Get your clients found, and chosen, in AI search by handing their search work to the AI Search Specialist, coming Nov. 2 in the new SEO AI Premium edition.

On November 2nd, Local SEO evolves into Vendasta SEO AI, with three editions. Standard and Pro keep the features you know today under the new name. SEO AI Premium is a brand new edition that includes the AI Search Specialist, an AI employee that takes the search work off a small business's plate and helps it rank faster.

Customers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity who to call. Most local businesses don't know whether AI recommends them, and don't have time to keep business profiles, keywords and website content current by hand. The AI Search Specialist shows where a business stands against named competitors and does the work to improve it, so your clients get found and chosen with less effort.

Brand Visibility, SEO and AEO reports show how a business shows up in AI answers against named competitors. Reports start the day Premium is turned on and refresh automatically on the last business day of each month, in a new Performance tab.

The AI Search Specialist reads the business's website, fills in services, service areas, payment options, description and attributes, and updates every connected listing. It handles Google's suggested edits and picks 10 keywords worth tracking.

It turns report gaps into one blog a month, FAQs, and schema and robots.txt fixes. Approve them in one click from Next Steps, or let it run on its own. If a change ever breaks a site's layout, it rolls back automatically.

Get plain-language answers about keywords, listings, citations, SEO, AEO and AI visibility.

Any site gets the reports, keyword selection and business profile upkeep. Blogs, FAQs, schema and robots.txt edits run end to end on Vendasta WordPress sites hosted on WP Cloud. Other platforms are being scoped; no date is promised. Backlinks stay a human service.

From November 2, 2026:

Yes. On Nov 2, Local SEO becomes SEO AI, with Standard, Pro and Premium editions. Standard and Pro keep their features under the new name.

Thank you for testing it with us. The open beta ends Oct 30, when the AI Search Specialist's reports, profile upkeep and chat leave Local SEO Pro. Your Pro features stay as they are. To keep the AI Search Specialist, upgrade to SEO AI Premium from Nov 2.

Your beta reports live in chat with the AI Search Specialist, so you won't be able to see them in Local SEO Pro after Oct 30. Upgrade to SEO AI Premium and you'll get a fresh report in the new Performance tab, and you can still see the reports you ran during the beta: just ask the AI Search Specialist to pull them up.

Pricing will be available in Partner Center on Nov 2.

No. Backlink building is not currently available with the AI Search Specialist.

Reach out to your Vendasta account rep.

Clear the clutter from your inbox, and track every request in one place. Starting Monday, Nov 2, 2026, use Partner Center support requests as your primary way to reach the support team.

From Monday, Nov 2, 2026, the Partner Center tickets page is how you open a new request with Vendasta’s support team. When you open a request there, you can associate the account and product up front, so our team starts with the details they need. You can also see every open request and its status in one place.

From Monday, Nov 2, emails to support@vendasta.com won't open a request and will direct you to send your request in Support requests instead.

Your requests deserve a clear path to our team and as little back-and-forth as possible. Our support email inbox gets of emails a week, and only about a quarter are real requests the team needs to handle. That noise buries urgent issues.

By submitting through Partner Center, every request is tied to your account, so it reaches our team clear of the noise and with added context. Its status, history and follow-ups sit in one place, and you can check on a request without sending another email.

Vendasta is now in the Claude connector directory. Pull up deals before a call, turn meeting notes into records, and clean up your pipeline after a review, all without leaving Claude.

Check it out: https://claude.ai/directory/vendasta

Connect Claude to Vendasta once and ask for what you need in plain English. Claude can find a company and its open deals, create a contact from your meeting notes, or fix deal fields after a pipeline review. It can also search Vendasta's published documentation, so "how do I do this in Vendasta?" gets an answer on the spot.

Keeping a CRM current means switching tabs, verifying details from calls and updating records after every pipeline review. With Vendasta in Claude, the details you already have go straight into your CRM, and each person's access stays tied to their own Vendasta login.

on Claude Team and Enterprise plans, a workspace admin may need to enable the connector first.

Be there for your customers when they need you most by empowering your AI Voice Receptionist to handle after-hours emergency dispatch. No expensive after-hours answering service needed, no customers left without assistance.

Add the "On-call Dispatch" capability to an AI Voice Receptionist to ensure customers needing urgent help can get it without delay, even in the middle of the night.

The AI Voice Receptionist will assess the situation, collect caller details, ring your on-call technician if deemed necessary, and connect the call.

Set the phone number and the criteria for when a call should be transferred.

The AI Voice Receptionist collects the caller's information the same way it does for standard lead capture, then puts the caller on hold, and rings the designated on-call technician

The caller is seamlessly passed into the care of the on-call technician when the AI Voice Receptionist announces the call with a customizable message (for example: )

Customize what happens next, such as sending the technician an SMS with the call details automatically.

Businesses that handle after-hours or emergency calls have historically had two options: pay for a human after-hours answering service, or let calls outside business hours go unanswered. Neither is great. An answering service can run hundreds of dollars a month, with your customers are talking to someone outside your business with no context on the job, and simply not answering means your customers are reaching out to your competitors. With On-call Dispatch, a business' own AI Voice Receptionist can screen the call, capture what's needed, and get your on-call technician on the line directly.

A: No, it works alongside it: The dispatcher collects lead information the same way standard lead capture does, then adds the hold-and-transfer flow on top.

A: Yes. The announcement message is customizable and can include dynamic fields like the caller's name, service location, and the reported issue.

A: Yes. Dispatch calls fire an automation event you can customize — for example, texting your on-call technician the call details automatically. Learn more

A new zero-balance option for QuickBooks Online sends review requests only when an invoice is fully paid, not when it's first raised or partly paid.

The QuickBooks Online connection now includes a setting. When it's on, a review request goes out only once the invoice's balance due is fully cleared. Invoices that are raised but unpaid, or partly paid, no longer trigger a request.

Before, review requests from QuickBooks Online could go out the moment an invoice was created, whatever its payment status. That could mean asking customers for a review before the job was finished, or before they'd had a chance to review the work. Now, review requests line up with a completed, paid job, so customers are asked at the right time, helping businesses collect more - and better - reviews.

A: Nothing is sent until the balance reaches zero. The request goes out when the invoice is fully paid.

A: No. It's an option you turn on per connection.

A: This release covers QuickBooks Online.

New phone numbers in Business App start answering calls the moment they're active so that nobody is left hanging.

When a new phone number is activated, calls are now routed automatically:

Before, a newly activated number did nothing until someone set up call handling. Customers who called it early simply didn't get through, and a missed call is a missed lead. Now every new number works from the moment it's turned on, so you can share it with confidence and your clients don't lose callers while setup catches up.

There's nothing to configure for this to work.

A: No. Forwarding is set up automatically when the number is activated.

A: The business's phone number on file. Make sure it's correct before activating a new number.

A: No. This applies to newly activated numbers.

Mark CRM standard fields as read-only for a business, so data kept up to date by an integration isn't overwritten by a manual edit.

From Partner Center or Business App, a partner admin can mark any standard CRM field as "read-only" for a specific business.

Before, standard fields could always be edited by hand, even when an integration was keeping them in sync. One well-meaning edit could break that sync and leave the record out of date. Now you decide which fields people can change, so your integrations stay reliable and the data your team - and your clients - rely on stays accurate.

A: No. The field still shows in tables. It's only hidden from create and edit forms.

A: It's set per business. Use Blueprints to apply it across accounts.

A: Yes. Turn read-only off for the field to make it editable again.

SMB users can now invite their teammates straight from Business App, and new accounts and business profiles can be saved without filling in every address and category field.

Previously, when a business wanted to add a teammate to Business App, they had to ask their partner to do it, delaying the business and creating admin work for the partner. Now, businesses can add teammates themselves, saving everyone time.

Additionally, when adding a user the required fields further slowed things down, resulting in placeholder data being typed in to be able to save. This then caused problems in listings, reports and AI features. Now businesses can bring their team in themselves the moment they're ready, and accounts get created with real information or none at all, so it's clear what still needs filling in.

A: It works the same way, except you add people by email rather than searching CRM contacts.

A: Usually not. Most invites go out with the default settings.

A: You can, but some features (such as listings and local search tools) work best with them filled in. On the business profile, once a recommended field is filled in and saved, it becomes required so those features keep working. Website stays optional.

Bing stopped sending real performance data, so we removed it to keep your reports accurate. The technical feed providing Bing analytics data stopped sending active metrics, causing Bing listings to report zero views and zero clicks regardless of actual search activity. Displaying these false zeros created a misleading impression that healthy listings were underperforming. Removing this broken data feed ensures your reporting remains accurate, dependable, and representative of true performance.

This update is automatically applied across all accounts—no action is required.

Put a single web chat widget on your brand's main website, and let each visitor pick their preferred location. No more choosing one location to represent the whole brand, or juggling a separate widget per site.

Multi-location brands and franchises can now install one web chat widget on their main website that covers every location. When a visitor opens it, they get a searchable location picker listing each business by name and address.

Once they pick a location, the chat opens with that location's own AI Chat Receptionist, using that location's own knowledge. The conversation, contact, and lead all land in that specific location's inbox. Adding or removing a location later is just an edit to the widget's settings, not a change to the code installed on the website.

Before this release, a multi-location brand could only add a standard web chat widget one business at a time. A brand's main website had to either pick a single location to represent everyone, or skip web chat entirely. Now the brand site can serve every location at once. Each visitor lands with the right receptionist and the right inbox, and there's no central inbox to sort through and redistribute leads from. Onboarding a new location becomes a settings change instead of a web development request.

Q: Do I still need a separate web chat widget on each location's own website?

A: If each location has its own website, you can still install a standard widget on each one. The multi-location widget is specifically for a single brand or corporate site that routes visitors to many locations. You can use either approach, or both.

Q: Why is one of my locations missing from the location list when I build the widget?

A: A location can only be added if it has web chat active in its own Conversations settings. If it shows a yellow "Conversations AI not active" badge, activate its AI Chat Receptionist first, then reopen the window.

Q: Can each location have a different AI Chat Receptionist?

A: Yes. Each location answers with its own receptionist and its own knowledge. The receptionist's name and avatar aren't shown in the chat window itself, but you can see which employee handles each location in the Choose businesses window when building the widget.

Q: A client says chats never arrived. Where did they go?

A: Check the inbox filter first. Chats arrive as anonymous web chat conversations until the visitor shares contact details, and the default inbox filter hides them. In the location's inbox, make sure the filters include Web Chat and Anonymous.

Q: Can I add or remove locations after the widget is live?

A: Yes, edit the widget and reopen Choose businesses. You don't need to change the code already installed on the website.

Q: Does the widget support embedded installs, not just floating?

A: No, the multi-location widget supports floating installs only. Embedded installs and widget actions (like prefill or auto-send links) aren't available on the multi-location widget at this time.