasingly receive an answer rather than ten blue links. The goal shifts from simply being found to being named in that answer.

AI assistants summarise existing signals when making recommendations. Reviews are a rich source because they describe what you do well in everyday language.

Each system draws on different sources:

• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode draw directly on Business Profile information, including review text and your replies.
• ChatGPT has no direct access to Google reviews and relies on Bing results, directories and review platforms. Yelp licensed review data to OpenAI and Perplexity, allowing those reviews to inform AI answers directly.
• Perplexity and other assistants combine web results with structured data from review sites and your own website.

Relying on one platform can therefore leave gaps. Google plus at least one other appropriate platform, such as Kiyoh or Klantenvertellen for Belgian webshops or Trustpilot for international customers, makes the profile more robust.

Despite their differences, AI search systems favour similar foundations:

1. Volume: enough reviews to build a useful picture. Ten reviews carry less weight than a hundred.
2. Recency: recent experiences matter. Recent research found that 73% of consumers mainly trust reviews less than a month old, and AI systems similarly favour current signals.
3. Distribution: presence across several platforms. The average consumer consults six review sources, and AI tools take a comparable broad view.
4. Machine readability: structured data explaining who you are, what you do and how customers rate the business.

Content matters as well: a review saying a boiler in Ghent was repaired the same day gives AI more context than a bare five-star rating. You can ask customers to briefly describe what they appreciated.

Strengthen the review profile without expensive tools:

1. Complete your Business Profile. Categories, services, hours and photos provide useful information for Google AI Overviews.
2. Collect fresh reviews consistently. Ask after successful work using a direct link, maintaining a routine rather than one-off campaigns.
3. Reply to reviews. Your responses add text assistants can read and show that the business is active.
4. Add schema markup. LocalBusiness data describing the name, address, hours and ratings makes the site machine-readable. Ask your developer about it.
5. Use a second review platform. Invitation-based platforms such as Kiyoh or Klantenvertellen connect webshop reviews to real transactions.
6. Answer customer questions on the website. Clear, direct answers are useful sources for AI citations.

You need not finish everything in a week. Work down the list: the first three steps cost no money and can produce measurable changes within weeks, in Maps and AI answers. The remaining three build on that foundation.

AI visibility is more than a vanity exercise. Brands cited in AI Overviews have, according to Triple Whale research, up to 35% higher click-through rates than conventional results. A mention also acts like a recommendation: the tool has already carried out part of the comparison.

The reverse matters too: if you are absent, a growing group of consumers may never encounter the business. Younger customers increasingly begin with an assistant instead of a conventional search.

Many small-business competitors have not addressed this yet. Improving the website and review profile now offers a head start.

Flova discusses the factors beyond reviews in getting your business into Google AI Overview.

AI search recommendations draw on review volume, recency, distribution across platforms and a machine-readable website. These are all areas a small business can improve without a large budget.

Want to know where your business stands, from its Business Profile to the website's technical foundations? Try the free marketing scan for a practical view of what needs attention first.