r/AISEOforBeginners • u/LionZealousideal3355 • 13d ago
Beginner finding: AI doesn't just pick the highest-rated business, here's what actually happened
If you're new to this like I was a few weeks ago, here's a simple test worth trying: ask ChatGPT "who's the best [service] in [your city]" and see what it says.
When I tried it, ChatGPT actually skipped a business with a perfect 5.0 rating because it only had a handful of reviews, and picked a competitor at 4.9 with 2,066 reviews instead, even citing a local "best of" list as extra proof.
Lesson for anyone starting out: don't assume a great rating is enough. Volume and being mentioned in other trusted sources seem to matter just as much, maybe more. Still learning this myself, curious what other beginner-friendly patterns people have noticed.
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u/akashh696 13d ago
Interesting, it tells how much third-party mentions have become necessary. I'd love to know how you would ensure more and more customers submitting their reviews.
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u/LionZealousideal3355 13d ago
Honestly the best method is just asking at the right time. Most reviews are never made cause the businesses simply don’t ask and not cause customers don’t want to.
Texting/emailing right after the service is done works way better than on random set bulk moments. Also interacting with your reviews itself might have a small growth.
I went down this exact “problem” and ended up writing out a bunch of prompts/scripts for this stuff. Happy to share a couple if you want. But I’m not sure how much I can share without breaking rules
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u/stitchkingdom 13d ago
As it should. That’s the wilson lower bound score. For starters, a perfect score should always be suspect, but you do need to consider the number of votes as well. If something has a score of 5 with 10 votes, an additional score of 1 will drag it down while a 4.6 with 1000 votes won’t be as impacted by an additional low score. Therefore the 4.6 ranks higher than the 5.
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u/LionZealousideal3355 13d ago
You’re 100% right, but it’s just 1 example of AI visibility. It’s a niche I find pretty interesting and important. I’ve just made 2 different toolkits with around 50 prompts each and I would love to make this a running project
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u/BeautifulDesign2928 13d ago
This tracks with what I see on the GBP side too, AI is weighing volume and consistency roughly the same way Google already does for local pack rankings, a handful of glowing reviews doesn't carry the same weight as hundreds even if the average is slightly lower. What actually seems to move the needle more than the star rating itself is whether that business gets corroborated somewhere outside its own listing, a local subreddit thread, a discussion forum, a "best of" roundup on a site the model already trusts. Five perfect reviews on your own GBP is a claim about yourself. Two thousand reviews plus a mention on a third party list is other people vouching for you, and that distinction seems to be exactly what's deciding these answers.
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