AI Search vs the Map Pack
Where Metro Vancouver businesses should invest now
You're trying to decide where to put your local marketing budget, and the question underneath it is fair: if AI now answers everything, is local SEO still worth paying for?
Short answer: Yes, for the searches that turn into customers. AI has taken over the research questions that rarely end in a booking anyway. The high-intent searches, the ones where someone in Burnaby is ready to call a plumber tonight, still run through the map pack, and that is where your revenue is.
Free. No pitch for a service you don't need.
Cutting your local SEO spend right now means walking away from the surface that still captures buyers.
You would be saving money on the surface that AI was never going to monetize for you, and giving up the one that still delivers people who are ready to book. That is a trade worth looking at carefully before you make it.
We do not guess about this, so below is the actual data, the ROI logic, and a straight answer on whether this is worth your money and who it isn’t for.
What's actually at stake for your business
Local search splits into two kinds of query, and only one of them pays you.
"Why is my hot water suddenly cold"
The person wants an explanation, not a plumber. AI Overviews now handle almost all of these, and they rarely end in a booking.
"Emergency plumber Burnaby"
That person wants a business, a number, and a call button, and they convert at a rate no informational reader ever will. This is the search your revenue comes from.
Here is the money question. When a ready-to-buy customer searches, who does Google show them? If the answer is your three competitors and not you, that is not a ranking problem you can shrug off. It is booked jobs going to the shop up the street, every day, on the exact searches that were most likely to become revenue.
The cost of losing the map pack is not abstract traffic. It is the specific customer who was reaching for their phone to call someone right now. That is what your local SEO investment is protecting, so the real question is not “is AI killing local search.” It is “for the searches that make me money, does the map pack still win.” The data answers that cleanly.
The evidence that the investment still pays
Local SEO researcher Whitespark ran 540 local queries across three cities and split them by what the searcher actually wanted.
| Buying-intent query | Research query | |
|---|---|---|
| Map pack appears | 93% | 6% |
| AI Overview appears | 15% | 92% |
| What it's worth to you | Where your revenue is | Rarely becomes a booking |
Across all local business searches, AI Overviews showed up on roughly 68%. That is the scary headline everyone quotes. It’s inflated by research queries you were never going to bill.
Read it as an investor would. The searches most likely to become paying customers are the ones where the map pack still dominates almost completely. AI did not take your buyers. It took the window-shoppers. Your local SEO spend is aimed at the 93%, not the 15%, and that is why it still returns.
This is the same logic we apply to any channel: fund the surface where the money actually is, and measure it by customers, not impressions.
Why doing nothing gets more expensive, not less
The instinct when a market shifts is to wait and see. Here the wait-and-see position quietly costs you ground, for two reasons the data makes concrete.
The AI recommendation layer is a harder club to enter than the pack, which means the businesses that invest now build a wider moat. SOCi’s 2026 analysis of nearly 350,000 locations put numbers on the gap.
of businesses surfaced by Google's 3-pack
recommended by Gemini
recommended by Perplexity
recommended by ChatGPT
Earning an AI recommendation is, by SOCi’s estimate, three to thirty times harder than ranking locally, and the businesses that got named carried higher review ratings than the ones that merely ranked. Harder to earn means more valuable once earned, and it means the gap between the businesses that do the work and the ones that don’t is widening, not closing.
The pack is also absorbing AI, not being replaced by it. Google put its Gemini AI directly inside Maps with Ask Maps in March 2026, and Gemini pulls its local answers from Google Business Profile and Maps data. The same profile, reviews, and listings you optimize for the map pack are what feed the AI answer. That is the part that makes this a good investment rather than a hedge: one body of work pays off on both surfaces at once. Skip it, and you lose on both.
What the work actually produces
Local SEO is not a mystery box, and you should know exactly what you're buying.
The work produces a business entity that Google, Maps, and the AI engines can all find, trust, and recommend, through a handful of named mechanisms.
A complete Google Business Profile
Makes you eligible for the pack and readable by Gemini and Ask Maps, because those tools read Maps data directly.
A steady flow of recent reviews
Clears the higher rating bar that AI recommenders apply, and lifts your pack ranking at the same time.
Consistent name, address, and phone
Lets every engine resolve your listings to one business, which is the precondition for being shown at all.
Content that answers the research questions
Puts you back into the informational searches AI now owns, often hours before the buying moment arrives.
Third-party mentions
Local press and community pages feed the unstructured signals AI Mode leans on when it decides who to name.
None of these is speculative. Each is a lever with a known effect on a surface you can name. That is what separates a real local SEO investment from paying someone to “do SEO.”
Not sure which of those five you're actually missing?
We'll check your profile, reviews, listings, and pages against the searches that actually pay you.
A Burnaby example: the business that invested, and the one that didn't
This is an illustration, not a named client, but every step maps to a real signal.
Picture two plumbing companies in Burnaby. Both are competent plumbers. One invested in its local presence: a finished Google Business Profile, forty reviews with a dozen from the last three months, identical listings across the web, and a page answering “why is my hot water cold.” The other has a half-built profile, nine old reviews, and a homepage that says “Your Comfort Is Our Priority.”
A homeowner’s tank starts leaking at 9pm. They search “emergency plumber Burnaby.” The first company sits in the map pack with a call button, and gets the job.
That afternoon, before the leak, the same homeowner had searched “why is my hot water suddenly cold.” The first company’s page was pulled into the AI Overview, planting the name hours before the emergency. The second company was absent from both moments. Not because it was a worse plumber, but because it never did the work that makes a business visible.
The difference between those two companies is not talent. It is a few months of deliberate local SEO, and it shows up as booked revenue on the exact search that mattered.
Who this is worth it for, and who it isn't
Straight talk, because naming who this doesn’t fit is how you know the rest is honest.
Local SEO is worth the investment for service-area and storefront businesses that earn customers locally: home services, trades, clinics, dental and veterinary practices, restaurants, and professional services across Metro Vancouver. If a meaningful share of your revenue comes from people searching for what you do near where you are, this pays back.
Poor fit: a pure e-commerce brand with no local service area
Poor fit: customers who all come from referrals or long procurement cycles, not search
Poor fit: a business that can’t yet deliver good service, because reviews broadcast the truth either way
If you’re in one of those cases, local SEO is not where your next dollar should go. Fund the channel your customers actually come through, and come back to this when the shape of your business changes.
What it takes, and how to decide
Local SEO is not instant, and anyone who promises overnight results is selling something.
Profiles tighten in weeks, reviews accumulate over months, and ranking gains compound from there. The right way to judge it is the way we judge any acquisition channel: cost per paying customer, not cost per click or per report.
That framing usually favours local SEO for local businesses, because the assets persist. A verified profile keeps its reviews and ranking after a given month’s work is done, where a paused ad campaign stops producing the day you stop paying. The investment builds something you keep, which is exactly why it survives a shift like AI search instead of being erased by it.
On price, the honest answer is a range. What it costs depends on the scope of work, how competitive your category and city are, how much you keep in-house, and the level of expertise on the account. A plumber in a dense Metro Vancouver market needs more sustained work than a niche trade in a quieter one. Our plans start at $950/month and run month-to-month with no long-term contract; the full breakdown is on our pricing page.
Do it yourself
The playbook is public, and plenty of owners run it well. The risk is that the mistakes are silent: a slightly wrong primary category, a service area set like a radius, an old suite number on one listing. Nothing errors. You just don't appear, and nothing tells you which lever slipped.
Hire help
If that time is worth more spent on the actual work of your business, or if your market is competitive enough that partial effort won't move you. What you're buying is diagnosis as much as execution: knowing which lever is costing you, measured against the businesses currently outranking you.
Do nothing
Only if you genuinely fit the poor-fit profile above. For everyone else, waiting is the option that quietly costs the most, because the moat the investing businesses are building gets harder to cross the longer you wait.
Frequently asked questions
Local SEO is still worth it for businesses that earn customers locally, because the high-intent “ready to buy” searches still run through the map pack about 93% of the time. AI has absorbed the informational searches that rarely convert, so a well-run local SEO investment is aimed squarely at the queries that still become paying customers.
Measure local SEO by cost per paying customer, not by rankings or impressions. Track calls, direction requests, and bookings. A verified profile keeps producing those after the work is done, so the cost-per-customer math improves over time in a way paid ads do not.
You can run local SEO yourself, and the playbook is public. The harder part is that the errors are silent: a mis-set primary category, a service area treated like a radius, or listings that disagree with each other will quietly keep you out of the pack with no warning that anything is wrong. Hire help when that diagnosis matters more than the doing, or when your Metro Vancouver market is competitive enough that partial effort won’t rank you.
Local SEO pricing varies with the scope of work, how competitive your category and city are, how much of the work stays in-house, and the level of expertise on the account, so the honest answer is a range rather than one number. Quarc’s local SEO plans start at $950/month, with higher tiers for competitive categories and multi-location businesses; the full breakdown is on our pricing page. Plans are month-to-month with no long-term contract, though most businesses see the strongest returns after four to six months of compounding work. The number that matters most is what each new customer costs you, not the monthly line item alone.
Investing in local SEO improves your AI visibility as a byproduct, because Gemini and Ask Maps read the same Google Business Profile and Maps data that power the map pack. One body of work, a complete profile, strong reviews, and consistent listings, feeds both the pack and the AI answer.
Local SEO profiles can tighten within weeks, while reviews and ranking gains compound over months, so it is a build rather than a switch. Because the assets persist once earned, the return grows the longer the foundation is in place, unlike paid channels that stop the moment you stop spending.
See where you stand before you spend.
Before you commit a budget, it's worth knowing exactly where you are. We run an audit that shows your current position in the map pack, whether AI engines can find and recommend you, and the specific gaps costing you high-intent customers right now. Book a free audit and we'll show you what to fix first, and whether hiring help is even the right call for your business.
Book a free auditQuarc Digital: Local SEO & Digital Marketing Scientists · Langley, serving Metro Vancouver & the Fraser Valley · (778) 726-1420