What's actually different
More people are starting their search for a local service — a plumber, a landscaper, an electrician — not by typing into Google directly, but by asking an AI assistant. Google itself has leaned into this with AI Overviews now appearing above traditional search results for a huge range of queries. This means there's now a real difference between being findable and being recommendable.
People are asking things like “who's a good plumber near me,” “find me a landscaper in Swan Hill,” or “what's the best lawn care service in Toowoomba” — and getting a direct, summarised answer rather than a list of links to scroll through. The business that gets named in that answer is the one that wins the enquiry.
Why this catches most small businesses off guard
Traditional SEO — the kind most small business websites are built around — focuses on keywords, backlinks, and page speed. All of that still matters. But AI tools work differently: they read and summarise the actual contentof a page to figure out what a business does, who it serves, and whether it's a good answer to someone's question.
A site that's visually nice but has thin, generic, or poorly structured content can rank fine on Google and still be completely invisible to an AI assistant — because there's nothing clear for it to read and cite. This is sometimes called AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) — structuring a website specifically so AI tools can understand and confidently recommend it, not just so a human finds it visually appealing.
What actually helps
Clear, direct answers on the page itself
An FAQ section that states things plainly — "Do you offer emergency callouts? Yes, 24/7 across [service area]." — gives an AI tool something exact to quote or reference. Vague, fluffy copy gives it nothing.
Structured data (schema markup)
This is effectively a translation layer that tells search engines and AI tools exactly what your business is, what it offers, and where it operates — without them having to guess from surrounding text. Every ecodevz build includes this as standard.
Specific, unambiguous service and location details
Vague copy ("we do all kinds of plumbing work") gives an AI tool nothing concrete to recommend you for. Specific copy ("emergency hot water system repairs across Swan Hill and surrounding areas") gives it something to actually cite.
What this means for your business
If your business doesn't have a website at all, this is a genuine, current reason to get one — being invisible to Google was already a problem; being invisible to the growing number of people using AI tools to find local services is a newer, faster-growing version of the same problem.
If you do have a website, it's worth checking whether it's actually structured in a way an AI tool could read and recommend from. Most older or template-based sites aren't.
Every website we build at ecodevz includes AI Search Optimisation as standard, not an add-on — because at this point, it's not really optional anymore.
Want to know where your current site stands with AI search?
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