▶  Local SEO · S6E138 · 51:28 · September 28, 2026

Local SEO in the AI Era: What Actually Moves Rankings with Andrew Shotland

Guest: Andrew Shotland, Founder & CEO of Local SEO Guide (LSG)
Hosts: Jon Clark & Joe DeVita

Play episode
0:00 51:28
Apple Podcast Spotify Youtube

About this episode

Andrew Shotland, founder and CEO of Local SEO Guide, has spent nearly 20 years doing local SEO for everyone from Walmart to single-location businesses. His short answer on what drives local visibility now is proximity, engagement, and reviews. In a Local Falcon study of roughly seven million local queries, a business’s first 200 reviews did most of the ranking work across local packs, Google AI, and ChatGPT. After that point, additional reviews mainly expanded the radius where the business ranks. Andrew also walks through the tests behind his thinking. He had people request driving directions to a business to see if map rankings moved. He recommends opening a legitimate second location instead of producing more content. He explains how review language maps to LLM conversation paths, which is where local SEO meets Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). And he describes a Reddit brand-mention test where AI visibility spiked, then disappeared as soon as the posting stopped.

In This Episode

• Can driving-direction requests move Map Pack rankings?
• Why a legitimate second location can beat months of content work
• Local Services Ads (LSAs): service areas, lead quality, and rising CPCs Apple Maps ads: 25-character copy, images as copy, and tracking workarounds
• How many Google reviews do you need to rank?
• Review text, LLM conversation paths, and citation syndication
• The Reddit brand-mention experiment and AI visibility

A practitioner’s look at which local SEO tactics hold up once AI systems are answering the “near me” question.

Connect with Andrew Shotland

Local SEO Guide
Andrew on LinkedIn

Chapters

  • 0:00

    Local SEO beyond Google

  • 1:45

    Meet Andrew Shotland

  • 2:35

    Enterprise vs. SMB local SEO

  • 5:44

    NBC and the early internet

  • 7:37

    How has local SEO changed with AI?

  • 9:32

    Do engagement signals move Map Pack rankings?

  • 12:54

    Google Business Profile posts

  • 15:12

    Fast leads for a new plumber

  • 20:13

    When local SEO plateaus

  • 22:08

    LSA service areas and lead quality

  • 25:20

    Rising CPCs and SEO as a hedge

  • 27:14

    Apple Maps ads early testing

  • 28:59

    Apple Maps ad copy and tracking

  • 32:32

    How do reviews affect AI visibility?

  • 38:08

    Measuring review velocity

  • 40:05

    How many reviews should you target?

  • 41:27

    Review text and LLM conversation paths

  • 44:05

    Syndicating GBP descriptions to citations

  • 46:57

    Reddit brand-mention experiment

  • 49:26

    Where to find Andrew next

Resources mentioned