We sat down with DJ Wetzel of White Oak Digital to unpack how local customers really search now. His answer: the old ranking game is over. Here’s what he told us.
A few years ago, if your gutters were overflowing, you typed “gutter cleaning near me” into Google, scanned a list of blue links and map pins, opened a few tabs, and made a call. Every local business owner understood the game: rank on that first page, and you got found.
That ritual is dying. Not slowly, either.
From typing to asking
The shift is simple to describe and enormous in its consequences. People have stopped typing keywords and started asking questions. Instead of “gutter cleaning Greenville SC,” they open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or the Google AI Overviews at the top of Google and type — or say out loud — something that sounds like a conversation: “My gutters are pulling away from the house and one section is leaking near the back porch. Who should I call in the Greenville area, and what should I expect to pay?”
DJ has watched this happen in real time. As he put it:
“I stopped thinking about rankings the day a customer told me she found her HVAC guy by asking her phone a full sentence out loud. She never saw a list. She got a name and called it.”
— DJ Wetzel, M.Ed., White Oak Digital
And here’s the part that matters: they expect an answer. Not ten options to evaluate — maybe two or three names, with a sentence on why each fits. The AI has already done the scanning, comparing, and filtering that used to be the customer’s job.
That’s the whole change in one sentence. Search used to hand people a list. Now it hands them a recommendation.
You’re not competing for rankings anymore
Sit with what that means if you run a local service business. For twenty years, the goal was to climb the list. But when a customer never sees the list, ranking third or seventh stops meaning what it used to. The AI reads far past the first page, synthesizes dozens of sources, and surfaces the handful of businesses it can describe with confidence.
So the competition has quietly moved. You’re no longer competing to be on the list. You’re competing to be the answer — the business the AI feels safe recommending by name because it understands who you are, who you serve, and why someone would trust you.
DJ was blunt about it:
“Being ‘the answer’ isn’t about tricks. It’s whether a machine can read your business and describe it back accurately. If it can’t, you don’t exist in that conversation — no matter how good your work is.”
— DJ Wetzel, M.Ed., White Oak Digital
Different game, different rules — and DJ says most owners haven’t been told the rules changed.
What this looks like in the wild
DJ points to three situations he sees constantly.
A homeowner’s water heater dies on a Sunday. They ask ChatGPT for a plumber who handles emergency replacements in their zip code. The ones that get named are those whose sites, reviews, and content clearly say we do emergency water heater replacement, here, for people like you. Vague “full-service plumbing” sites don’t make that answer — the AI can’t tell what they actually do.
A young couple buying their first house asks Gemini which local insurance broker is good for first-time homeowners who want the coverage explained. The broker who shows up is the one who has written plainly about exactly that — first-time buyers, plain-English explanations, local knowledge.
A contractor’s past client asks Claude for “someone reliable to finish a basement near Travelers Rest.” The name that surfaces is the one with a track record the AI can see and describe — specific projects, a clear service area, a real human voice.
In every case, DJ notes, the winner isn’t the biggest company or the one paying most for ads. It’s the one the AI understands well enough to vouch for — one of the reasons AI search quietly favors small local businesses over big brands.
Why generic content is quietly losing
DJ points to a common trap: owners respond by flooding their site with AI-generated posts like “5 Tips for Choosing a Plumber.” Resist it. The systems doing the recommending get sharper every month at telling real expertise from generic filler — and they’re increasingly reluctant to stake a recommendation on the latter.
What wins is the opposite of generic: your point of view, your service area, the jobs you’re known for, the way you talk to customers. Here DJ doesn’t hedge:
“Generic content is the fastest way to teach an AI that you’re forgettable. Your weird, specific expertise — the exact jobs only you take — is the raw material that earns a recommendation.”
— DJ Wetzel, M.Ed., White Oak Digital
Authenticity isn’t a nice-to-have here. It’s what the AI uses to decide whether it can trust you enough to say your name.
What to do about it
DJ’s practical takeaway is not “panic.” It’s “get legible.” Your business needs to be structured and positioned so an AI system can accurately understand and confidently recommend you — saying clearly who you serve and where, demonstrating expertise in your own voice, and making sure the signals scattered across the web add up to a coherent picture of a trustworthy local business.
None of that requires ad spend or gimmicks. DJ is quick to say he doesn’t run paid ads for anyone — it requires being clear about who you are, consistently, everywhere a machine might be reading. Slow, compounding work, and that’s the point.
If you’re not sure how you show up when someone asks an AI for a recommendation in your category, that’s worth knowing before you do anything else. A quick way to get a first read is a five-minute exercise asking ChatGPT where your business stands. Our free AI Visibility Snapshot shows you exactly where you stand — no call required, twenty-four-hour turnaround. An honest first look at whether the AI systems your customers already use know you well enough to recommend you.
— Based on an interview with DJ Wetzel, M.Ed., founder of White Oak Digital.