Local SEO in Switzerland: Google, local.ch and search.ch.

At a glance

• In Switzerland, 81% of searches go through Google: your Google Business Profile is the first thing to look after.
• Google ranks local results by relevance, distance and prominence. You can’t buy a place on Maps, and Google says so.
• Name, address, phone number and opening hours should be identical on Google, Bing, Apple Maps, local.ch, search.ch and your own website.
• Ask every customer for a review, with nothing in return. Asking only your happy customers breaks the rules.

Take a garage in Biasca. On Google, its Saturday hours are right: closed. On local.ch, the old hours are still up: open until noon. A customer checks local.ch, turns up at ten with the winter tyres in the boot and finds the gate locked. That evening, they leave a one-star review on Google. This is local SEO too: the part nobody does.

Local SEO is the work that makes you show up when someone looks for a service nearby: on Google Maps, in directories such as local.ch and search.ch and, more and more often, in AI answers. It’s made up of unglamorous things: consistent details everywhere, reviews, holiday opening hours. Between 2025 and 2026 these became more important, and keeping them in order takes one hour a month.

How Google picks who to show near you

In Switzerland, in August 2026, 81% of searches went through Google and around 11% through Bing1. If you work locally, the first thing to look after is your Google Business Profile: the listing with your address, opening hours, photos and reviews that appears on Maps and next to the search results.

Google explains how it chooses which businesses to show. It looks at three things2:

• Relevance. How well your profile matches what the person is searching for. What counts here is the right category, your services written out in full and a clear description.
• Distance. How far you are from the person searching. There’s nothing you can do about this one.
• Prominence. How well known you are. Google says that the number of websites linking to you and the number of reviews you have also play a part.

“There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”

Keep that in mind the next time someone calls to sell you “first place on Maps”. It can’t be bought. You work on relevance and prominence, and there you can do quite a lot. Google adds that complete, accurate profiles are more likely to show up, and specifically mentions special opening hours2.

What changed in business listings between 2025 and 2026

Three changes affect SMEs, and they all point the same way: what’s written in your listing matters more and more.

Questions and answers are disappearing

For years there was a section under the listing where anyone could ask a question (“do you have parking?”) and anyone could answer, sometimes wildly off the mark. On 3 November 2025, Google shut down the technical interface that outside software used to manage it, because it is updating the feature3. In December, according to the trade publication PPC Land, it announced that it would remove the section from listings as well: in its place comes a button for asking Google, and AI answers based on the owner’s replies and the reviews4.

For you, this means one thing: whatever customers used to ask there now needs to be written in your listing and on your website. Parking, wheelchair access, payment by TWINT, languages spoken. If it isn’t written anywhere, the answer has nothing to go on.

An AI assistant inside Maps

In March 2026, Google launched Ask Maps, an assistant inside Google Maps that you can ask long questions, as you would a person. To answer, it draws on data about more than 300 million places and on reviews from its community5. It started in the United States and India; in August it arrived in English in more than 150 countries6. We haven’t found official confirmation for Switzerland, but the direction is clear: the answers about you are built from your listing and your reviews.

Apple Maps moves house

Since 14 April 2026, your business listing on Apple Maps has been managed through Apple Business, a free service that replaced Apple Business Connect7. In Switzerland, location management is available8. It’s the listing people see when they search with Maps on an iPhone: if you’ve never opened it, you don’t know what it says.

local.ch, search.ch and the rest: the same details everywhere

Google isn’t the only place people look up a phone number or opening hours. local.ch and search.ch, both run by localsearch, report a large audience.

These are the publisher’s own figures, based on data from a few years ago (Mediapulse 2022, Google Analytics 2023)910. One convenience: the basic entry is free, and an entry you create on local.ch also appears on search.ch10.

But the point isn’t how much each directory weighs. A customer can find you in any of them, and AI answers piece together what the web says about you11. If two sources don’t match, someone ends up at a locked gate.

Where to check your details

Where	What to check	Why
Google Business Profile	Category, opening hours and special hours, phone, services, photos	Google handles 81% of searches in Switzerland
Bing Places	The same details as on Google	Microsoft recommends it for AI answers in Bing12
Apple Business	Your Apple Maps listing: opening hours, photos, website	Replaced Business Connect in April 2026
local.ch and search.ch	A single entry: name, address, phone, opening hours	The basic entry is free
Your website	Address, areas covered and opening hours written as text, not inside an image	It’s the only source you fully control
Trade portals and associations in your sector	Name and address written exactly as elsewhere	They count towards prominence

A practical rule: decide once how your name and address are written, then use them identically everywhere. If you’re “Garage Castagno SA” on Google and “Castagno Auto” on local.ch, a person will realise it’s the same business. A program comparing sources might not.

Reviews: how to ask for them without breaking the rules

Reviews count twice. Once for Google, which says that more reviews and positive ratings help your local ranking2. And once for customers: in the United States, 97% read reviews before choosing a local business, and 74% look for reviews from the last three months13. Ten glowing reviews from three years ago say very little.

This is where many businesses go wrong in good faith. Google’s rules ban three things that seem perfectly normal14:

• Offering something in return. A discount, a free service, a gift: any incentive for a review.
• Asking only happy customers. Google’s policy says you must not “selectively solicit positive reviews from customers”, nor discourage negative ones.
• Applying pressure on the premises. You can’t ask or push customers to write a review while they’re with you, or suggest what to write, not even the name of the staff member who served them.

What is allowed is asking everyone to describe a genuine experience, with nothing in return. Google itself suggests sending customers a link or a QR code, and points out that a mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy15. Asking works: in the United States, 83% of people who were asked for a review went on to write one13.

And be wary of anyone who promises to “remove negative reviews”. A review can only be reported if it breaks Google’s rules, and Google makes the call15.

The AI Overview above the map

Since March 2025, many searches in Switzerland have shown a summary written by Google’s AI at the top of the page16. Since October 2025 there’s also AI Mode, where search becomes a conversation17. For local searches, this means there may already be an answer before the map even appears.

When the summary appears, people click less: in the United States, they click on results about half as often18. Someone looking for a local service often decides by reading the answer, without opening a single website.

But the raw material is the same as ever. In its AI guide, Google names the Business Profile among the tools for appearing in generated answers as well as in classic results11. The answer is written from whatever it finds: your listing, your reviews, your website. For questions put to ChatGPT and other assistants, you’ll find everything in our guide to getting found on ChatGPT.

Local SEO in one hour a month: the checklist

You don’t need a marketing department. You need one hour a month, the same one every month, blocked out in your diary.

1. Opening hours. Check they’re correct on Google, Bing, Apple Maps and local.ch. Before every public holiday, cantonal ones included, and before you close for holidays, add special hours.
2. Reviews. Reply to the new ones. Check that the review request really went out to every customer that month.
3. Photos. Add one or two real photos: a finished job, the team, the entrance. Google lists them among the things that help a profile2.
4. Services. If you’ve added a service or an area, write it in your listing and on your website, in the same words.
5. A test search. Search for your service plus the name of your town, on Google and on an AI assistant. See who comes up and what is said about you.

Then, once a year, go through every place in the table above, one by one. An afternoon is enough.

If you’d rather we handled it, the Tune-up in AI Visibility aligns your listings: Google, Bing, Apple Maps, local.ch, search.ch, Facebook and the portals or associations in your sector. We also prepare the link, QR code and message for requesting reviews. If your website needs redoing too, basic SEO and Google indexing are included in our website packages.

The first step is the free 30-minute consultation: together we look at how Google and AI see you today. If working on this makes no sense in your sector, we’ll tell you.

Sources

1. Search Engine Market Share Switzerland. StatCounter Global Stats, August 2026 data.
2. Tips to improve your local ranking on Google. Google Business Profile Help (accessed 3 September 2026).
3. Q&A API: change log. Google Business Profile APIs, entries of 15 September and 3 November 2025.
4. Google quietly kills Q&A for an AI button most won’t use. PPC Land, trade publication, December 2025.
5. Ask Maps and Immersive Navigation: New AI features in Google Maps. Google, 12 March 2026.
6. Ask Maps in Google Maps rolling out Personal Intelligence, real-time transit, global launch. 9to5Google, 6 August 2026.
7. Introducing Apple Business: a new all-in-one platform for businesses of all sizes. Apple Newsroom, 24 March 2026.
8. Apple Business feature availability. Apple Support, list of countries and features (accessed 3 September 2026).
9. local.ch: reach and figures. localsearch (Swisscom Directories Ltd). Publisher’s data: Mediapulse 2022, Google Analytics 2023.
10. search.ch: reach and free basic entry. localsearch (Swisscom Directories Ltd). Publisher’s data: Mediapulse 2022, Google Analytics 2023.
11. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search. Google Search Central, updated 10 July 2026.
12. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview. Microsoft Bing, Webmaster Blog, 10 February 2026.
13. Local Consumer Review Survey 2026. BrightLocal, 11 February 2026. Survey of 1,002 adults in the United States.
14. Prohibited & restricted content (Maps User Generated Content Policy). Google, Maps Help (accessed 3 September 2026).
15. Tips to get more reviews. Google Business Profile Help (accessed 3 September 2026).
16. We’re bringing the helpfulness of AI Overviews to more countries in Europe. Google, 25 March 2025.
17. AI mode in Google Search is coming to Switzerland and Europe. blue News, 8 October 2025.
18. Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results. Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025. Browsing data from 900 adults in the United States, March 2025.

Written by Alessandro Scerpella. Sources checked on 3 September 2026. This article is not professional advice: if you spot a figure that doesn’t add up, write to us at info@digitam.ch.