Is Your Burnaby Site Ready for AI Search This Holiday?

It's mid September, and the holiday rush is close. Many Burnaby and New Westminster owners are asking a new question this year: when someone asks Google's AI Mode or ChatGPT "who's open late near Metrotown on Boxing Day?", will my business show up?

The honest answer: nobody can promise that it will. But you can remove the most common reasons it won't. The good news is that most of this checklist is ordinary website care, and none of it needs a pricey "AI SEO" package.

What changed, briefly

Google started rolling out AI Mode in Canada on August 21, 2025. According to Google's Canadian announcement, it launched in English "as a tab on your Search results page, and in the Google app for Android and iOS." It sits next to AI Overviews, the summaries that already appear above many regular results.

ChatGPT has its own search feature, and it finds websites through its own crawler. So you now have two separate systems to think about, and each has its own rules.

What Google actually says you need

Here's the part that surprises people. Google's AI features and your website page (last updated December 10, 2025, when we read it in September 2026) says: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary."

The same page says a page has to be "indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet." It also says you don't need to create "new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup" to appear. So if someone is selling you a special AI file as a shortcut into AI Mode, Google's own documentation doesn't back that up.

What Google does list is the usual groundwork: let crawlers in through robots.txt, link your pages to each other, keep important content in plain text, and make sure any structured data matches what's visible on the page.

What OpenAI says about ChatGPT search

OpenAI's Overview of OpenAI Crawlers explains that OAI-SearchBot is the crawler used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features. The key line: "Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links."

It's a separate bot from GPTBot, which OpenAI describes as crawling content for training its models. That split matters. You can say no to training and still say yes to search. OpenAI also notes it can take about 24 hours for its systems to pick up a robots.txt change.

The pre-holiday checklist

Work through these before November. Most take under an hour each.

• Check that your pages are indexed. Search Console's URL Inspection tool will tell you. A page that isn't indexed can't show up in AI Overviews or AI Mode, per Google's page above.
• Read your robots.txt file. Visit yoursite.com/robots.txt. Look for lines that block Googlebot or OAI-SearchBot. If you want to show up in ChatGPT search, don't disallow OAI-SearchBot. Also ask your web host whether a firewall or "bot protection" setting is quietly blocking crawlers.
• Decide on training separately. Google's list of common crawlers (updated July 14, 2026) says Google-Extended "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search" and isn't a ranking signal. Blocking it, or GPTBot, is a training choice, not a search choice.
• Don't hide the facts in images. Holiday hours posted only as an Instagram graphic are hard for any system to read. Put hours, address, phone number and services in plain text on the page.
• Set holiday hours in Google Business Profile. Google's special hours help page covers this for holidays and closures of up to 6 days in a row. For 7 or more days, it says to mark the business as temporarily closed instead.
• Add or fix LocalBusiness structured data. Google's LocalBusiness documentation (updated September 8, 2026) lists name and address as required, with opening hours and telephone recommended. For seasonal hours it says: "Use both the validFrom and validThrough properties." Test it with the Rich Results Test before you publish.
• Make your key pages answer real questions. "Do you do same day pickup?" "Do you deliver to New Westminster?" "Are you open December 26?" If the answer isn't written on your site, an AI answer can't quote you on it.
• Keep everything consistent. Your website, Business Profile and social pages should show the same hours and phone number. Conflicting info is a problem whether a person or a machine is reading it.

How to tell if it's working

Don't expect a neat "AI traffic" dashboard from Google. Its AI features page says traffic from AI features shows up in Search Console's Performance report under the "Web" search type, counted along with regular search. You can't cleanly separate it out there.

For a practical check, run your own test searches in AI Mode and ChatGPT a few times each week in November. Write down whether your business appears and whether the details are right. It's rough, but it's honest.

The catch: fewer clicks, not more

Here's the evidence that cuts the other way. A Pew Research Center study published July 22, 2025 tracked 900 U.S. adults' Google searches in March 2025. When an AI summary appeared, users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits. Without one, it was 15%. Only 1% of visits included a click on a link inside the summary itself.

That's U.S. data from early 2025, not Metro Vancouver today, and it covers AI summaries rather than AI Mode specifically. Still, the direction is clear. Being mentioned in an AI answer may not bring the website visits you're used to. So make sure the answer itself carries what a customer needs: your hours, your phone number, your location.

Where this doesn't apply

This checklist won't fix everything, and in some cases it isn't worth your time right now.

• If your pages aren't indexed or ranking at all, fix basic SEO first. Google is clear that the AI features use the same foundation.
• If most customers find you by referral or walk-in, a clean Business Profile matters far more than your robots.txt.
• Nobody controls inclusion. Google and OpenAI don't guarantee that any page will be cited, and neither do we. Anyone promising "guaranteed AI Mode placement" is guessing.
• Measurement is weak. With AI traffic counted inside regular Search Console numbers, you won't get precise ROI figures for this work.
• Rules change. These are fast moving products. The pages we cite were read in September 2026, and they may change.

If you only have one afternoon, spend it on holiday hours in your Business Profile and a plain text hours section on your site. That's the highest value work on this list.

Sources

• Google Search Central. "AI features and your website." Last updated 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
• Google Search Central. "List of Google's common crawlers." Last updated 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers
• Google Search Central. "Local Business (LocalBusiness) structured data." Last updated 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/local-business
• Google Business Profile Help. Special hours guidance. Accessed 2026. https://support.google.com/business/answer/6303076
• Google Canada Blog. Stein, R. "Google Search: Introducing AI Mode in Canada." 2025. https://blog.google/intl/en-ca/products/explore-get-answers/google-search-introducing-ai-mode-in-canada/
• OpenAI. "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers." Accessed 2026. https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
• Pew Research Center. Chapekis, A. and Lieb, A. "Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results." 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/

Want a second set of eyes before the rush? Book a free call with Autana. We'll go through your site, robots.txt and Business Profile with you, and tell you plainly what's worth fixing now and what can wait until January.