Locafy: from local SEO to AI search visibility

Search has changed dramatically since Locafy began operating in Western Australia in 2009. Businesses once worried mainly about appearing in a list of blue links. Today, they also compete for visibility in map results, local business panels and answers generated by artificial intelligence.

Locafy has followed that shift for more than 15 years.

The Perth-based software company started long before AI search became a marketing term. Its focus was already local visibility: helping businesses make information about themselves easier for search engines and online directories to discover. That same problem now extends beyond traditional search engines into AI-powered discovery tools.

The technology has changed, but the underlying question remains familiar. When someone searches for a service in a particular place, how does a business make itself visible?

Locafy began life under a different name

The company behind Locafy was incorporated in Australia on 23 April 2009 as Gumiyo Australia Pty Ltd. It later changed its name to Locafy Limited on 14 January 2021.

Founder and chief executive Gavin Burnett has remained closely involved with the business. Regulatory filings record his appointment as managing director from the company’s incorporation date in 2009.

That history matters because Locafy did not suddenly appear during the recent AI boom. Its current products grew from years spent working on local search, business listings and web pages designed to improve online visibility.

The company eventually settled around a software-as-a-service model. Rather than building individual websites manually for every customer, its technology aims to automate much of the work involved in creating and distributing search-friendly business information.

That automation would become more important as Locafy moved from serving individual businesses towards partners and organisations managing many locations.

Local search became the centre of the business

A local search is different from a broad internet search.

Someone looking for general information may not care where a website is based. A person searching for an accountant, restaurant, plumber or insurance agent usually does.

Location changes the result.

Businesses therefore need more than a conventional website. Search platforms may also consider business profiles, directories, maps, location pages and other signals that help establish what a company does and where it operates.

Locafy built products around this part of the search market.

Its current platform includes business listings, landing pages, location-based search tools and other services designed to help organisations publish consistent information across the web. The company also operates several online directories and reported that its directory network contained more than 60 million business profiles by June 2025.

For a small business, updating one online profile may be manageable. The challenge grows quickly when an organisation operates hundreds or thousands of locations.

Automation becomes much more valuable at that scale.

Entity-based SEO became Locafy’s technical pitch

Locafy describes its approach as entity-based SEO.

Traditional search optimisation often focuses heavily on individual keywords. Entity-based search tries to give search systems clearer information about the actual business, place, service or subject behind those words.

The distinction sounds technical, but the practical idea is straightforward.

A search engine needs to understand that a business exists, what it does and where it operates. Consistent information across structured pages, listings and other digital properties can help build that picture.

Locafy says its platform combines business data, automated page creation, search optimisation and proprietary site structures. The company also uses generative AI to assist with content production.

Its landing-page technology includes features covering speed, accessibility, security and search-friendly content. Locafy also offers technology aimed at improving the visibility of a business profile in local map results.

Claims about ranking performance should still be treated carefully. Search platforms control their own algorithms, and no outside company can guarantee a permanent position.

Locafy itself bases many of its performance statements on internal testing and customer deployments.

The more significant story is how the company turned local SEO into software that could operate across many business locations at once.

Nasdaq changed the scale of the company story

Locafy reached the US public markets in March 2022.

The company completed its initial public offering on 25 March 2022, listing its ordinary shares on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker LCFY. Warrants also began trading under LCFYW.

The IPO offered 1,454,546 units at US$4.125 each.

Becoming a Nasdaq-listed company did not change Locafy’s core technology overnight. It did, however, bring greater scrutiny to its financial performance and strategy.

Public filings now provide a much clearer view of the business behind the software.

They show a relatively small technology company trying to turn years of search-development work into recurring subscription revenue.

That transition has not always followed a straight line.

Locafy shifted away from labour-heavy services

Software companies often face a choice between selling scalable products and performing customised work for individual clients.

Locafy has experienced both.

During the financial year ended June 2025, services revenue fell sharply because the company deliberately reduced bespoke consulting work. Management said those projects required considerable labour and could not be repeated easily at scale.

That decision reveals an important part of Locafy’s strategy.

A customised SEO project can generate revenue, but each new customer may require another block of employee time. Software subscriptions work differently. Once the platform and automation exist, the company can potentially serve additional customers without increasing costs at the same rate.

Locafy has therefore placed greater emphasis on recurring subscriptions and partner-led distribution.

Instead of behaving mainly like an SEO agency, the company wants its technology to become the product.

Localizer became the main commercial push

The clearest example is Localizer.

Locafy launched the product in the US market in 2025 as a subscription-based service aimed at improving local search visibility.

The product combines several parts of Locafy’s existing technology. It can work with local business information, landing pages and map-focused search optimisation.

Locafy has also promoted Localizer as an answer-engine optimisation product.

That term reflects another change in how people find information online.

A traditional search engine usually presents links and lets the user decide which page to open. AI-powered search tools can instead generate an answer directly.

Businesses therefore face a new challenge. Appearing prominently in ordinary search results may no longer be enough if users increasingly receive answers without clicking through a conventional results page.

Locafy’s response has been to adapt its technology for both traditional search and AI-driven discovery.

The company says pages produced through its platform have appeared as sources in AI search results. Those performance statements come from Locafy and should be understood as company-reported results rather than guarantees that every customer will achieve the same outcome.

Still, the change represents an important extension of the original business.

Locafy started by helping companies become easier to find online. It now wants them to remain visible when the interface between consumers and the internet changes.

AI search created a new version of an old problem

Artificial intelligence may look like a completely new market, but it presents Locafy with a familiar problem.

Search systems still need information.

They need to determine whether a business exists, where it operates and whether its content appears relevant to a user’s request.

AI changes how the answer reaches the consumer, not the need for underlying information.

Locafy’s newer positioning therefore centres on both SEO, or search-engine optimisation, and AEO, or answer-engine optimisation.

Its regulatory filings describe technology designed to improve visibility in conventional search engines and AI-driven search experiences.

The company has continued developing products around that strategy, including a platform known as Poseidon.

Management described Poseidon during its 2026 financial reporting as an AEO-focused SaaS platform intended to bring several digital-marketing functions together.

As with any new software launch, the commercial importance will depend on actual customer adoption rather than the announcement alone.

For now, the broader shift is already visible. Locafy no longer presents itself solely as a local SEO company.

It wants to operate wherever consumers search for businesses.

Partner distribution became increasingly important

Selling software to thousands of small businesses one at a time can be expensive.

Locafy has responded by relying more heavily on partnerships.

Under its evolving model, partners can introduce or sell Locafy’s services while Locafy maintains a direct commercial relationship with the end customer. The company then pays the partner from revenue it collects.

This differs from a traditional wholesale reseller arrangement.

Locafy believes the model gives it greater control over billing and customer relationships while allowing partners to provide wider distribution.

The strategy has become especially visible in the United States.

By September 2026, Locafy’s investor-relations site reported that 165 State Farm agents were active on its Localizer platform across all 50 US states.

That figure comes from Locafy and represents adoption of its technology by individual agents. It should not be interpreted as a corporate-wide deployment across the entire insurance organisation.

The distinction is important, but the number still illustrates the type of customer base Locafy is trying to reach.

Instead of selling one location at a time, it can work through channels that already serve large groups of businesses.

Revenue growth returned during fiscal 2026

Locafy’s financial results show signs that the subscription strategy has begun contributing more strongly.

For the first nine months of fiscal 2026, revenue reached approximately A$3.11 million, up 31% from about A$2.37 million during the corresponding period a year earlier.

Subscription revenue rose 36% to about A$3 million. The company also reduced operating expenses by 13%, while its net loss improved by A$1.3 million compared with the previous period.

Those numbers remain modest compared with large global software companies, but Locafy is not operating at that scale.

Its own June 2025 filing recorded just 18 staff and contractors across Australia, the Philippines and the United States.

That small workforce makes automation particularly important.

Locafy cannot rely on a huge sales and services organisation if it wants to expand widely. Its technology and partner network need to do much of the scaling.

Search itself is now Locafy’s biggest moving target

The unusual part of Locafy’s business is that its products depend on platforms it does not control.

Search algorithms change.

Advertising programmes change.

Consumer behaviour changes.

AI assistants create yet another route between a person and a business.

Locafy’s own financial filings show how directly those shifts can affect results. During fiscal 2025, advertising revenue from its directory assets fell as organic search traffic changed and users increasingly turned to alternative search methods.

That pressure also helps explain the company’s move towards subscriptions.

Advertising revenue depends heavily on traffic and external advertising systems. Subscription revenue gives the company a more direct relationship with paying customers.

The strategy does not remove platform risk, because the product still exists to improve visibility on external search services.

It does, however, change how Locafy earns money from its technology.

Locafy’s next chapter is still about being found

The terminology surrounding internet search has changed repeatedly since 2009.

SEO became local SEO. Mobile search made location more important. Map results moved closer to the centre of commercial discovery. Generative AI then introduced answer engines that can respond without sending users through a traditional list of websites.

Locafy has changed its products alongside those shifts.

The company that began as Gumiyo Australia became Locafy, reached Nasdaq and increasingly concentrated on automated subscription software. Localizer now sits at the centre of its commercial strategy, while newer products extend the same search-visibility idea into AI-generated answers.

That makes Locafy’s history less about repeatedly reinventing the business and more about following one problem as the internet changes around it.

Businesses still want customers to find them.

The places where that discovery happens are what keep changing.