ChatGPT is cooked + new AI coming to GBPs

last week's local SEO developments

January 19, 2026

Bonjour šŸ„–

Fancy some local SEO with your Monday morning croissant?

1. When did you last update your business description?

You need to update your business description on your citations right now.

Most businesses wrote their business description years ago, when they first built their citations, and then never touched it again. And sometimes (most of the time) it's really poorly written.

Think of your description like a data set that search engines and AI use to understand your business. You want it to:

  1. Be written in clear, structured statements, often called semantic triples:
    Subject - predicate - object.

  2. Clearly explain what your business is, what it does, and what it specializes in.

For example: [Acme Pest Control] [is a Dallas pest control company] [specializing in wasp removal].

What you say about yourself only goes so far. What really matters is what the broader web says about you. And your citation descriptions are a golden opportunity to fix outdated messaging and emphasize things you probably havenā€™t thought about in years.

@darrenshawseo

Local SEO Tip you NEED to know: update your business description on your citations. Most businesses wrote their business description years... See more

Donā€™t have a TikTok account? Watch on Instagram!

2. Googleā€™s new conversational AI agent is coming to GBPs (I think)

Googleā€™s new conversational AI agent is coming to Google Business Profiles (I think).

Itā€™s a new feature in Merchant Center called Business Agent, and itā€™s a conversational experience in Google Search that lets shoppers chat directly with your brand. You can even customize the agent to match your brand voice.

Business Agent pulls information from your website and your Merchant Center data, which allows it to give helpful, context-aware answers. Under the hood, it uses Gemini models to analyze your product data and other business information you provide.

To me, this represents a sneak preview of what the next iteration of the ā€œAsk Mapsā€ feature will look like on Google Maps. The current version lets you ask a question, but then it gives you the answer, and thatā€™s it. Itā€™s not conversational.

I think a conversational version of Ask Maps will be coming soon.

Hereā€™s what Whitespark is doing to help our SEO Services clients prepare for this:

  • Researching what data we can and should be extracting from clients (query fan out with Michael Kingā€™s Qforia, AlsoAsked, etc.)

  • Regular interviews with our clients to collect the data

  • Fully building out their Google Business Profiles and regularly updating with fresh information in the Description, Services, Products, and Posts sections.

  • Adding more details to every page of their website. Our goal is to cover every tiny detail about what the client does, what products they carry, what payments they accept, insurance, etc.

  • Marking up all this data in Schema. I know Iā€™ve said schema doesnā€™t matter for local, but Iā€™m changing my tune. Structuring your data in a way that helps the robots ingest it has got to be helpful, right?

Our goal is to give Google ALL the data our clients need for AI agents to answer any question, AND to have them appear in AI and traditional search results.

See what other local SEOs think on LinkedIn.

3. ChatGPT is cooked

ChatGPT is cooked. Gemini will power Siri and other Apple Intelligence features in the future.

Google already owns the Android market. Now theyā€™re going to be the default AI on Appleā€™s ecosystem, too. Thatā€™sā€¦ almost every mobile device on Earth.

How does ChatGPT realistically compete with Gemini at that scale?

ChatGPT is burning through investor cash and still struggling to turn it into revenue. Meanwhile, Google is casually dropping $100B revenue quarters.

And Google is already embedded into all our workflows: Gmail, Googel Docs, Google Sheets, Google Meet, Google Cloud, Google Business Profiles, etc. I donā€™t really use ChatGPT anymore because Gemini is included in our company's Google Workspace account.

Google owns the whole market now. I think itā€™s over for ChatGPT.

Some people disagree. Some brought up the FTC. See the discussion on Facebook.

4. Your rank tracker might be hiding your wins

What if your local SEO strategy is working, but your grid rank tracker just doesnā€™t show it?

The whole point of rank tracking is to measure the impact of your local SEO work. So, if your rank tracker stops tracking at position 20, what are you really measuring?

Say you make some updates, and your rankings at all points move from positions 80 to 30. That's a huge win! But you wouldnā€™t know that if youā€™re using a rank tracker that displays all positions above 20 as ā€œ20+ā€.

Thatā€™s why Whitesparkā€™s Local Ranking Grids tracks rankings all the way up to 100 positions. We have the only tool that tracks to 100. This is one of the biggest things that sets our software apart from other grid ranking tools.

Our local ranking grid tool is also the most beautiful on the market. Itā€™s genuinely a delight to use, and it costs the same or less than anything else out there.

Try it free (no credit card required) šŸ‘‡ļø

Au revoir!

Darren

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