DAY 48 – Why Small Businesses Should Show Prices on Google Business Profile

Today I was auditing local visibility for a company on Google and two tabs caught my attention. One was the online estimates tab and the other was the top rated tab. This made me think about the future of search and the impact of AI on local visibility.

We already know that AI tools like Google’s AI overview and ChatGPT prefer transparency. They perform better when they can read clear information, structured data, and schema. Google reviews already provide this automatically because your Google Business Profile feeds review data directly into Google and into AI overviews.

The online estimates tab has a similar intention. It aims to help people compare local businesses quickly. With the top rated tab, Google can list businesses from highest to lowest because the review data is standard and Google owns and manages it. With pricing they cannot do the same yet because many businesses still do not show prices online. That is why the online estimates tab is not very strong at the moment, but this will change. As AI starts rewarding transparency, more website owners and SEOs will feel the pressure to show pricing. I personally think that in two or three years most service websites will have at least some form of pricing.

If you want to benefit from the online estimates tab, go to your Google Business Profile and add your services and prices. This feature already exists and every small business should use it. You can treat it like a free product feed inside your Google profile. It gets shown across search and maps and it will appear under the online estimates tab for local service businesses. AI overviews can also pick this up and include you in the summary. The same goes for ChatGPT when it scans public business data.

Google is always trying to make local search easier for people and AI is speeding up this trend. Small businesses are already struggling with zero click search because Google often answers the question on the results page without sending traffic. But when a search involves reviews, ratings, or pricing, Google cannot answer it fully without mentioning your brand name. Business Profile optimisation will be one of the biggest opportunities for small businesses in the coming years because the data you add there becomes perfect structured data for AI overviews.

If small businesses want to stay visible, they need to adjust early.

What are your thoughts?

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