Most articles on search everywhere optimisation say the same thing. Google is finished, TikTok is the new search engine, and you need to be on every platform by Friday. The data does not back that up. And for a plumber in Southend or an accountant in Chelmsford, it is expensive advice.
Here is the honest version. Google still handles the vast majority of searches in the UK. But your customers no longer make their decision on Google alone. They check your reviews on other sites, ask for recommendations in local Facebook groups, and more and more of them ask ChatGPT whether you are any good.
Search everywhere optimisation is about showing up well at each of those checkpoints, starting with the ones that bring in work. I first wrote this guide in June 2025. I have rewritten it for 2026 because the data has moved, and some of the claims doing the rounds last year (including a couple in my own first version) did not hold up.
What is search everywhere optimisation?
Search everywhere optimisation is the practice of making your business easy to find, check and trust on every platform your customers use to search: Google, Google Maps, review sites, YouTube, social media and AI assistants like ChatGPT. It builds on traditional SEO rather than replacing it.
The term was popularised by Rand Fishkin of SparkToro. His argument is simple: search is a behaviour, not a channel. People type questions into whatever is in front of them. Google, Amazon, YouTube, Instagram, a Facebook group, a chatbot. If you only optimise for one of those, you are only visible for part of the journey.
You will see the same idea sold under other names: omnichannel SEO, holistic SEO, "SEO everywhere". And you will see it mixed up with the newer AI terms. Here is how they fit together:
| Term | What it covers | How it fits |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Ranking your website in Google and Bing search results | The foundation. Still where most customers start. |
| Local SEO | Google Business Profile, the map pack, reviews, local listings | The most important part for any business serving an area. |
| GEO / AEO / AI SEO | Being mentioned and cited in AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews | One part of search everywhere optimisation, and growing fast. |
| Search everywhere optimisation | All of the above, plus review platforms, video, social and marketplace search | The umbrella. Your visibility across the whole decision, not one results page. |
So search everywhere optimisation is not a new discipline to buy. It is SEO with the walls taken down. If you want the AI-specific side in more depth, I cover it on my AI SEO services page.
Where people actually search in 2026: the honest numbers
The best data we have comes from SparkToro and Datos, who published a study in March 2026 looking at search activity across 41 major websites. They used 2025 desktop data from millions of devices in the US, the EU and the UK. It is the most complete picture of "where search happens" I have seen. The headlines:
- Google is still the main road. It handled 73.7% of all US desktop searches across the 41 sites in the final quarter of 2025. In the UK and EU it was around 80%.
- AI tools are smaller than the headlines suggest. In the US, traditional search engines took roughly 80% of searches, shopping sites around 10%, social networks about 5.5% and all AI tools combined 3.2%.
- Amazon, Bing and YouTube each saw more desktop search activity than ChatGPT. Few businesses optimise for any of them.
- Google is slowly losing share at the edges. It dropped 3.5 points in the US over 2025 and around 2 points in the UK and EU, with the long tail of other sites picking up the difference.
The TikTok claim everyone gets wrong
You have probably heard that "40% of Gen Z use TikTok instead of Google". It came from a Google executive in 2022, and what he actually said was narrower: that almost 40% of young people looking for somewhere to have lunch go to TikTok or Instagram rather than Google Maps or Search. That is a real signal about how younger people discover places. It is not evidence that Google has been replaced.
What has genuinely changed in the UK
The bigger shift is AI, and much of it is happening inside Google itself. Ofcom's Online Nation 2025 report found that around 30% of Google searches in the UK now show an AI-generated summary, and 53% of UK adults say they often see them. ChatGPT had 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million in the same period of 2024.
Google is still the main road. It is just no longer the only road, and more of the traffic now stops at checkpoints along the way.
Why a Google-only plan leaks customers
For a local service business, the problem is rarely being found. It is what happens between being found and being called. A homeowner in Leigh-on-Sea needing a roofer does not look at one result and ring it. The decision now runs across several platforms:
Google, Google Maps, or a voice question to Siri or Alexa. This is where traditional SEO and your Business Profile do their job.
An AI Overview, or a question to ChatGPT, gives them a shortlist before they have clicked anything. You are either in it or you are not.
They look at your Google reviews, then often Checkatrade, Trustpilot or Facebook. Thin or inconsistent reviews end the journey here.
A post in a local Facebook group or on Nextdoor asking "can anyone recommend...". Or a direct question to an AI assistant: "Is [your business] any good?"
Your website, photos of real jobs, maybe a video on YouTube or Instagram. They are checking you are real, local and competent.
By now they have mostly decided. The call is a formality if every step before it went your way.
The data backs this up. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 found that 45% of US consumers had used an AI tool to find a local business in the past year, up from 6% the year before. Google is still the most used platform in that survey, but its share fell from 83% to 71% in a year. And 88% of people using AI for recommendations said they check what it tells them before acting.
That last figure matters most. AI is becoming the front door, but reviews and your website still close the deal.
Every checkpoint is a place where a competitor can beat you, even if you rank first on Google. I wrote more about that gap in You Paid to Be Seen. Not to Be Chosen.
Where a local business should show up, in priority order
"Be everywhere" is not a plan. No sole trader has time to run nine platforms well, and a half-dead profile does more harm than no profile. This is the order I work through with local service businesses in Essex:
| Platform | Why it matters | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search & Business Profile | Still where most local searches start. Your profile feeds Maps, the local pack and Google's own AI answers. | Must have |
| Your website | The one place you fully control. Google and AI tools both pull your services, areas and prices from it. | Must have |
| Google reviews | The first trust check almost every customer makes, and a signal AI tools read too. | Must have |
| Trade review sites | Checkatrade, TrustATrader, Which? Trusted Traders or Trustpilot. Customers cross-check, and AI assistants read these pages. Pick the one or two your trade actually uses. | High |
| Bing Places & Apple Business Connect | Free and about an hour's work. Bing feeds Microsoft Copilot and is widely reported to be one of the sources behind ChatGPT's web results. Apple Maps powers Siri and iPhone map searches. | High |
| Facebook page & local groups | Where local people ask for recommendations. You need a findable page, and customers happy to tag you. | High |
| YouTube | Strong for visual work and explainers (roofing, landscaping, kitchens, accounting "how to" questions). Videos also appear in Google results. | Depends |
| Instagram & TikTok | Useful for visual trades and younger customers. Weak for most B2B and professional services. | Depends |
| LinkedIn & Reddit | LinkedIn matters for B2B and professional firms. Reddit rarely moves the needle for local UK trades. | Depends |
How AI assistants decide who to recommend
Nobody outside OpenAI or Google knows the exact rules. Anyone who says they do is selling something. What we do know is how these tools work when they answer a local question: they search the web, read what they find, and summarise it. So they favour businesses that are easy to find, easy to understand and backed up by other sources.
In practice, six things make the difference:
Consistent details
Same business name, address, phone number and service area everywhere. Conflicting details make you harder to trust, for people and machines.
Reviews in more than one place
AI tools do not just read Google. A healthy, recent profile on a second platform gives them independent confirmation.
Clear service pages
One page per service that says what you do, where, for whom and roughly what it costs. Vague pages give AI nothing to quote.
Mentions on other sites
Local press, trade bodies, suppliers, community sites. Being talked about by others is what turns a claim into a fact.
Structured data
LocalBusiness, Service and FAQ schema tell machines exactly who you are. More on this in my guide to semantic HTML and SEO.
A site they can read
Check your robots.txt is not blocking search crawlers like Googlebot, Bingbot or OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT's search crawler). Key text should be real text, not baked into images.
Why you should ignore "rank number one in ChatGPT"
A SparkToro and Gumshoe study published in early 2026 ran nearly 3,000 identical prompts through ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI. One of the categories tested was digital marketing consultants, so I read it with some interest. The odds of getting the same list of recommendations twice were under 1 in 100. The odds of the same list in the same order were closer to 1 in 1,000.
If you want to understand how page structure and design affect what AI can read, see my article on semantic web design for SEO and AI search.
Speak each platform's language, without spreading yourself thin
Each platform rewards something slightly different. You do not need to master them all. You need to get the basics right on the ones you choose:
- Google and your website: a page for each main service and area, written around the questions customers actually ask. Prices or price ranges where you can.
- Google Business Profile: the right primary category, every service listed, real photos added regularly, and a reply to every review.
- YouTube: a title that says exactly what the video answers, and say your service and town out loud. YouTube reads the captions.
- Instagram and TikTok: captions and on-screen text are searchable. Name the job and the place ("loft conversion in Rayleigh"), not just a hashtag.
- Facebook groups: be helpful, never spammy. The best result is a customer recommending you before you get the chance.
- AI assistants: clear, factual, consistent information everywhere else. There is no separate AI channel to post to.
Search everywhere done badly
- Accounts on nine platforms, most untouched since 2023
- Different phone numbers and addresses across directories
- The same generic post pasted everywhere
- Chasing AI visibility while the Business Profile is half finished
- Paying for weekly "AI ranking" reports
Search everywhere done well
- Three or four platforms, kept up properly
- Identical business details everywhere
- One good job turned into a case study, a profile update and a short video
- A review request after every completed job
- Tracking which channels actually bring in calls
One well-documented job can feed your website, your Business Profile, a short video and a review request. That is search everywhere optimisation on a small-business budget.
If you do not have time to produce this content yourself, that is exactly what my content marketing service is for.
How to measure it without fooling yourself
Rankings and website traffic only tell part of the story now. Someone who sees you in an AI answer, then a Facebook group, then searches your name, will show up in Google Analytics as a branded search or a direct visit. Here is what I track instead:
- Branded searches in Google Search Console. More people searching your business name is the clearest sign your visibility elsewhere is working.
- Business Profile actions. Calls, direction requests and website clicks, month on month.
- AI referrals in Google Analytics. Visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com. Small numbers for most local businesses, but worth watching.
- Reviews on each platform. Count, average rating and how recent the last one is.
- "How did you hear about us?" On every form and every phone call. The cheapest and most underrated data you can collect.
- Repeated manual AI checks. Ask ChatGPT and Google the same few questions several times each month and record how often you appear.
A 90-day plan for a local business
If you run a trade or professional service business in Essex or anywhere in the UK, this is the order I would work in. Most of it costs time, not money.
Your first 90 days
- Month 1: complete every section of your Google Business Profile. Categories, services, service areas, hours, photos, description.
- Month 1: claim Bing Places and Apple Business Connect. Then check your name, address and phone number on the main directories and fix anything that does not match.
- Month 1: check your robots.txt is not blocking search crawlers, and add LocalBusiness schema to your website.
- Month 2: rewrite your main service pages so each answers four questions: what you do, where, roughly how much, and why you.
- Month 2: start a review routine. Ask after every completed job, with a direct link. Add one trade review platform alongside Google.
- Month 3: choose one extra platform based on where your customers are. Turn your best jobs into content for it.
- Month 3: add "How did you hear about us?" to every enquiry, and record a baseline of how often AI tools mention you.
The key points from this article
- Search everywhere optimisation means being easy to find, check and trust wherever your customers search. It builds on SEO. It does not replace it.
- Google still handles around 80% of desktop searches across major sites in the UK and EU. Anyone telling you Google is finished is wrong.
- The real change is that customers now check you in several places before they decide, and AI tools increasingly write the shortlist.
- For local businesses, the order is: Google Business Profile, website and reviews first. Then consistent details everywhere. Then one or two extra platforms.
- AI recommendations are inconsistent by nature. Aim to appear often, and ignore anyone selling "position one in ChatGPT".
- Measure branded searches, profile actions, AI referrals, reviews and what customers tell you, not just rankings.
Common questions about search everywhere optimisation
Sources
- SparkToro & Datos, Search Happens Everywhere: an analysis of 41 websites (March 2026)
- SparkToro, It's still SEO: search everywhere optimization
- Ofcom, Online Nation 2025: from apps to AI search (December 2025)
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026
- Search Engine Land, AI recommendation lists repeat less than 1% of the time (January 2026)
- TechCrunch, Google exec suggests Instagram and TikTok are eating into Google's core products (July 2022)
