| Algolia | LOCLshop | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it operates | Inside the brand’s own site | Inside third-party AI Engines |
| Trigger | Customer already on your site | Customer asks before knowing you |
| Controls the result | Yes — brand owns ranking | No — the engine decides |
| Unit | Search request, indexed record | Location by prompt |
| Buyer | Engineering, e-commerce | CMO, franchise operations |
| Budget | Infrastructure | Marketing measurement |
| Metric | Conversion, relevance, latency | Share of voice, citations |
Do not call Algolia a competitor, and do not position LOCLshop as a replacement for on-site search. Several target accounts run it.
Algolia decides what a customer sees once they have arrived. We measure whether they arrive at all. If an engine never names your Denver location, Algolia never receives the query. Sequential, not substitutable.
Algolia only observes queries that reach a property it serves. It cannot see answers that never mention the brand — which is exactly where unclaimed demand lives. Architecture, not roadmap.
Algolia has named the off-property problem and shipped Agent Studio on an MCP foundation — but its answer is still on-site. Re-evaluate if it reports off-property citation metrics or ships location-grain retrieval.
