Josh Thompson: Local SEO When AI Agents Pick the Contractor

Josh Thompson put one word in a local client's title and H1, and within a week that client was the number one answer when he asked ChatGPT for the top three companies in their trade. Josh runs Brightbeam SEO, a local SEO agency in Boise, Idaho that works mostly with contractors.

Josh thinks the next big change for plumbers, HVAC techs and roofers is the AI agent: a homeowner asks an assistant for estimates from the top three plumbers in Boise, and nobody looks at a screen. In this episode he explains why chat answers for local queries pull from regular search results, not the map pack, and why authority, backlinks and history still decide the winner once everyone copies the "top" trick. Read the full recap with quotes and quote cards: Josh Thompson on local SEO for the AI agent era.

Jeremy and Josh also cover:

• The one-week "top" test and how to run it on your own clients (full breakdown on SEO Arcade)
• Bing for local service businesses: IndexNow, Bing Places, social signals and the Webmaster Tools checklist (the checklist)
• Why local SEO is bottom of funnel by nature, and why national brands should move their content down the funnel
• Josh's first five moves for a brand-new contractor: website, Google Business Profile, the business name, a map pin, and phone numbers everywhere
• Why AI still struggles with judgment calls like contextual internal linking
• Why a local SEO usually knows far more than the local competition, even when Twitter makes you feel behind

Related episodes: Chris Garrett on why Bing matters more than ever and Mike Martin on the Google Business Profile loop.

Mentioned on the show: Mike Rowe's TED talk on dirty jobs.

Host: Jeremy Rivera. Guest: Josh Thompson, founder of Brightbeam SEO. Recorded May 2025.