AI now answers local questions on Google and the iPhone. Keep your website's facts current.

Two changes this month put an AI’s words between a new customer and your business. One is a Google test on the listing people see when they search your name. The other is Apple’s new Siri.

What Google is testing

On September 17, Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google is turning local knowledge panels, the Business Profile listing, into an AI Overview listing. The listing shows an AI Overview label at the top. A Show more button opens a follow-up chat in the style of AI Mode.

The report’s author, Barry Schwartz, said he reproduced it himself after Ben Fisher posted it on LinkedIn. He wrote that most of the AI’s description of his own company was correct, but part of it was out of date. He added that his company’s website was out of date too.

The report cites no Google announcement. It does not say how widely the test shows, or whether owners can change what it says.

What Apple shipped

On September 14, Apple said Siri AI began rolling out in beta in English, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish to follow next month.

Apple says Siri AI will use information from across the web to answer questions, including a search for “the best local coffee spot in a new city.” Apple says the models behind it were custom-built “in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models.”

Siri AI needs a device with Apple Intelligence. Apple says it will not be available at first in the EU on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. The announcement does not say which websites Siri AI reads, or whether it shows links to them.

What this means for a local business

In both cases an AI writes the first words a customer reads, about you or about the business it recommends. Apple says Siri AI draws on the web. In Google’s test, Schwartz blamed part of an outdated description on his own outdated website.

The part you control is the set of facts an AI may read. Keep them accurate, and easy to find on your own website.

Check what AI says about you

1. Search your business name on Google, on a phone and on a computer. Note whether the top of your listing says AI Overview, and save a screenshot with the date.
2. Read every line of it. Mark anything wrong or out of date.
3. Fix the facts you control. Put your services, service area, hours and phone number on your website in plain words, and match them on your Business Profile.
4. If you have an iPhone with Siri AI, ask the question a new customer would ask, such as the best plumber in your town. Note whether the answer names you, your rival, or nobody.
5. Repeat both checks next month.

What to do this week

• Screenshot the top of your Google listing today.
• List every fact on your website that changed in the last year, and update it.
• Ask Siri AI one customer question, if you can, and save the answer.
• Set a monthly reminder to check again.

Each month, New Reward’s Monthly War Report marks the same customer questions again and shows which ones changed, and a real person walks you through it.