Why does my dispensary not show up on Google Maps?

Almost always one of three things: the Google Business Profile is unverified or incomplete, the name, address and phone number differ between your site and your profile, or the business sits outside the area Google treats as one market. Google ranks the three map results by proximity, prominence and relevance, and proximity you cannot change. The other two you can.

Do I need SEO if I run a dispensary?

You need it more than most businesses do. Google Ads prohibits advertising substances that induce highs, so paid search is closed to you. Organic search and the Map Pack are the channels you are allowed to win, which makes them the whole acquisition channel rather than one option among several.

How long does it take to rank a dispensary on Google?

A profile fix can move the Map Pack in days to weeks. A new page usually takes two to four months before it holds a position, and the pages we watched on a 27-day-old domain had not been crawled at all. Treat profile and content as separate timelines instead of one.

Does AI recommend dispensaries?

Yes, and it names shops by name. Asked for the best dispensary in Los Angeles, an AI engine named The Artist Tree and Sweet Flower; asked in Chicago, it named Ivy Hall, Dispensary 33 and Sunnyside. Google is the odd one out: for “cannabis dispensaries near me” in five US cities it returned no AI answer at all, only a map of three pins with Yelp, Leafly and Reddit underneath. Two different shortlists, but the same question for your store either way: it is naming somebody, so is it naming you?

What is the fastest thing I can fix myself?

Claim and verify the Google Business Profile, then make the name, address and phone number on your site match it character for character. That is free, takes under an hour, and inconsistency there is the single most common cause of a missing map result.

AEO agency: what the work actually is

YourCite · Answer engine optimisation · updated 31 October 2026 · measured, with sources

As of October 2026: across 15,745 checks on 4 AI engines, a brand was cited in only 13.8% of answers. Perplexity 17.6%, Gemini 17.3%, ChatGPT 12.2%, Claude 7.6% (Boring Marketing, 2026). An AEO agency exists to move that number for one brand. Most of what you will be sold does not move it.

What is AEO, and how is it different from SEO?

Search engine optimisation gets you into a list of links. Answer engine optimisation gets you into the sentence an assistant says. That's the difference between being findable and being recommended, and if you've ever asked an assistant a buying question and simply taken the first name it gave, you know which one you trust in that moment.

They use some of the same material and they aren't the same job: a page can rank first and never be quoted, which is exactly what happened to our own business. GMI Grinders ranked on page two of Google and appeared in none of the four AI answers we tested.

What does an AEO agency actually do?

Four things, in this order:

Ask the questions. The buyer's real questions, phrased the way they type them, put to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. Then record whether the brand appears and who appears instead. No opinion, no dashboard: the answers.
Check whether your own pages answer them. A model can only lift what exists. If no page on your site answers "which clinic takes Saturday appointments", there is nothing to quote.
Make the answers liftable. Question as the heading, the answer in the first two sentences, and something specific inside it: a date, a count, a named customer. That shape is what gets reused.
Re-measure, and publish what moved. Including when nothing did. A single measurement is a photograph, not a trend.

Why does being mentioned elsewhere matter more than a link?

Because a model cites what it has already seen cited. When one of our own answers quoted our comparison page, ChatGPT added its own warning: "some MOQ comparisons come from GMI's own comparison article, confirm directly." It cited us and then told the reader to check us, because the page was ours. That is the ceiling of first-party content, and the way past it is other people saying the same things.

How do you tell a real AEO agency from a rebadged one?

Ask these four questions, and listen for specifics:

Which questions did you ask, and which engines, on which date? A real one has a list and dates.
Can I see a brand you moved, and the before and after answers? Vague case studies are decoration.
What do you do when the answer changes next month? AI answers move. The method has to include re-measurement.
What will you not promise? Anyone who will not name a limit has not done the work.

What should it cost?

An AI visibility audit is a one-time piece of work and the market prices it at $99 to $500. Ongoing work sits inside a normal SEO retainer, because answer readiness is built on the same foundation: readable pages, correct facts, consistent business details, and something worth citing. Across 439 providers, local SEO averages $1,557 a month and an AI optimisation add-on averages about $900 (Ahrefs, 2026 and GoodFirms, 2026).

To be fair to the sceptics: no agency controls what a model says, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling certainty they don't have. What can be controlled is whether the material exists, whether it is readable, and whether it is specific enough to be worth quoting.

What does good look like after three months?

The first time an answer names your brand where it used to name two competitors, it doesn't feel like marketing. It feels like being introduced to somebody who had already heard of you. That moment is worth chasing, and it is also the moment people stop asking whether the work is worth paying for.

The same questions, asked again, on the same engines, and a straight answer about what changed. Sometimes the answer is: you are named in two more questions than before, and here is the page that did it. Sometimes it is: nothing moved, and here is what we are changing. Both are results. Only one of them is usually reported.

See where you stand before hiring anyone

We ask your buyers' questions of the four engines and show you the answers, who is named, and what your own site is missing. Free, and yours whether or not you work with us.

Get my free report

Next: the six levers that get a page quoted.

Related reading: our own before and after.