GEO for Accounting and Professional Services
Professional services firms — accounting practices, consultancies, advisory shops, boutique M&A firms, and their cousins — are experiencing a quiet migration of top-of-funnel queries from local search into AI-composed answers. The buyer who would have Googled "best CPA for startups in Austin" in 2022 is now as likely to ask ChatGPT the same question and work from its shortlist. The firms that show up in that shortlist are not necessarily the firms that ranked first on Google. This piece unpacks what changes in the acquisition funnel, what stays the same, and what a defensible GEO posture looks like for a professional services firm in 2026.