Google Search Labs Experiment to Bring Live Leads to Auto Shops & Nail Salons

The News

Last week Google Search Labs launched a new experiment they are calling “Ask for me,” that will use AI to call businesses on your behalf to find out what they charge for a service and when it’s available, like a basic manicure at a nearby nail salon, or an oil change at a local auto shop. It promises “responses in 30 minutes.”

Source: Google

For those unfamiliar with Duplex, Google first announced it in May of 2018 as “a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out ‘real world’ tasks over the phone.” While impressive in its sophistication, it can still sound like AI and may seem like spam to those with good ears and who are unfamiliar with these types of calls.

Rose goes on to note that this Google Labs experiment is primarily focusing on auto shops and nail salons, and that businesses can opt out if they wish (though I have not been able to find any information on how as of yet).

Why This Matters

While only an experiment that may never be fully rolled out to the general public, it is an exciting potential new feature that could generate more active, qualified leads for local businesses that make themselves available to take these calls, and who don’t mistake them for spam.

Google Posts & Customer Review Snippets Appearing atop Profiles in Maps

The News

Businesses with enough reviews and photos may find customer review snippets for popular keywords highlighted in the photo carousel atop their Google Business Profile in local Maps results.

Observed Review Snippet behavior:

• Up to 3 review snippets may appear.
• Each snippet is tied to a Place Topic* (i.e. onsite customer service, kickboxing) and a relevant photo.
• Clicking on the review snippet opens a window with additional related review snippets & photos.
•  While we did not identify a minimum review volume for snippets to appear, they did not appear unless enough relevant photos were present. 

*For those unfamiliar, Place Topics are the keywords buttons that appear at the top of review feeds.

And in a move that seems to signal that Google Posts are far from dead, businesses publishing offers and updates may see those updates also appearing alongside photos at the top of their Maps profiles.

Observed Google Post behavior:

• Only one post appears at a time; typically the most recent, or most relevant. 
• Posts appear vertically oriented; images may be cropped if not formatted the same way.
• Highlights the first 50-60(ish) characters of post copy.
• The appearance of a Google Post does not seem to limit the maximum number of review snippets that may appear.

Why This Matters

Google is continually rolling out new ways for businesses to engage with their customers, and opportunities to highlight what sets them apart in their local market.

Business owners will want to ensure they have enough relevant photos uploaded to their Google profile to increase the opportunity for review snippets to appear.  Pay attention to Place Topics keywords and make sure relevant photos have been uploaded to support them.

And for those still not taking advantage of Google Posts, this is another great reason to start.  Just be sure to format posts (image & copy) to get the maximum impact when presented in this format. Grab customer attention with a short, impactful headline; and while Google recommends 1:1 formatted photos, keep important content within the center 3:5 of the frame.

Page Optimization for AI Search

The News

One of the top questions I currently get from customers (which I’m sure isn’t an uncommon one among SEOs) is “how should I be optimizing my local pages for AI search?”

My typical response typically involves two parts. 1) Train the AI by describing in detail what you do, what customers should expect from someone who does what you do, and how you do what you do better than everyone else. And 2) make sure your pages are well structured and optimized to be easily crawled and understood.

A recent article from Search Engine Journal takes a deep dive into the latter, breaking down their key optimization suggestions for ensuring your page content is visible in the AI era.

Some of SEJ’s key takeaways aren’t that dissimilar to traditional local SEO advice:

• Metadata matters. For local pages, consider clear meta titles and descriptions that highlight the key aspects of your business, along with relevant local business schema to help AI systems better understand the purpose of your page. And don’t forget those OpenGraph tags to improve how results are presented in preview.
• Speed is critical. Page Speed Insights has long been a focus for SEOs. While Google may penalize your page for being slow, SEJ found that many AI crawlers have timeouts of only 1-5 seconds for retrieving content. They recommend choosing HTML over JavaScript (many AI crawlers don’t handle JavaScript well) and keeping load times under 1 second.

Besides offering up great, detailed optimization advice that you should absolutely review and put into practice as soon as possible, the article also provides resources for confirming if your page is currently accessible and useful for AI, and how AI agents perceive and access your content.

Why This Matters

LLMs don’t have a Google Business Profile of their own; Local Business Pages are often the best structured data source AI crawlers have available to validate important information about a local business. If pages are poorly structured, difficult to index, or, worse yet, don’t exist, business may not appear in AI search results. As a business, you have complete control of this information. Be sure to audit your pages if it’s been a while, and make sure you have a local page partner that understands how to properly structure your pages for visibility in an AI search environment.