Hello Lunch Break. Hello, August. And, because it's also birthday week for my team and me. Hello, cake.
If you want to work for Top of Search, prerequisite: be a Leo. Or at least act like one. 🤪
We are in celebration mode over here which got me curious. What are your birthday traditions? Reply back, let me know. For me, it's cake. Store bought, homemade, not really particular, just cake. So, I wondered if I was in a pinch for a birthday celebration, are there any local bakeries that offer same day cakes? More on that below.
Alright. Clock's ticking. Back to work.
THE GAME CHANGED
AI knows who you are. It still won't say your name.
Victorious tested 175 brands across eight AI platforms last quarter. Here’s what it found. Ask “What can you tell me about [Brand]?”and platforms get it right 96% of the time. Ask the same platforms “Who are the best [category] options near me?” and 89% of them never come up at all.
What this says: Recognition and recommendation require two different strategies when it comes to AI visibility. A recommendation doesn’t come from the brand's own website. Instead, platforms look for how many other sites link to you and how many other sites talk about you.
THE WINDOW IS NOW
Your Yelp Page is now a ChatGPT input
Yelp is licensing its reviews, ratings, photos, and business details to OpenAI. Axios broke it July 23. Request a Quote is coming to ChatGPT next, so a homeowner could ask for a house cleaner and send a quote request without opening a browser.
When I heard the news, I ran a series of local queries in ChatGPT and right now still see Reddit as being the most cited domain but I recommend getting ahead of this if you, like many others, stopped maintaining Yelp in 2019 and want to be visible in ChatGPT.
YOUR COMPETITORS ARE ASLEEP
Nobody writes the word "today" on their own website.
Urgency prompts are the least competitive in AI platforms right now. Prompts like, “need it same day,” “tonight,” “open right now”. Every bakery site in town says custom cakes for every occasion. Almost none of them say what you can walk out with in the next hour. Profound looked at 11.8 billion citations last month and found company websites are the single largest source AI pulls from, 69% of everything Gemini cites. Your site is being read. It just isn't answering the urgent question.
Under 30 minutes: Open your homepage and your main service page. Find one sentence that tells a stranger what you can do for them today, without an appointment, without a lead time. If it isn't there, write it and publish it.
WHAT’S THE PROMPT
Make the engine show its work.
Most people test AI by asking who's the best. This tells you the answer without telling you why. Here’s my recommendation. Ask for the reasoning instead and the engine will hand you its evidence, which is the part you can change.
“I need a birthday cake in Wilmington, NC today. Not next week. Today. List the businesses that can handle it, and for each one tell me exactly what information you used to decide they could do a same day order.”
Swap the cake for whatever you sell. Then build the prompt set for your whole category: topofsearchmarketing.com/frameworks/prompt-set
CITED
Ready, Beat Rated. 🎂
AI says: Apple Annie's Bake Shop
I ran the prompt “same day birthday cakes wilmington, nc” across all three engines. Two Wilmington bakeries came back on every list. Spoiler: ready, beat rated.
Source: Perplexity
Source: ChatGPT
Source: Gemini
One Belle Bakery is the highest rated bakery shop of the bunch. Perplexity put it in first place. ChatGPT put it third with a note to call ahead. Gemini named it too, but as the example of what not to do, opening with the line that custom bakeries like One Belle usually require advance notice before sending readers somewhere else.
So One Belle Bakery got first place on one engine but a word of caution from Gemini. The source of caution was the paragraph on One Belle's own website. Their site sells tastings, consultations, and wedding cake design, which is exactly right for the customer they want and exactly wrong for the one who needs a cake by 5pm. Gemini read their positioning correctly and routed the urgent buyer elsewhere.
Apple Annie's was first place, second, second. It's the lowest rated of the four at 4.3, behind Sugar Crystals and One Belle. What it has instead is a locations page that says it will personalize a cake while you wait, and posted hours running to 7pm six days a week. That's the answer to "can I get this today", in the business's own words, on the surface each engine reads. Bottom line: If you offer it, say it so AI can recommend you.
One more thing. Gemini gave me a phone number for Apple Annie's that doesn't match the one on their website, their Yelp page, their Facebook page, or the chamber directory. If you only fix one thing this week, make it that your number says the same thing everywhere.
See you next Thursday.
- Anna
Want to know where you actually stand in AI search? The AI Visibility Audit tells you exactly what the engines say about your business and what to fix. topofsearchmarketing.com/audit/
THE POLL
