AEO for Local Businesses
Show up when someone asks an AI assistant for the best option near them, across every location you operate.
Overview. Your AI visibility and share of voice at a glance.
Used by 200+ brands to optimize their AI visibility
Your buyers are asking AI. Is it naming you?
Near-me search was the last big shift in local discovery, and it is happening again. Rather than scanning a map pack, people ask an assistant for a recommendation and get a short list with reasons attached. The engine assembles that list from your business profile, your reviews, and whatever local publications say about you.
For multi-location operators the problem compounds: visibility is not one number but one per city, and the answer in Austin can look nothing like the answer in Denver. A single national ranking hides exactly the variance you need to act on.
Prompts local businesses should track
- best [service] near me
- who should I call for [problem] in [city]
- is [business name] any good
- [service] open now in [neighborhood]
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Gemini
- Perplexity
- AI Overviews
Loved by marketers. Recommended by AI.
“It’s a mature, open‑source, self‑hosted AEO/AI visibility tracker.”
ChatGPT
“Simple and much more cost effective than Profound.”
Nolan
Speakeasy
“Elmo is the open-source pick: you self-host it for free and track how every major AI answer engine mentions and cites your brand.”
Claude
“We were looking for an affordable way to track our visibility in AI search, and Elmo was a great fit. They were incredibly responsive and quickly added the integration we needed.”
James W.
TradeSites
“The best open-source alternative to the AI visibility platform Profound is Elmo.”
Gemini
“We're an AEO consultancy, so we turned Elmo on ourselves before any client. It's the tool I trust to tell us the truth about our own AI visibility, and it was tracking within the hour.”
Viveka D.
AISearch Global
“The biggest thing for me is seeing how our brand shows up in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews all in one dashboard. Before this I was literally typing prompts by hand to check.”
Borys M.
Backlink Agency
“Elmo has been fantastic to use for tracking AI visibility of my sports management platform RecordRanks. I highly recommend it, I think it's genuinely worth it!”
Deni M.
RecordRanks
“Elmo is the best open-source alternative to Profound for most users.”
Perplexity
The AEO playbook for local businesses.
What gets a brand named in AI answers in your category, and where Elmo shows you the gaps.
1Run the prompt set per location
AI answers to local questions are location-conditioned. Track each city or metro separately, because one strong market can mask several where you are invisible.
2Keep the business profile factually clean
Hours, service areas, and categories propagate into AI answers through the same feeds that power maps. Contradictions between your site and your profile give an engine a reason to prefer a competitor it can state confidently.
3Earn mentions in local publications
City guides, neighbourhood blogs, and regional press are disproportionately cited in local AI answers because they read as independent. One good local roundup often outperforms a dozen generic directory listings.
4Answer the operational questions on the site
Pricing ranges, response times, service radius, and what happens on a first visit are exactly what people ask assistants. Publishing them plainly gives the engine something concrete to quote.
Where Elmo fits
Elmo runs the same prompt set across every location you operate and reports visibility per market, so a strong city never hides a weak one. Self-hosting means adding your fiftieth location costs infrastructure, not another per-seat licence.
From zero to a plan in one afternoon.
No sales call, no bloat. Elmo sets up your tracking and tells you what to change.
1Add your brand
Point Elmo at your site. It suggests the prompts your buyers ask and the competitors to track against.
2See where you stand
Visibility, share of voice, and the sources AI cites, sampled up to 4× daily from the real apps.
3Know what to fix
Opportunities ranked by impact. Elmo keeps you updated, so you always know what to do next.
Every answer engine your buyers use.
Elmo both scrapes what real users see in popular AI search tools and captures all other models with direct API calls and OpenRouter.
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Gemini
- Perplexity
- AI Overviews
- AI Mode
- Copilot
- Grok
- DeepSeek
- Mistral
- Qwen
- OpenRouter LLMs
Why Teams Switch to Elmo
More Data
Elmo runs every prompt against models 4× daily.
No Bloat
We only do AEO / GEO, but we do it very well.
Unlimited Seats
For your whole team on every plan.
API + MCP
Fit Elmo into your stack and agents.
Open Source
Self host at any time, with no lock-in.
Simple, self-serve pricing.
We recommend Starter for local businesses: 50 prompts across ChatGPT, checked 1× daily, for $29/mo. Unlimited seats on every plan.
- 1 brand, 50 prompts
- ChatGPT only
- Answers checked 1× daily
- No premium models
- 1 brand, 50 prompts
- Any 4 AI platforms
- Answers checked 4× daily
- No premium models
- 2 brands, 150 prompts
- Any 4 AI platforms
- Answers checked 4× daily
- 20 premium prompts 1× daily
- 5 brands, 350 prompts
- Any 4 AI platforms
- Answers checked 4× daily
- 30 premium prompts 1× daily
Self-hosted
The same product on your own servers. Unlimited prompts, every model, full source.
Custom
More brands, custom prompt limits, higher sampling rates, and any models.
White label
Offer AI visibility tracking to your clients under your own brand, domain, and SSO.
Frequently asked questions
Something we didn't cover? Ask the maintainers directly on Discord.
Do AI assistants give local recommendations?
Yes. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity all answer near-me style questions with named businesses and reasons, drawing on business profiles, review platforms, and local publications. The named set differs by engine and by city.
How do multi-location businesses track AI visibility?
By treating each market as its own measurement. The same prompt returns different businesses in different cities, so visibility has to be tracked per location and compared across the portfolio rather than averaged into one score.
Start winning AI search today.
Start tracking your brand in minutes. Plans start at $29/mo.
- Self-serve
- Unlimited seats
- API and MCP access
Want a walkthrough first? Book a 30-minute tour.
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