AI has a favourite brand. Social Places makes sure it's yours.

Ask an AI assistant "where’s the best burger near me" or "which bank has a branch open now" and it doesn’t give you a list. It gives you an answer. That answer already favours somebody, and the odds are stacked against most brands getting picked. A 2026 industry analysis of 350,000 locations, reported by Search Engine Land, found brands appear in Google’s local 3-pack 35.9% of the time, but get recommended by Gemini just 11% of the time, and by ChatGPT a mere 1.2% of the time.

ChatGPT alone now serves 900 million people a week, and more than a third of consumers say they start their search with an AI tool instead of Google. Whoever the AI picks gets the visit. Everyone else disappears.

For multi-location brands, that's a problem you can't see. There's no ranking to check. No impressions dashboard. No error message when you're left off the list. You just quietly stop showing up.

Social Places, the local marketing technology platform trusted by Africa's largest banks, retail, restaurant and medical groups, is closing that gap with AI Visibility Tracker: a new capability that shows exactly how often AI assistants recommend your locations, and where you're winning or losing.

What it means for you

• More revenue: high-intent customers arrive already decided. Visibility converts straight to sales.
  
• A better customer experience: correct hours, menus and details in every answer. No wasted trips, no bad first impressions.

The blind spot every multi-location brand has right now

Reputation, listings accuracy and content have driven search rankings for a decade. They now drive AI answers too, but almost nobody is measuring it. Search has split in two, and most brands are still only optimising for one half of it. Traditional search and AI search now run side by side, and both need to be managed.

AI Visibility Tracker tracks the real questions consumers ask AI assistants, records how each one answers, and turns that into a number you can manage like any other channel. Per platform. Per location. Benchmarked against the competitors you actually compete with on the ground. It is the only AI visibility report built specifically for franchises and multi-location brands in South Africa.

"Search became a conversation, and the brands that make the shortlist are the ones with accurate, structured data behind every location. Most brands have no idea whether they’re on that shortlist or off it. We built AI Visibility to make that measurable."

Ryan Haworth, CEO, Social Places

What it actually shows you

• A score weighted to your goals: a weighting slider lets you decide what success means, balancing Mention against Position.
  
• Share of Visibility: your slice of the AI answer for the queries that define your category, benchmarked against named competitors and the industry as a whole.
  
• ChatGPT and Gemini coverage: the two assistants driving the most recommendation traffic, tracked side by side.
  
• Contextual, location-level tracking: the search terms you define for each area, for example "best burgers in Durbanville" rather than a generic "near me", scored per location against local competitors, audited twice weekly.

Social Places' tools are the building blocks of AI discovery

Most AI monitoring products stop at the score. Social Places doesn't, because the score isn't the point, fixing it is. AI Visibility Tracker sits inside the same platform that already manages the signals AI assistants use when they decide who to recommend. Measurement and improvement live in the same dashboard, run by the same team. You don't get a score and a to-do list handed to someone else. You get the team that does the work for you.

AI ranks on factors Social Places already powers

• Accurate, consistent location data: verified data synced across every platform AI draws from.
  
• Review score, volume and recency: reviews monitored and responded to at every location.
  
• Sentiment and responsiveness: AI sentiment tagging and replies at scale.
  
• Structured, crawlable content per location: AI-optimised local pages and content, rolled out for every location.
  
• Citations across trusted platforms: listings and content published across all digital channels.

A decade of making brands findable, now extended to AI

Social Places has spent 11 years keeping multi-location brands accurate and visible across Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing, TripAdvisor and in-car navigation, serving 665+ enterprise brands across 80+ countries with a 97% client renewal rate, five years running. AI assistants draw on the same structured location data Social Places has spent a decade perfecting. AI Visibility isn’t a new discipline, it’s the next place that decade of data pays off.

AI Visibility Tracker is available now as an add-on inside the Social Places AI Insights Hub. Brands can request a visibility check at socialplaces.io/ai-visibility.

About Social Places

Social Places is the local marketing technology platform trusted by Africa's largest banks, retail, restaurant and medical groups to manage their digital presence at scale, combining a centralised software platform with a managed service team that executes on brands' behalf. Learn more at socialplaces.io.

Media contact

Social Places press office · oi.secalplaicos@sda · +27 21 551 3170
Screenshots, logos and interview requests available on request.