The factors that win a Google local pack placement and the factors that get a local business cited in an AI answer are no longer the same list. In the 2026 local ranking data, the local pack is still won by Google Business Profile fundamentals and proximity. AI search visibility is won mostly by mentions of your business on other sites. If you only work one list, you will lose the other.
By Cody Wise, Founder, Wise Media. Last updated 28 September 2026.
Summary
- Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey asked 47 local search experts to score 187 factors, and for the first time it asked them to score every factor for its impact on AI search visibility as well as on the local pack, localized organic results and conversion.
- The local pack list barely moved. Primary Google Business Profile category, proximity to the searcher, and keywords in the business title still sit at the top.
- The AI visibility list looks different. Three of the five highest scoring AI visibility factors are citation signals, which is why Whitespark’s own read is that in AI search, mentions are the new links.
- Google states plainly that there is no special markup, no AI text file and no separate optimisation needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page needs to be indexed and snippet eligible. That is the whole gate.
- Practical consequence for a Canadian business: the local pack work is on your own profile, and the AI visibility work is almost entirely off your own website.
Table of Contents
- What changed in the 2026 local ranking data?
- What actually ranks you in the local pack?
- What gets a local business cited in AI answers?
- Why Google says there is nothing special to optimise for AI
- A 90 day plan that serves both lists
- Common mistakes
- What this changes for Canadian and Alberta businesses
- FAQ
What changed in the 2026 local ranking data?
One thing changed, and it is structural. Every factor now carries four scores instead of three.
Whitespark, which is based in Edmonton and has run this survey for more than a decade, invited 47 local search experts to score 187 factors for the 2026 edition. In previous years the panel scored each factor on its impact in the local pack and Maps, its impact in localized organic results, and its impact on conversion. For 2026 a fourth column was added. As the report puts it, “for each factor, the experts also had to now score it based on what they thought the visibility impact was in AI search responses.”
That is the first time a serious local search dataset has treated AI visibility as its own category rather than a footnote inside organic. Forty seven new factors were added this edition, and several of them landed straight in the local pack top ten.
The caveat the report puts on its own numbers
Whitespark’s Darren Shaw is direct about the limits of the new column. Scoring AI visibility is, in his words, “a bit ambiguous,” because the answer depends entirely on which AI system you mean. A Google Business Profile factor might score zero for ChatGPT, which has no access to that data, and three or more for Google’s AI Mode, which does.
Read the AI column as informed expert opinion about direction, not as a measured weight. That is still more signal than anything else publicly available, and the direction it points is consistent enough to act on.
What actually ranks you in the local pack?
Category, location and title. In the 2026 survey the three highest scoring local pack factors are the primary Google Business Profile category, the proximity of your address to the point of search, and keywords in the business title. Nothing about AI changed that.
The top ten, as scored
| # | Local pack factor | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Primary GBP category | 227 |
| 2 | Proximity of address to point of search | 225 |
| 3 | Keywords in GBP business title | 223 |
| 4 | Physical address in city of search | 213 |
| 5 | Business is open at time of search (business hours) | 189 |
| 6 | High numerical Google ratings (4 to 5 stars) | 181 |
| 7 | Address is showing on GBP (not a service area business) | 176 |
| 8 | Additional GBP categories | 173 |
| 9 | Quantity of native Google reviews with text | 170 |
| 10 | Proper placement of map pin | 165 |
Two entries are worth stopping on because they are new information, not restated advice.
Business hours now sit at number five. Whether you are open at the moment somebody searches is scored as a major ranking input. For a trade, a clinic or a restaurant that means your posted hours are not administrative housekeeping. They are a ranking field. Holiday hours that were never updated, or a profile that says you close at 5pm when the phone is answered until 8pm, are costing placements in the window that matters most.
A visible address outranks a service area business. Showing an address on the profile scored at number seven. Hiding it, which is the correct configuration for a genuine service area business, is a measurable handicap in the local pack. That is not a reason to fake an address. It is a reason to understand that a service area business is playing a harder game and needs to make up the difference elsewhere.
The two factors you cannot buy your way around
Proximity is the second strongest factor in the list and you cannot optimise it. Neither can anyone you hire. Google’s own documentation names three inputs to local ranking: relevance, distance and prominence, and defines distance as “how far each business is from the customer who’s searching.” Google also states flatly that “there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”
Any proposal that promises a number one local pack position across a whole city is promising something the ranking system does not offer. What is available is relevance and prominence, which is where the rest of this article lives.
What gets a local business cited in AI answers?
Being talked about somewhere other than your own website. In the 2026 survey, three of the five highest scoring AI search visibility factors are citation signals, which is Whitespark’s basis for the line that in AI search, mentions are the new links.
This is the single most useful finding in the report, because it inverts the default instinct. When a business owner decides to “do AEO,” the first move is almost always to add something to their own site. The data says the leverage is mostly off-site.
Factors the panel scored highest for AI visibility impact
| Factor | AI visibility score |
|---|---|
| GBP popular times section shows the business as busy | 179 |
| Quantity of engagement signals on the website | 145 |
| Quantity of user uploaded photos | 135 |
| Click through rate from the local pack and Maps | 130 |
| Presence of GBP predefined services | 127 |
Notice what is not there. No schema type. No word count. No keyword density. No AI text file. The factors that score are evidence that real people interact with the business: it is busy at the times people go, customers upload their own photos, people click through from the map, the services list is filled in properly.
Where the two lists disagree
| Signal | Local pack | AI visibility | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary GBP category | Top factor | Weaker outside Google surfaces | Fix once, get it exactly right, move on |
| Proximity to searcher | Second strongest | Largely irrelevant | Nothing you can do, stop paying for promises about it |
| Citations and mentions | Declining, down about half a percentage point again this year | Three of the top five | Reverse your last three years of advice and rebuild them |
| Review signals | Rising, one of the two biggest movers in 2026 | Strong | The one area that pays on both lists |
| Behavioural signals | Rising, the other big mover | Strong | Earn clicks and calls, do not simulate them |
Why citations came back from the dead
Local citations, meaning consistent listings of your name, address and phone number across directories, have been declining in the local pack for years. They dropped again this edition, by roughly half a percentage point as a group weighting. Most competent local SEO advice since about 2022 has told business owners to stop spending money on citation building. That advice was correct for the local pack.
It is wrong for AI. Language models assemble an answer about “the best roofer in Calgary” from third party pages, not from your homepage. A business that appears on industry directories, on review sites, in local roundups and in community coverage is a business the model has multiple independent reasons to name. A business that exists only on its own domain is a business the model has one reason to name, and that reason is the least trusted kind of source.
Whitespark’s recommendations follow directly from that: get listed on industry directories, complete those listings properly rather than dumping a name and a phone number, secure reviews on the prominent review sites in your category, keep a real testimonials page, write concise semantically rich content, and pursue local mentions.
We have written about the measurement side of this in Google’s AI search report and what Bing’s shows that it does not, and about the repair side in how to fix incorrect information about your business in AI answers.
Why Google says there is nothing special to optimise for AI
Because there is not. Google’s own documentation on AI features states that “to be eligible to be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet,” and that “there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.”
It goes further, and this is the sentence that should end several conversations: “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add.”
If someone has quoted you a monthly fee to install an AI text file so you appear in AI Overviews, that is the product being sold. Google says the file is not the gate. We reached the same conclusion from the other direction when we looked at AI crawler directives in robots.txt for Canadian sites: the crawler configuration decides whether you are eligible at all, and after that it does nothing for you.
What the controls actually do
- nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet. These restrict what Google may display from your page, and because AI features draw on snippet eligible content, they restrict AI display too. Use them deliberately or not at all.
- noindex. Removes the page from Search entirely, and therefore from AI features. This is a sledgehammer and it is regularly applied by accident during a redesign.
- Google-Extended. Governs use beyond Search. It does not remove you from AI Overviews, which pull from the regular index through Googlebot. A large share of Canadian small business pages still have this backwards.
- Search Console. AI Overviews and AI Mode appearances are folded into overall search traffic in the Performance report under the Web search type. There is no separate click column to find, because there is no separate click column.
Structured data still earns its place. It is how you qualify for rich results, and a correctly marked up local business page is easier for every parser to read. It is simply not the AI lever it is being sold as. If you want the detail, our guide to schema markup for Canadian local businesses covers where it does pay.
A 90 day plan that serves both lists
Work the overlap first, then the local pack, then the off-site citation layer. Reviews and behavioural signals are the only work that pays on both lists, so they go at the front.
Days 1 to 15: the overlap
- Audit your posted hours against reality, including holiday hours and any seasonal change. This is a top five local pack factor and it takes twenty minutes.
- Confirm your primary category is the single most accurate one, not the broadest. A dental office categorised as “dentist” beats one categorised as “medical clinic” on every dental query.
- Fill in every predefined service Google offers for your category. This scores on the AI visibility list and most profiles leave it half empty.
- Build a review request that goes out at the moment of delivery, not a month later. Review quantity with text is a top ten local pack factor and reviews score strongly on AI visibility.
- Check your map pin sits on the door customers use, not the centroid of the building or the back of the lot.
Days 16 to 45: the off-site layer
- List the directories that actually matter in your category and province, not a bulk submission package. For a Canadian trade that usually means the category specific associations, the provincial licensing body’s public directory, and two or three review platforms.
- Complete each listing fully. A directory profile with a description, categories, hours and photos is a source a model can use. A name and a phone number is not.
- Build a testimonials page on your own site that names real clients with their permission, and make sure those clients also exist somewhere else on the web.
- Pitch one local mention. A supplier case study, a community sponsorship write up, a trade association member profile. One genuine third party page beats fifty directory submissions.
Days 46 to 90: measurement and content
- Set a baseline. Run the same ten questions a customer would ask through Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity, and record whether you appear and what is said about you. Repeat monthly. This is the only AI visibility measurement that is fully in your control.
- Watch Search Console’s Performance report under the Web search type. AI feature appearances are inside that number.
- Write concise, semantically rich pages that answer one question each. Long pages that answer nine questions badly are the most common content failure we see.
- Fix anything the AI answers get wrong about you at the source, not on your own site.
Common mistakes
- Treating AI visibility as a website task. The data says it is mostly an off-site task. Your own site is one source among many, and the least independent one.
- Buying an “AEO package” that installs files. Google says no special file or markup is required. Ask what the package actually changes off-site.
- Killing citation work because it stopped paying in the local pack. Correct in 2023, wrong in 2026. The payoff moved rather than disappeared.
- Blocking Google-Extended to “opt out of AI” and expecting to disappear from AI Overviews. You will not. Those pull from the regular index.
- Chasing proximity. Registering an address you do not operate from is a suspension risk, and Google states ranking cannot be bought or requested.
- Simulating behavioural signals. Click through rate and engagement score on both lists, which is exactly why manipulating them is detectable and not worth the exposure.
- Reading the AI column as measured weights. The report itself flags the ambiguity. Use it for direction.
What this changes for Canadian and Alberta businesses
Three things, and the first is an advantage most Canadian operators are not using.
The Canadian citation surface is thinner, which cuts both ways. There are fewer credible Canadian directories than American ones, so the ones that exist carry more weight per listing and the work is finite. A Calgary trade can realistically complete the entire meaningful directory set in a week. The flip side is that an AI answer about a Canadian category often gets assembled from American sources, which is how a Toronto or Houston company ends up cited for a Calgary query.
Service area businesses are over-represented here. Trades, cleaners, mobile techs, property services and short term rental operators mostly have no public storefront. A visible address scored at number seven on the local pack list, and these businesses correctly cannot show one. The AI visibility list is where that gap gets closed, because a mention on a third party page does not care whether you have a lobby.
The source is Albertan. Whitespark is an Edmonton company, and this dataset is the closest thing local search has to an industry standard. If you are in Alberta and you want a primary source to build a plan on, it is already local.
What this costs
- Days 1 to 15 work: free, and roughly four to six hours of your own time. There is no version of this where paying someone beats doing it yourself in week one, because it requires knowing your actual hours and services.
- Directory and citation cleanup: most meaningful Canadian listings are free to claim. Paid submission tools are optional and mostly buy speed.
- Ongoing monitoring: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are both free and both now report on AI surfaces. Start there before buying a visibility tracker.
For context on what agency support costs in this country when you do decide to buy it, our Canadian SEO pricing guide gives ranges in CAD with sources.
FAQ
Do I need special schema or an AI text file to appear in AI Overviews?
No. Google’s documentation states there are no additional requirements and no special schema.org structured data needed. A page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Structured data is still worth having for rich results, but it is not an AI gate.
Are citations still worth building in 2026?
Yes, but for a different reason than five years ago. Citation signals kept declining as a local pack group weighting in the 2026 data, while three of the five highest scoring AI search visibility factors are citation related. Build them for AI answer inclusion, not for map placement.
Why do my pages rank in Google but never get mentioned by ChatGPT?
Usually because everything the model can find about you is on your own domain. Google can rank a single authoritative page. A language model assembling an answer prefers corroboration across independent sources. Get listed, get reviewed and get mentioned somewhere you do not control.
Does blocking Google-Extended remove me from AI Overviews?
No. AI Overviews and AI Mode draw from Google’s regular index via Googlebot. Google-Extended governs other uses. If you want to limit what appears, the snippet controls are the relevant lever, and they cost you normal search visibility too.
Can I pay for a better local pack ranking?
No. Google states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. You can pay for the work that improves relevance and prominence. Any guarantee of a specific map position should be treated as a reason to walk.
I am a service area business with no public address. Am I stuck?
You are at a structural disadvantage in the local pack, where a visible address scores at number seven. You are not disadvantaged on the AI visibility list, which rewards mentions, reviews and engagement rather than a storefront. Put your effort there and treat the local pack as the harder half.
How do I measure AI visibility without buying a tool?
Write the ten questions a customer would actually ask, run them through the major assistants once a month, and log whether you appear and what is said. Pair that with Search Console’s Performance report under the Web search type, which now includes AI feature appearances, and Bing Webmaster Tools, which reports citations directly.
Conclusion
The 2026 data does not say local SEO is dead and it does not say AI changed everything. It says one list became two. The local pack is still won on your Google Business Profile and your address. AI answers are won on what other people have published about you. Reviews and real engagement are the only work that pays in both places, which is why they are worth more than any tactic on either list.
Work the overlap, accept that proximity is fixed, and move your citation budget from map placement to answer inclusion.
Want this done properly?
Wise Media builds the local and AI visibility layer as one system: profile and hours audit, the Canadian directory set that actually counts in your category, a review engine that runs without you, and monthly answer engine monitoring so you can see what the assistants say about you. Start with a scoped quote through our intake form, or read what is included in our website growth packages.
Sources: Whitespark, 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors; Google Business Profile Help, Improve your local ranking on Google; Google Search Central, AI features and your website. Survey scores are aggregated expert opinion and are not published Google ranking weights.