First Five

Dispensaries

AI visibility for cannabis dispensaries

Google and Meta will not sell you an ad at any price.

Both prohibit cannabis advertising outright, which leaves organic, the menu platforms, and whatever AI engines decide to say about you. 45% of consumers now ask AI for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. AI returns one to five names. There is no second page.

ChatGPT

best dispensary in Austin

Here are some well-reviewed options:

  1. 1 Skin Society
  2. 2 Ageless Aesthetics
  3. 3 Radiance Group
  4. 4 Viva Wellness
  5. 5 Bella Vita
Your dispensary Not mentioned
0

mainstream paid search or social channels available

Google and Meta both prohibit cannabis ads

45%

of consumers now ask AI for local recommendations

up from 6% a year earlier

1–5

businesses named in a typical AI answer

there is no page two

2 services

What we do for dispensaries

Citation sources we audit

Where your customers' recommendations come from

Each engine reads a different set of sources. These decide whether a dispensary gets named in your category.

SourcePrimarily feeds
WeedmapsAll engines
LeaflyAll engines
Google Business ProfileGemini / AI Overviews
Bing PlacesChatGPT / Copilot
YelpChatGPT / Copilot
FoursquareChatGPT
Reddit — state and city cannabis subsPerplexity
Local editorial roundupsAll engines

6 services × your markets

The prompts we test

Drawn from how customers actually ask, not from keyword tools. A full engagement tracks fifty per market across 4 engines.

How it starts

Three steps, and the first one is free to look at.

  1. 01 Week 1

    Baseline

    We run fifty real customer prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot for your markets, and show you exactly who gets named instead of you.

  2. 02 Weeks 1–12

    Build

    We fix the sources those engines actually read — listings, structured data, review velocity, third-party and community presence — in the order that moves your score fastest.

  3. 03 Ongoing

    Compound

    Every month the score is re-measured and reported, with the citation source behind each mention. You watch the number move and you know what moved it.

Before you ask

The four things people say first.

"You cannot actually measure this."

We measure it every month

Fifty prompts, four engines, three runs each — logged with the source every engine cited. The number is reproducible and you get the raw log, not just a summary.

"We already have an SEO agency."

Keep them

The work barely overlaps. Theirs happens on your website. Around four fifths of ours happens off it — directories, review platforms, community and editorial. We will tell you plainly if we think you are paying twice.

"This is too new to spend on."

The shift already happened

Forty-five percent of consumers now ask AI for local recommendations, up from six percent a year earlier. The question is not whether it arrives, it is whether you are named when it does.

"Show us it works first."

That is exactly how we start

Every engagement opens with an audit. You see your score, your competitors’ scores, and the gaps — before committing to a retainer. If the number is already good, we will say so.

Comparison

What a traditional SEO retainer does not cover

Not a criticism of SEO — it still matters. These are simply different jobs, and most operators are only buying one of them.

  Traditional SEO agency First Five
Engines covered Google ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot
Where the work happens Almost entirely on your website Roughly four fifths off it, where citations come from
What success looks like A position on page one Being named in a list of five
Primary data source Google Search Console Business Profile, Bing Places, Foursquare, Yelp, review platforms
How reviews are treated Reputation management A primary input to whether you get named
Monthly deliverable A traffic report A score, a per-engine breakdown, and a citation source map
When you are not cited No visibility into why The exact source that produced a competitor mention instead
What compounds Rankings reset with each core update Presence in the sources engines read

Every row above is checkable. If your current agency covers a row we have marked, tell us and we will correct it.

Already working with someone?

How this compares to what you have.

Each comparison names the situations where the other option is the better one. If your current provider already covers this, the audit will show it and you should keep them.

9 questions

Questions dispensaries ask

Can you get us running on Google Ads or Meta?

No. Both prohibit cannabis advertising and we will not try to work around a platform policy on your account — the downside is your account, not ours. That prohibition is the reason this work matters: the channels your competitors in other industries lean on are closed to all of you equally, so organic and AI visibility is where the category is actually decided.

We already spend on Weedmaps ads. How is this different?

Weedmaps ads rent you position inside Weedmaps for as long as you keep paying. This builds presence across the sources every engine reads, including Weedmaps, and it keeps working when you pause. The two are complementary, but only one of them is an asset you own.

Do AI engines even recommend dispensaries?

For local queries, generally yes — "dispensary near me" and "best dispensary in [city]" return named businesses. Product and dosing questions often get declined. Coverage is patchier than in aesthetics or dental, so the baseline measures which of your prompts return a list at all before it measures whether you are on it. If the answer for your market is that engines mostly decline, we will tell you that rather than sell you a programme.

We are one location. Is this worth it?

Usually yes, because the competitive set in a single market is small and the entry engagement is a fixed-price project rather than a retainer. If the measurement shows you are already named consistently, we will say so and stop there.

We are licensed in two states. Does that change anything?

Each location is measured separately, because engines resolve them separately, and cannabis marketing cannot cross state lines. Multi-state operators usually have strong brand recognition and individual locations that engines fail to resolve as distinct entities — which is a fixable entity problem rather than a content one.

Is any of this going to put our licence at risk?

Nothing we do involves health claims, untargeted advertising, or anything aimed at under-21s. We work inside your state's advertising rules and the platform rules on top of them, and we will flag it when a tactic that is fine in one market is not allowed in yours. We are not compliance counsel and we will not pretend to be.

How long before the score moves?

Directory claims and structured data can register within two to four weeks. Review velocity and third-party presence compound over three to six months. We report monthly either way, so you see progress before it is complete.

Can you guarantee we get recommended by ChatGPT?

No, and you should be sceptical of anyone who does. No AI platform publishes how it selects sources. We work from measured output and correlations documented across the industry, we report honestly, and we re-baseline the source map quarterly because these systems change fast.

Is there a minimum term?

No. The monthly plans are cancel any time and the entry engagement is a one-time project with a fixed price. We would rather earn the next month than hold you to a contract. One caveat worth stating plainly: review velocity and third-party coverage compound over three to six months, so leaving at month two means paying for work you never saw finish.

Starts with an audit, not a contract

Be the one AI gets named

Fifty prompts, four engines, your markets. You will see your score and exactly who is being named instead — before you commit to anything.

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