Hello Lunch Break. Eating it from the car. Tuna salad with a potato chip or two. Center Point announced its first tenants last week. Burton’s, a bagel spot, a men’s store and more. Our town is growing so fast you just have to look outside your car window.

None of it surprises me. One of my clients works in real estate, and through that work I get a weekly look at how many people are actively trying to move here. Trust me, loads. The construction is just the demand catching up.

Here is what matters for you. When a town grows, the businesses chasing the same customer grow with it. Yet, growth does not widen the field in AI. It raises the stakes of being the name inside that answer.

Alright. Clock's ticking. Back to work.

THE GAME CHANGED

Getting cited by AI on some platforms can feel like a backstage credit. Your name is tucked somewhere. Easy to miss.

On May 6, Google launched updates to AI Overviews and AI Mode. You’ll see citation links right next to the sentence they support. It is a clickable door, and Google just moved it into the doorway. When the AI recommends a business and your name is the link on that sentence, you have been handed the click.

So, upside, it might increase the clicks to the cited page and that’s worth paying attention to.

THE WINDOW IS NOW

If I rank well on Google, the AI will recommend me. It feels true. It is not.

SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index found that among the brands most visible in traditional local search, only about 45 percent were also the brands AI assistants recommended most. Fewer than half. 

And the window to learn quietly is closing. Google confirmed this month that AI Mode is no longer an experiment. It is a default search experience now. 

The takeaway: It’s game-time if your business is in the 55%.

YOUR COMPETITORS ARE ASLEEP

Open ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity in three tabs. In each, type the question your best customer would ask: 

“the best (your category) in (your town)“

Read what comes back. Look for three things. 

That is your competition's brand, summarized by the machine your customers trust. 

Start tracking and keep your notes.

WHAT’S THE PROMPT

You saw who the AI names. This prompt tells you why.

It walks through the sources an AI checks before recommending anyone, shows you clear and consistent next to thin and contradictory, and ends with the single highest impact fix for your business.

Run the prompt for your business→

Swap in your real business type, category, and town before you send it.

CITED

I ask AI assistants a lot of test questions about my market. This week, this question caught my attention.

“the best farmers market in Wilmington, NC”

ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity all hand me the same three names. Riverfront Farmers Market. Biggers Market. The Wilmington Farmers Market at Tidal Creek. The order and framing for each change. The names never do.

Good news: Each business has a presence clear and consistent enough across the web that three systems read it the same way. They became the answer without paying for an ad. And citations compound. That’s a win.

Bad news: Wilmington has more than three farmers markets. That is the gift and the warning citations carry, in the same breath. The answer has a short guest list. Three businesses in your category are on it right now, and you can find out tonight whether you are one of them.

Three engines agreeing about you is not luck. It is what happens when your story is told the same way everywhere the AI looks.

Now go get yourself on the list.

- Anna

THE POLL