David Lange

Local keyword research is not about chasing the biggest search volume. It is about understanding how real people in a specific area search when they are close to needing a service. The right local keywords can shape your service pages, Google Business Profile, blog topics, internal links and the way your business appears in both traditional search and AI-driven results.

AI search does not behave like a classic ranked results page. It selects, summarizes and cites sources, often giving third-party pages a larger role than brand-owned content. Share of answer is becoming one of the more useful ways to think about AI search visibility, yet current research suggests only a small share of brands are tracking AI citation performance today.

Lily Ray shared a Google Sheets formula that rewrites SEO keywords into natural-language AI search queries, accumulating over 25,000 views within hours and triggering sharp debate about usability, model reliability, and the structural limits of traditional keyword research.