Most of the conversation about AI and marketing focuses on the business side. How to rank in AI search. How to structure content. How to measure what AI is doing to traffic.
The more interesting question is often the one underneath it. How has the way people actually find and evaluate businesses changed? Because that is what the rest of the conversation is trying to respond to.
For franchisors and multi-location businesses, this shift matters in ways it does not for a single-location brand. When a customer’s research process changes, the standards a multi-location website has to meet change with it. Some brands are keeping up. Many are not realizing yet that they have fallen behind.
The buyer journey looks different now
A few years ago, most local buying decisions started with a Google search. A customer would type “pet care near me” or “tutoring Oakville” and get a list. They would click a few listings, skim the sites, compare, and choose.
That pattern still exists. But a growing share of customers now start the journey somewhere else entirely. They open ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or the AI-powered answer panel at the top of Google search. They ask a question in plain language. They get a summary answer. And only then, if the summary is interesting, do they click through to a specific business.
This is not a small shift. It reorders what a business needs to do.
In the old flow, the website was the first impression. If the site was good, the customer stayed. If it was not, they bounced. In the new flow, the AI’s summary is the first impression. The website only matters after the customer has already decided which businesses are worth considering.
What customers are evaluating before they visit
Most of the evaluation now happens in a conversation with an AI, not on the business’s own website. By the time a customer lands on a location page, they are often working from opinions formed somewhere else.
Those opinions are shaped by:
- What AI tools say about the business in response to open-ended questions
- What review patterns look like, summarized and described by the AI
- What the business appears to offer based on third-party descriptions and directories
- Whether the business shows up at all for their city or neighbourhood
- How the business compares to alternatives, according to the AI
By the time someone visits the website, they often already believe they know what the business does, where it is, how it is rated, and how it compares. The website’s job is no longer to introduce the business. It is to confirm, deepen, and convert.
If the site contradicts what the AI said, trust drops. If the site is less specific than the AI’s summary, the visitor loses confidence. If the site does not provide a clear next step, the momentum the AI built evaporates.
Why multi-location businesses feel this differently
For a business with one location, this shift is mostly about getting the content right once. For a business with 20 or 200 locations, the shift exposes how much variation exists across the network.
AI tools are doing customer research one location at a time. A customer in Burlington is getting an answer about Burlington. A customer in Guelph is getting an answer about Guelph. If the Burlington page has real local detail and the Guelph page is a near-duplicate with the city name swapped in, those two customers are getting very different quality of AI summaries, even though the brand is the same.
In the old buyer journey, a weak local page meant a lost click. In the new one, it means a lost consideration.
This is why multi-location brands should pay attention to what AI tools actually say about each of their locations, not just their national brand. The consistency of the network’s AI presence is now part of the brand.
What this means for the website
None of this means the website is less important. It means the website is doing a different job.
A customer landing on a location page now is often already halfway through the decision. They are not looking to be convinced that the category exists. They are looking for confirmation, specifics, and a reason to take the next step.
That changes what needs to be on the page. For a deeper look at the mechanics, see what AI search means for your website, SEO, and visibility. Generic value propositions matter less. Specific details matter more. Clear next steps matter more. And because AI is also reading the page, the content has to be written so both a skeptical customer and a summarizing AI can get what they need from it.
For multi-location businesses, this reinforces the case for a content model that gives every location enough substance to be useful. Not identical content. Not filler. Content that shows the business actually operates in that market with expertise, specifics, and a clear handoff to the next step. This is where strong local pages and clear website copywriting do the work that AI summaries cannot.
Common questions about AI and the buyer journey
Q. How has AI changed the way customers find businesses?
A growing share of customers now start their research with an AI tool rather than a traditional search engine. They ask questions in plain language, get summary answers, compare options in conversation with the AI, and only click through to a specific business after the AI has helped them narrow down their choices. The business’s website is no longer the first impression. The AI’s summary is.
Q. Do people still visit websites after using AI search?
Yes. AI-influenced research often leads to higher-intent website visits. Analytics providers have reported that traffic from AI sources tends to convert at a higher rate than traditional search traffic, because the visitor has already been pre-qualified by the AI. The visit happens later in the journey, but it is a better visit.
Q. What do customers evaluate before they visit a business website?
By the time a customer visits a website, they often already believe they know what the business does, where it operates, how it is rated, and how it compares to alternatives. Those impressions are shaped by AI summaries, review patterns, directories, and third-party mentions. The website’s job has shifted from introducing the business to confirming and deepening what the customer already understands.
Q. Why does this affect multi-location businesses differently?
AI tools research one location at a time. A customer in Burlington gets a Burlington-specific answer. A customer in Guelph gets a Guelph-specific answer. If some locations have strong local content and others are near-duplicates with the city name swapped in, AI gives those customers very different impressions of the same brand. The consistency of local content across the network is now part of how customers perceive the brand.
Q. What should businesses do differently in an AI-influenced buyer journey?
The website has to match or exceed what the AI said about the business. That means more specificity, fewer generic claims, clearer next steps, and content structured so both humans and AI can extract what they need. For multi-location brands, it also means raising the floor of local content quality so every location gives AI something useful to summarize.
Read the full picture
This post covers one piece of a broader shift. The full overview of what is changing in AI and marketing, and what multi-location businesses should be doing about their websites, is in our pillar piece: How AI Is Changing Marketing and What Your Website Needs to Do Now.