Why findloc.ai is a public database of AI recommendations, not another GEO tool
Most GEO products sell you software to "optimise" your site. We do something different: every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini what they recommend across 42+ local markets, and we publish the answers. The database is the asset; the dashboard is just one front-end.
The category is too crowded with audit tools
Search "GEO tool" in 2026 and you get fifty products that do roughly the same thing: paste a URL, get back a score, get back a list of "fixes" your AI-visibility score will improve if you implement them. They run inside YOUR site's context. They measure YOUR markup, YOUR robots.txt, YOUR schema. Then they bill $49-499/mo for the privilege.
This category is useful but inherently limited. The single audit tells you whether your site is technically ready to be cited. It does NOT tell you whether AI engines actually cite you. It cannot — the audit lives inside your context, never observes the engines themselves. Engines are a black box that nobody bothers to actually query.
The audit-tool category answers: "could AI cite me?" The database we are building answers: "does AI cite me — and if not, who instead?"
What we measure (and what makes it a database, not a tool)
A database has four properties a tool lacks. (1) Volume — meaningful coverage across a defined scope. (2) Refresh cadence — measurements at predictable intervals. (3) Open methodology — the rules for what counts are public and auditable. (4) Historical depth — you can compare today's state to last week's, last month's, last year's. We deliberately built all four into findloc.ai.
| Property | How findloc.ai delivers it |
|---|---|
| Volume | 42 active (city × industry) markets across 14 cities, expanding to US Top 50 in 2026. |
| Refresh cadence | Every Sunday 01:00 UTC a cron probes all active markets with 15 customer queries × 4 engines = 60 probes per market. |
| Open methodology | /method publishes the full scoring formula; the first 5 of 15 queries per market are public; every cited business links to the engine answer that named it. |
| Historical depth | Snapshots are append-only — we never overwrite. Week-over-week rank delta and 5-week sparkline trend visible on every leaderboard row. |
The total dataset today is roughly 2,520 AI probes per week, 19,000+ business-name citations cumulatively analysed, growing weekly. Both numbers display live in the top nav ticker on every page of the site.
Why publishing (instead of paywalling) is the moat
The instinct in this category is to lock the data: charge a SaaS subscription, give Pro users access to the rankings, keep free users staring at a teaser. That move is everywhere in SEO and it is everywhere in early GEO tools too. We deliberately took the opposite path: the dashboard is free, the rankings are public, the engine answers are quotable. Here is the strategic logic.
- AI engines preferentially cite open data. They cannot read paywalled tables, and they distrust opaque "trust score" labels with no source. By publishing the leaderboard publicly with schema.org-marked-up data, we maximise the chance our pages themselves get cited when someone asks ChatGPT "who tracks AI visibility for local businesses". The eat-our-own-dog-food effect is real.
- Publishing creates a flywheel. Every business in the dataset who Googles themselves finds findloc.ai. They claim. They share. They become candidates for the Pro tier. A paywalled tool has zero of this organic acquisition.
- Trust comes from auditability. Anyone can verify our methodology by clicking through to the verbatim engine answer. A locked dashboard with a "8.3/10 visibility score" badge looks suspicious; an open leaderboard with a link to "ChatGPT's actual answer to this query, captured at 03:17 UTC on 2026-06-16" does not.
The revenue product (Pro $49/mo) is what you get on top of the public database: weekly rank-change emails for YOUR business, AI-generated improvement suggestions based on what the AI says about competitors who beat you, deeper analytics. The free database is the entry point — the trust signal that makes Pro worth paying for. Try locking the database first and you have no story.
What gets built on top of the database
Once you frame findloc.ai as a database rather than a tool, the product roadmap snaps into place. Tools max out at one user, one site, one purpose. Databases support multiple front-ends and serve different audiences in parallel.
| Front-end | Audience | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Live dashboard (/visibility) | Small business owners scanning their market | Live |
| Per-market deep-dive (/ai-visibility/{country}/{city}/{industry}) | Owners + agencies investigating a single market in depth | Live |
| Weekly editorial publications (/reports) | Researchers, journalists, AI / GEO analysts | Live |
| Public API | Agencies pulling weekly snapshots for client reporting; AI products consuming our rankings | Roadmap Q3 |
| Enterprise data licensing | White-label partners, large agencies, market-research firms | Inbound only, by contract |
What this means for you, depending on who you are
The database serves three distinct audiences. If you are reading this post and trying to figure out which one you are, here is the cheat sheet.
- Small business owner — find your city + industry on /visibility, see if you are cited, see who is beating you. Claim your business if you find it. Subscribe to Pro $49/mo if you want a weekly digest of YOUR rank moves + the specific things competitors who beat you have done differently.
- Marketing agency — same starting point, but the use case is reporting. Pull a screenshot of your client's market every Monday, send it as the "AI visibility update" slide in your monthly client deck. Reach out to us for the upcoming API + white-label arrangement if you want to brand the dashboard as your own offering.
- Researcher or AI product team — the open dataset at findloc.ai/data covers our 12-bot crawler activity. Q3 2026 we expose the full AI-recommendation dataset (snapshots + engine answers) as JSON / CSV. Contact us if you want early access for AI training / academic research.
The database is the asset. The dashboard, the reports, the API, the white-label, the per-business Pro subscription — all of these are front-ends that share the same underlying weekly snapshot. The more front-ends, the more leverage on each cron tick. That is the whole architecture.
Browse the live database
Open findloc.ai/visibility to see the current rankings for any of 14 cities × 3 lodging industries. Free, no signup. If your business is listed, claim it. If it is not, /add-business gets you in.
Pricing for the per-business Pro tier (weekly tracking + improvement suggestions) is at findloc.ai/geo. API access, agency / white-label arrangements, and dataset licensing are by inbound contact — email support@findloc.ai.
Frequently asked
- What does findloc.ai actually do?
findloc.ai is the public database of AI recommendations for local businesses. Every week we send 15 hand-curated customer-search queries through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini for every city × industry market we cover (currently 14 cities × 3 lodging industries = 42 markets), capture the verbatim engine answers, extract the named businesses, score by cross-engine consensus, and publish the rankings. The dataset is free to read at findloc.ai/visibility.
- How is this different from a GEO tool or AI-visibility checker?
Most GEO tools audit one website at a time and tell you what to fix on YOUR site. We measure the opposite side of the conversation — what AI engines are SAYING about your market, regardless of what your site looks like. You can be perfectly schema-optimised and still not get cited; you can have a bare-bones site and be cited constantly. The database tells you which one you are, and who is beating you. Tools optimise; databases measure.
- Why publish the data instead of locking it behind a paywall?
Three reasons. First, public data is what AI engines preferentially cite — closed datasets are invisible to the very engines we measure. Second, publishing creates a flywheel: every business owner who finds themselves in the database becomes a candidate to claim, which grows the dataset. Third, "the leaderboard is open" is the only honest way to sell this — if we hid it, we would just be another opaque audit tool charging $99/mo for screenshots.
- What is in the dataset today?
As of mid-2026: 14 US + NZ cities × 3 lodging industries (hotel, motel, Airbnb-style rentals) = 42 active markets. Each market is probed weekly with 15 customer queries × 4 engines = 60 probes per market, ~2,520 probes per week. Cumulative business-name citations analysed is over 19,000 and growing weekly. The live counts are on findloc.ai/visibility (top ticker).
- Who uses the dataset?
Three audiences, three use cases. (1) Business owners — see if they are cited, see who is beating them, claim their entry, optionally subscribe to weekly rank-change tracking. (2) Marketing agencies — pull weekly snapshots for client reporting, use the leaderboard as a sales tool ("here is who ChatGPT cites in your market; you are not on the list"). (3) Researchers and AI products — the dataset shows in detail how four major AI engines differ in their local-business recommendations.
- What is on the roadmap?
Three vectors. Geographic: expand from 14 cities to US Top 50 tourism markets, then UK / Canada / Australia. Vertical: expand from lodging to restaurants, attractions, professional services. Distribution: a public API and CSV exports for the data-nerd / agency / research audience that wants to ingest the dataset rather than browse a dashboard.
A free findloc.ai mini-page ships the full 8-point GEO stack automatically — schema.org markup, FAQPage, /llms.txt inclusion, sitemap, AI-bot allowlist. Five minutes, no credit card.
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