Learning to wisely budget local search marketing activities is essential for most brands. Too little time or money spent on a particular platform can equal lost opportunities to earn discovery, conversions, and transactions, while a hyperfocus on any single platform can result in a low rate of return.
Google’s dominance in local consumer journeys makes it a particularly slippery slope in this regard. If your team or your digital marketing agency’s clients have fallen into the risky habit of forsaking all others in order to give everything to Google Business Profiles, user behavior trends indicate that you’ll increasingly fall behind in the next few years.
In particular, if you’ve only invested in earning reputational content within the high walls of Google’s system, you could already be on the verge of a gradual key performance indicator (KPI) decline. Good news: there’s time to correct course.
Let’s look at some emerging data today and write a better marketing activities budget for the local brands you promote. It’s not too early to have this conversation at your next meeting, but if you don’t start talking about this now, it could quickly become too late.
Can these shocking search behavior stats be true?
I was recently genuinely started by a study of 1,500 US adults conducted by Higher Visibility which claimed that:
- 20.2% of Americans have switched to a different primary search platform in the past year
- 71.5% now use AI tools like ChatGPT for searching, though only 14% use them daily
The study went on to assert that Google remains the preferred vector for local searches and that review platforms like Yelp and TripAdvisor are still strongly in the game when people are looking for local service, but those bulleted stats kept niggling at me. Are 2 out of 10 Americans really relying on a different search platform since the winter of 2024, and have more than 7 in 10 really adopted AI tool usage to such a degree?
The skeptic in me was intrigued to find commentary on this particular study from one of the smartest local SEOs I know – Greg Sterling of NearMedia. In a recent edition of the company’s newsletter, Greg stated that the 20.2% claim was tantalizing though in need of a fuller explanation from the survey host, and that:
“The actual number of Americans who’ve used AI is somewhere between 30% and 40%+. Multiple studies indicate this is the range at the moment.”
I can’t prove or disprove any of these numbers, but found the overall picture of user behavior diversification in Higher Visibility’s study to be worth examining. In digging more deeply into their study, their conclusion appears to be that internet users aren’t abandoning traditional search behaviors, but are diversifying them, based on intent.
I can buy that, but I also wanted to check it against a couple of GatherUp’s proprietary data, based on our own survey of 1,200+ US Adults, in the context of reputation management.
What GatherUp has learned about local search behavior
When it comes to recommendation and reputational content, AI is clearly at the bottom of the pile, with just 9% of consumers consulting something like ChatGPT to discover reputable local brands. This is a far cry from the 70+% in the Higher Visibility study and the 30-40+% norms referenced by Greg Sterling.
Instead, it’s really social media that’s mounted the biggest challenge to Google’s historic ownership of local consumer journeys. In trying to find recommended nearby businesses:
- 52% of our respondents are using Instagram
- 42% are using TikTok
- 40% are using Reddit
- 39% are using YouTube
- 29% are using X
- 23% are using online local community hubs
No single survey should ever be viewed as infallible. Rather, your local business or agency should look at survey findings as being indicative of trends. In this case, both our own survey and the one I examined at Higher Visibility do confirm that search behavior is diversifying, and that, when it comes to recommendation/reputation content, a Google Business Profile-only approach to your marketing will become increasingly insufficient.
What do I mean by recommendation/reputation content?
When we surveyed consumers about where they spend their time writing reviews, we can still clearly see that historic pattern of Google’s dominance with them sitting at 60%. Expected players like Yelp (38%), Facebook (35%), and TripAdvisor (28%) are definitely in the mix. But have you spotted the problem here?
If more than half of consumers are consulting a community like Instagram in search of local business recommendations, then we have a real dilemma in seeing that only about 12% of review writers think of themselves as publishing reputation-oriented content on social media platforms.
I highlight this disparity because I think it encapsulates a transition we’re currently experiencing in the local search marketing world. For the past couple of decades, when we’ve talked about local business reviews, we’ve meant something like this:
It’s a basic local business review on Yelp – a platform that exists to publish this kind of content. It’s got a clear user name, a star rating, text, and photos. Likewise, your team or agency has gotten super familiar with Google’s formal review component of Google Business Profiles, with their star ratings, text, review summaries and other features:
But what do we call this Reddit thread in which people are discussing the same brand featured in the Yelp and GBP reviews?
None of the participants in this free-form discussion likely think of themselves as “writing a review”, yet they are definitely evaluating the brand and saying whether or not they like it (and arguing amongst themselves!). And what do we call it when the business posts a photo on Instagram that earns likes and comments:
Should we be thinking of hearts as the same thing as review stars in this dynamic? How about comments like “my family eats here at least once a month as a treat”. Probably, no one in the crowd thinks they are “writing a review”, but aren’t they actually doing just that?
And what about this new monster display?
Reviews have always been critiques, evaluations, judgements, but what do we call it when something like a Google AI Overview or a ChatGPT session features bots scrambling up editorial content based on whatever has gone into their training? If AI says that the best pizza in town is to be found at Business A or Business B, based on content they are pulling from sites like TripAdvisor and Reddit, is it not, in essence, generating a review?
In fact, even if that isn’t what Google thinks it’s doing with AI Overviews, won’t less tech-savvy users mistake this SERP feature for an endorsement by Google of these particular pizza places, given the premium placement the search engine is lavishing on this content? There’s always been a serious problem with portions of the public not being able to distinguish ads from organic SERPs, and now we’ve waded into even darker waters with AI.
Hopefully, you’ve now identified the problem I alluded to earlier of more than 50% of consumers consulting some social media for local business recommendations, but just 12% believing they are writing reviews on these platforms. I think that a truer picture of reality is that, in 2025, reputational content that can earn or lose sales is everywhere.
And this is why you can’t just keep focusing on Google Business Profile reviews. It’s time to re-examine your local search marketing budget when it comes to reputation management.
Summing up: reputation management today
Based on the trends we’ve looked at here, I’d advise you to budget time and money for these four components of a future-proof reputation management strategy:
Customer service – It’s never been more important to wow customers in the real world. The experience you create at your place of business needs to be memorable enough so that your patrons aren’t just writing formal reviews on platforms like GBP and Yelp of the brand you’re marketing, but feel inspired to start or jump into social conversations about your business anywhere they are happening around the web. Invest all you can in providing the best customer service in your geographic market.
Formal review management – Don’t misread the signs here and mistakenly believe that traditional reviews on local business listings and review platforms are waning in importance. Not only did our own survey find that people are reading more reviews than they did five years ago, but look again at how AI is using both review and social platforms to generate reputational content. I highly recommend investing even more than before in managing all aspects of your review content on the majors. GatherUp can help!
Social reputation management – Whether or not consumers think they are “writing reviews” while they are socializing, their sentiment has an impact on your brand. Identify the platforms your local community uses most, create channels there, collect brand mentions for sentiment analysis, and be prepared to jump into discussions of your business with the same professionalism and problem-solving mentality you bring to formal review responses.
AI reputation management – Track down what AI is generating as reputational content about your business and, wherever possible, locate the source of that information. Allocate budget to building a strong presence on any platform AI is being trained on in order to defend your brand. Unfortunately, AI’s hallucinations may mislead some of your potential customers, but take as much control as you can in this unwieldy new environment.
In sum, our picture of reputation has to change as consumers diversify their online habits. Particular platforms will come and go, in terms of their popularity, but the overall pattern here is one of expansion. It’s a lot to onboard, I know, and reputation management is slated to require a greater investment in more and better tools as we move forward. If you feel overwhelmed, keep going back to point #1, above. If you are absolutely acing customer service, it’s the best thing you can do to diminish reputation risks, and you’ll even find that your most loyal patrons will do a lot of the online promotion for you!
Learn how to future-proof your reputation strategy and stay ahead. Get a demo today!
