SaaS vs local in AI search — stop forcing a city

If you sell emergency plumbing, the buyer prompt has a place in it: best plumber in Denver. If you sell a CRM to companies anywhere, stuffing “Denver” into the test invents a local market you do not serve. The model then names whoever it can retrieve for that city — often a regional agency — and you look invisible. That is not an AI visibility failure. That is a bad test.

The check (five minutes)

Pick the prompt that matches how you actually get hired.

Local service

• best [category] in [city]
• who should I hire for [category] near [city]

SaaS / digital product

• best [category]
• who do you recommend for [category]
• how to choose the right [category]

Run the same set on ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity. Do not mix a worldwide product into a city prompt “to be thorough.” You will measure the wrong thing.

Why the geo has to match the business

Recommendation answers are retrieval plus a named entity. City is a strong filter. Google Business Profile, Yelp, and “near me” language help a dentist. They do not help a usage-based API that has no shopfront.

Worldwide SaaS needs a different evidence set: a clear product page (what it is, who it is for, company, pricing signal), Organization and Product schema, and the review or directory sources those engines already cite for the category — G2, Capterra, Product Hunt, and so on, if they showed up in the answers.

What to do this week

1. Write down whether you are hired by city or by category. That one line decides the prompt.
2. Re-run three engines with the matching prompt. Screenshot who got named.
3. If you are local: NAP, GBP, and a city in the first 75–150 words of the service page.
4. If you are digital: a “what is [product]?” page, no fake city, and listings only on sources the live answers actually cited.

The diagnostic on this site now asks what kind of business you are. Local still requires country and city. Digital can be worldwide. The 20 prompts follow that choice so the 12-step plan is not a plumber checklist glued onto a SaaS product.

Frequently asked questions

Should every business test “best [category] in [city]”?

No. That is the right shape for a local service. For a worldwide SaaS product it invents a market you do not sell. Use best [category] with no city, or a country only if you actually constrain sales there.

What if we sell in one country but not by city?

Use the country. Skip the city. “Best payroll software in Australia” is a real query. “Best payroll software in Fitzroy” is usually noise unless you are a local bookkeeper.

Will a city in the prompt help a global product get cited?

It can make the model pick local agencies and directories instead of you. You then “fail” a test that no customer would run. That is a bad diagnostic, not a visibility problem.

How does the AI Can't Find Me intake handle this?

Local services still require country and city. Digital products can be worldwide, with city optional. The live prompts follow that choice so the report matches how buyers actually ask.