Search Everywhere Optimization: What Small Businesses Need to Know
For years, being found online mostly meant one thing: showing up in Google.
That's not really the world we're living in anymore.
People have more ways to search for products, services, and businesses. At the same time, the systems answering those searches are looking in different places and using different information to decide what businesses to show, describe, or recommend.
This is the basic idea behind Search Everywhere Optimization.
It can get complicated pretty quickly. So rather than diving into every new search technology or optimization technique, let's look at the landscape, why it matters, and how small businesses can begin making sense of it.
1. Where People Actually Search
When someone needs to find a product, service, or business, where do they actually go?
Based on current consumer research, three search experiences stand out for small businesses today:
#1 Google Search
#2 Google Maps
#3 ChatGPT
Google Search is still the dominant starting point. Google Maps has become a search destination in its own right, particularly when people are looking for local businesses. And ChatGPT has quickly emerged as a new way for consumers to ask for business and service recommendations.
These aren't the only places people search, of course. And the mix will vary depending on the type of business and customer. But they give us a useful picture of how much search has already changed.
People haven't stopped using Google. They've simply gained more ways to search.
And here's where things get more complicated: Google Search, Google Maps, and ChatGPT don't necessarily arrive at their recommendations in the same way.
Sources:
2. How Do Those Places Find Their Answers?
Here's where Search Everywhere starts to get complicated.
Google Search, Google Maps and ChatGPT can all recommend a business, but they don't necessarily get there in the same way.
Google Search starts with Google's enormous index of the web, but Search itself is changing. Google's Gemini models now power AI experiences such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, where AI can interpret a question, conduct multiple searches and synthesize information into an answer. For local results, Google also draws on Business Profiles, websites, reviews and other sources.
Google Maps draws heavily from that same Google information ecosystem, with local context playing an especially important role. Google says local results are primarily influenced by relevance, distance and prominence.
ChatGPT has a different mix. It can search the live web using third-party search providers, including Microsoft's Bing, as well as information supplied by partners. And those relationships keep changing. In 2026, for example, Yelp began providing OpenAI with reviews, ratings, photos and business information to help power local recommendations in ChatGPT.
And that's just what has been publicly disclosed.
None of these companies publishes the complete recipe for why one business gets recommended over another. But we know enough to see what's happening.
Your customer asks one simple question. Behind the answer is an increasingly complicated network of search indexes, AI models, websites, business profiles, reviews and data partnerships.
That's the world of Search Everywhere.
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3. Welcome to Search Everywhere
For years, businesses learned to think about Search Engine Optimization. You worked on your website, created content, earned links and tried to improve your position in Google.
None of that suddenly stopped mattering.
What's changed is the world around it.
Customers now have more places to search, and as we've just seen, the systems answering those searches can draw from an expanding network of websites, business profiles, reviews, search indexes, AI models and data partnerships.
That's the idea behind Search Everywhere Optimization.
It doesn't mean your business needs to somehow optimize for every corner of the internet. It means understanding that your website is no longer the only place influencing how customers find you or how these systems understand and recommend your business.
And if that sounds like a lot to keep track of, it is.
4. Fortunately, There Is Some Overlap
At this point, Search Everywhere can start to sound exhausting.
Do you need one strategy for Google Search, another for Google Maps, another for ChatGPT, and then another for every new AI solution that comes along?
Fortunately, no.
These systems may work differently, but many of the signals they rely on overlap. Your website, business information, reviews, mentions around the web, and other trusted sources can influence how your business is discovered and understood in more than one place.
That means improving one part of your online presence can sometimes help across multiple search experiences.
The goal isn't to optimize everything independently or chase every new platform.
It's to figure out which improvements are likely to have the biggest impact for your business, across the places your customers are actually searching.
And that brings us to the more practical question: How do you know where to start?
5. So What Do You Do About It?
There isn't a universal Search Everywhere checklist. Every business is different, and the places that matter most will depend on your customers, your market and how people actually find you.
So trying to optimize everything isn't the answer.
A better place to start is with data.
Where are you showing up today? Where aren't you? How are different search and AI experiences representing your business? How do you compare with the businesses being recommended instead?
Once you can see that, you can start prioritizing.
The idea is simple: understand what's happening, decide what matters most, make changes where you can, and then measure whether those changes had an effect.
The priorities won't be the same for every business, and they won't stay the same forever. Search is changing too quickly for that.
What matters is having a way to keep figuring out what deserves your attention next.
6. And Yes, This Is Exhausting
If your reaction to all of this is, “Great, one more thing I’m supposed to understand,” we get it.
Google itself is changing rapidly. AI-generated answers are becoming part of traditional search. New AI tools and data partnerships keep appearing. And the sources these systems rely on, and how much those sources matter, can change right along with them.
Small business owners already have businesses to run. They shouldn't have to become experts on search algorithms, AI models, business listings, structured data, reviews, and whatever changes next month just to make sure customers can find them.
And even if you work with a digital marketing partner, you still need some way to understand what matters most. Otherwise, how do you know where they should focus, what you should be spending money on, or whether any of it is actually working?
Search Everywhere is complicated. Managing it shouldn't have to be.
That's the problem we're interested in solving.
7. Why We're Building AKINOS
This is exactly the kind of problem we're building AKINOS to help solve.
AKINOS starts by gathering data about how your business is being represented across multiple AI solutions, so you can see where you're showing up, how you're being understood, and where there may be opportunities or problems.
But seeing the data isn't enough.
The goal is to help you decide what matters most, understand what you can do to influence it, and make those changes where possible. Then you measure again to see whether they actually worked.
Some of those actions may be things you can handle yourself. Others may make more sense to tackle with a digital marketing partner. Either way, you have data and priorities you can work from together instead of guessing what to do next.
Search Everywhere isn't going to stop changing.
AKINOS is being built to help you understand what's happening, decide what matters, take action, and see whether it made a difference.