How To Build Local Pages That Win In AI-Powered Search
Summary
Search Engine Journal published an on-demand webinar covering how to build local landing pages that surface in AI-generated search answers, with a focus on structured data, listings, and review signals for multi-location brands.
Search Engine Journal has released an on-demand session focused on building location pages that perform well in AI-powered search results. The session features Nick Larson, Product Manager and Local Pages Expert at Alchemer, walking through a framework for local SEO in the context of AI-generated answers.
What’s actually new
This is a webinar recording, not a product launch or spec change — worth setting expectations there. The session covers three areas: how AI search discovers individual locations (pulling from site content, listings, schema markup, and reviews), how to build location pages that are “authoritative, genuinely localized, and aligned with broader SEO strategy,” and which technical and content signals currently matter most for AI citation. The target audience is clearly multi-location brands trying to get cited in AI answers rather than just rank in traditional SERPs. Beyond those topic outlines, the source doesn’t share specific technical recommendations — you’ll need to watch the session for the practitioner-level details.
What it means for your config
Let’s be direct: this isn’t a developer tooling announcement, and there are no config file changes to worry about. That said, there’s a relevant thread here for teams managing location pages at scale. If you’re templating local pages through a CMS or static site generator, the emphasis on structured data (schema markup) and genuinely localized content suggests your build pipeline should support per-location schema injection and unique content blocks — not just swapping out city names in a shared template. Teams using JSON-LD generators or schema plugins should verify that individual location pages carry accurate, location-specific structured data rather than generic org-level markup. The session apparently covers which signals matter most, so if you’re prioritizing engineering work around schema or review integration, the full recording may help you decide what to build first. The source doesn’t go into specific schema types or properties, so we can’t recommend concrete markup changes here.
Recommended next step
If you manage local pages for a multi-location brand — especially if you’ve noticed inconsistent visibility in AI-generated answers from Google or Bing — watch the full session. Before you do, audit a sample of your location pages: check whether each one carries unique structured data, whether your review feeds are actually connected, and whether the content goes beyond find-and-replace localization. That baseline will make the webinar’s recommendations more actionable when you hear them.
Read the full announcement on Search Engine Journal → How To Build Local Pages That Win In AI-Powered Search
More Search Engine Journal Updates
AI Opt-Out May Cost Sites A Google Top Stories Spot
Google is placing Top Stories carousels inside AI Overviews for a notable share of news queries. This means publishers who opt out of AI features via Search Console may lose that carousel placement too — but Google hasn't confirmed it.
ChatGPT Links Out Most On Travel Questions
Similarweb data shows ChatGPT includes citations in 22.6% of travel answers versus just 4.8% for education, with the overall citation rate climbing from roughly 1.3% to 6.8% over the past year. The breakdown matters for anyone thinking about AI-driven traffic to their sites.
X Live-Tweets Its Fight Against Chatbot Spam In Real-Time
X's head of product Nikita Bier publicly documented a 24-hour anti-spam operation on the platform, detailing the removal of 42,000 chatbot accounts and revealing that some spammers had been using X's own Grok AI to generate replies at scale.