Regulated, local and international businesses

Updated 17 October 2026 · 7 min read

Andy Bright

Director of Product and Technology

On this page

Finance, health, law and other high-stakes subjects
Businesses that serve customers in person
Businesses that sell in more than one country or language
What to do next
Further reading

The basics in this guide apply to every business. Some businesses face extra risks or extra rules, though, and some rely on different sources of information. This chapter covers three groups: businesses in regulated industries such as finance, health and law, businesses that serve customers in person, and businesses that sell in more than one country or language.

It isn't legal or regulatory advice. Check your obligations with whoever handles compliance in your business.

Finance, health, law and other high-stakes subjects

Google uses the term Your Money or Your Life, often shortened to YMYL, for subjects where bad information could cause real harm. Google gives people who rate the quality of its search results a set of instructions called the Search Quality Rater Guidelines⁠(opens in a new tab). They describe YMYL topics as those that "could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society". Its examples include "symptoms of a heart attack" and "how to invest money".

The raters' scores don't decide where any page ranks. Google says⁠(opens in a new tab) "their ratings don't directly influence ranking". But the guidelines describe what Google's systems are trying to reward, and Google's guidance on helpful content⁠(opens in a new tab) says its systems "give even more weight" to signs of experience, expertise and trustworthiness on these subjects.

The bigger risk is being described wrongly

For most businesses, the main AEO goal is to be recommended. In a regulated industry, a wrong answer about your products can also harm customers. An AI answer might quote an old interest rate, get the eligibility rules for a product wrong, or describe a medicine's side effects inaccurately, and you have no say over the wording.

So in these industries, check accuracy as closely as visibility:

Add branded questions about your products' terms, fees, eligibility and risks to your prompt set.
Record exactly what each assistant says, and which pages it cites for each statement.
When an answer is wrong, find the page it came from. It's usually an old page on your own site, a page on someone else's site, or a page that's easy to misread. Then follow the steps in the chapter on describing your business.
Keep a dated record of the errors you found and what you did about them. Your compliance team may want to see it.

What helps in these industries

Google's guidance on helpful content⁠(opens in a new tab) asks whether content is "written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well". It also asks whether it shows "clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site". Those questions describe what to do.

Name the qualified person who wrote or checked each page, with their qualifications and the date they last reviewed it.
Link to primary sources, such as regulations, official guidance and published research, rather than to articles about them.
Publish the facts customers need in plain text on your pages, with dates. For a financial product, that means rates, fees, eligibility and risk warnings. For a clinic, it means treatments, prices and who can and can't have them, within your sector's advertising rules. In the UK, for example, prescription-only medicines can't be advertised to the public (the UK advertising code, called the CAP Code⁠(opens in a new tab)).
Say where your information applies. AI answers can mix up the rules of different countries. A page about tenancy law should say whether it covers England, Scotland or another country.
Use your industry's correct terms consistently, and explain them. An assistant that learned from general web pages may use the more common word, such as "interest" for an Islamic finance product that pays profit instead, so make the accurate description easy to find.
Avoid claims you couldn't defend. An AI answer that repeats an exaggerated claim from your site can cause you regulatory problems as well as harm to customers.

Your advertising rules still apply

Content you publish to influence AI answers is still marketing. If your industry has rules about promotions, they apply to it too. In the UK, for example, financial firms must follow the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) rules on financial promotions⁠(opens in a new tab). Put AEO content through the same approval process as any other marketing.

Businesses that serve customers in person

AI assistants answer local questions, such as "a good physiotherapist near me" or "which cafés in Leeds sell specialty coffee?", partly from listings of local businesses as well as from web pages.

Google says its generative AI responses "can include product listings, product information, and information about local businesses" (AI optimisation guide⁠(opens in a new tab)). It points to Google Business Profile, the free listing that shows a business's address, opening hours, photos and reviews in Google Search and Maps. With a few exceptions, Google allows one only for businesses that make in-person contact with customers during their stated hours, at their own premises or the customer's (Google⁠(opens in a new tab)). Bing's equivalent is Bing Places.

ChatGPT also takes location into account. OpenAI says ChatGPT may use a person's approximate location, worked out from their internet connection. It may also share that location with "trusted third-party providers that help provide more local information, such as nearby business listings" (OpenAI⁠(opens in a new tab)).

If you serve customers in person:

Claim your Google Business Profile and Bing Places listing, and complete every section, including categories, opening hours, services, photos and your website address.
Use exactly the same business name, address and phone number on your website, your profiles and every directory that lists you.
Ask customers for reviews on the platforms people in your area use, following each platform's rules, as the chapter on other websites explains.
Get mentioned by local sources, such as local news sites, local business directories, and "best of" lists for your town.
Test questions that include a place, such as "best physiotherapist in Leeds", and ask them from that place if you can, for example on your phone while you're there, because answers change with location.

Businesses that sell in more than one country or language

AI assistants don't give the same answer in every country and language. The University of Toronto study⁠(opens in a new tab) found that AI search engines differ in their "cross-language stability", and recommends "language-aware strategies". The study, published in 2025 before being checked by other researchers, used the versions of the assistants that developers connect to through an API. It found that how often the assistants cited websites in the question's language varied by assistant and by language, and that Claude often cited English websites even for questions in other languages.

Fernhill Coffee sells in the UK, Ireland and Germany. In its first checks, ChatGPT recommended Fernhill in some English answers for the UK, but never in German answers about coffee subscriptions in Germany. Its German pages were new, and no German website had mentioned Fernhill yet.

What helps:

Measure each country separately, in its own language, and from that country if you can. Fernhill keeps a separate group of German questions in its prompt set.
Publish properly localised pages, with local prices, delivery details and contact information, not just translations. Connect the versions with hreflang tags, lines of code that tell search engines which language and country each page is for. Your developer can add them, and the technical SEO guide's international SEO chapter explains.
Earn coverage in each country, as well as in English. English-language coverage can carry over to other languages in some assistants, but in others local-language sources dominate. Fernhill sent samples to two German coffee bloggers and asked its German subscribers for reviews in German.
Check the words in each language, especially for regulated products, where a mistranslated term can change the meaning.

What to do next

If you're in a regulated industry, add questions about your products' terms and risks to your prompt set, and start a dated record of wrong answers.
Make sure every important page names who wrote or reviewed it, with their qualifications and the review date.
If you serve customers in person, claim and complete your Google Business Profile and Bing Places listing.
If you sell in more than one country, set up a separate group of questions for each country, in its own language.