An AI assistant does not judge your food. It assembles its answer from what has been publicly recorded about your business, and out of that it uses only the details it can verify: how complete your profile is, whether your sources say the same thing, whether there are recent reviews, whether you are open at that moment and whether there is anything to order or book.

There is one thing you have no influence over, and that is how far you are from the guest asking the question. The rest sits in sources you maintain yourself, or that you can have updated.

What does an AI search engine go on, and what does it not?

Nobody outside OpenAI or Google can tell you how heavily such a model weighs each detail, and anyone who hands you a ranking with percentages is making it up. What can be verified is which details about your business are publicly available, whether they are there and whether they are correct.

An AI search engine does not invent opening hours for your new location; it takes it from a source, or it leaves you out of the answer.

Five details, and who keeps them up to date

Five kinds of details come back in almost every restaurant recommendation.

What happens when three sources give three opening hours

It starts with the fields you left empty. A profile without a phone number, cuisine type, menu URL or photos leaves an assistant knowing less about you than about the venue two streets away. With a question like “where can I get gluten-free takeaway in Utrecht”, the whole answer hangs on that cuisine type.

After that come the places where two sources say something different. If your business profile has you closing at 22.00, your own site at 23.00 and your delivery platform at 21.30, there is no version that three sources confirm. With one location something like that still gets noticed. With five locations across those three places, that comes to fifteen places where the same time has to appear, every time you change it.

How long has your last review been sitting there?

Review activity is really two details. The count and the average say what guests think of you; the date says whether anything is still happening on your profile.

A venue with 340 reviews where the most recent one is from February reads differently from a venue with 90 reviews where the most recent one is from last week. Of those five details, this is the only one where your guests do the work. What you add are the replies, and with SOUS Spotlight those go out automatically in your own tone, adjustable per star rating, so the high scores run by themselves and the low ones stay in your hands.

What Google itself says about distance and opening hours

For local results there is documentation, and it is usable because restaurant recommendations often lean on the same map data. Google names three factors: relevance, distance and prominence, meaning how well your profile matches the question, how far you are from the searcher and how well known your venue is. That same page mentions complete business information, opening hours and category, and states that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking.

Distance is the only thing you do not change, and that is the reason to have those five details in order. Google itself adds that you cannot request or buy a better local position.

Is there anything at your venue to order or book?

A recommendation only becomes useful once the guest can go further. If an assistant puts a booking link or an ordering page next to your name, all that guest still has to do is tap it.

What has to be on your site for that is more technical than the rest, and it can still be checked. For a restaurant listing Google asks for your opening hours, a working link to your menu and your cuisine type in the code of your site, and for booking or ordering it asks for a separate connection. Ask whoever manages your site whether those fields are filled in per location. Without a menu URL there is no menu to read from either.

The six checks you can run per location today

1. Ask a guest’s question. Ask an AI assistant where you can eat or get takeaway tonight in the city your location is in, without naming your own business. Note whether you get mentioned and with which details.

2. Put your opening hours side by side as they appear on your business profile, your own site and every delivery platform, and include the public holidays, because those differ most often.

3. Check the address and phone number in those same places, character by character. A location that has moved is often still listed somewhere at the old address.

4. Click your menu URL from your business profile. If it lands on a two-year-old pdf or on a 404, that is the menu an assistant reads from.

5. Look at two dates: your last review and your last reply. Do that per location.

6. Test whether a guest can order or book from your profile. Do it yourself, on your phone, all the way to the final step.

Start with the location you look after the least, because that is usually where the details have gone untouched the longest.

What SOUS Spotlight takes over here

For a single venue this is an afternoon of work. Per location it quickly comes to ten places or more, and as soon as something changes that same round starts again, for every location separately.

SOUS Spotlight distributes your details to 45-plus platforms and search engines per location, and keeps them the same there. SOUS itself names Google, Maps, ChatGPT and Claude. In the AI dashboard and the management portal you follow the venues in your area, put your own listings next to those of up to 25 competitors you add yourself, and get 20 content suggestions a week plus a report every two weeks.

BISOUS saw map views rise by 189% and menu clicks by 31%. At Laymous it came to 73% more map views, 152% more menu clicks and 44% more route requests, and Grand Café JAN! got 3x visibility on Google Maps.

SOUS Spotlight costs €90 per month per location with annual billing or €129 per month with monthly billing.

If you want to know where your venue stands right now, run the free AI scan at ai.poweredbysous.com.

Frequently asked questions

Does ChatGPT know my restaurant exists?

Only if it has been recorded somewhere. An assistant reads public sources: your business profile, your site, map services, review sites, delivery platforms. If your newest location is nowhere yet, it will not turn up in any answer either.

Do more reviews help?

Yes, for local results at least. Google writes itself that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. On top of that, the date is yours to control, and it tells you as much as the count does.

My guests are older. Do they really search through an AI search engine?

Partly, and it is not only about who deliberately goes there. AI answers now sit inside Google itself and inside the apps your guests already use, so you also turn up for someone who never opens an assistant.

Can I see which answers I appear in?

Yes. In the AI dashboard of SOUS Spotlight you see that per location, and you set it against competitors you add yourself, up to 25 of them.

What does SOUS Spotlight cost?

€90 per month per location with annual billing, or €129 per month with monthly billing.