You cannot buy or switch on an AI recommendation. AI tools tend to recommend businesses whose own websites clearly explain what they do, for whom and where, and whose name appears consistently across the web with genuine reviews and mentions. There is no guaranteed formula, but there is honest, practical work that improves your chances.
More people now ask ChatGPT, Google’s AI features and similar tools for recommendations instead of scrolling a list of links. Business owners reasonably want to know how to appear in those answers.
The uncomfortable truth first: nobody controls what an AI says. The useful work is making your business easy to understand and easy to verify, wherever these tools look. Much of that work is the same work good websites and good SEO have always needed.
AI assistants do not keep a directory. They generate answers from information they can find and combine: your website, other websites that mention you, reviews, directory listings and their own training data. When they search the live web, they read pages much as a search engine does. Under the bonnet they are large language models, which is why clear, unambiguous writing about what you do helps them describe you accurately.
A 2026 study of 1,044 AI answers across eight industries found that 84% of the sources cited were the websites of the companies being recommended, not news sites or forums. When a company’s own site was cited, that company was recommended 96% of the time. When it was not, the figure fell to 18%. 1
The same study found that commercial pages earn the citations. Homepages, service pages and about pages were cited far more often than blog posts. The pages that sell what you do are the pages AI tools read when deciding whether to mention you.
State plainly what you do, who you do it for and where you do it. An AI tool summarising your business can only use what is written down. If your homepage is a slogan and a stock photograph, there is little to summarise.
Make each service page specific. What the service includes, what it costs or how pricing works, who it suits, and what happens next. The study found that top AI recommendations were nearly four times as likely to include a concrete number as lower-ranked ones. 1 Vague pages produce vague answers.
Keep the information consistent. Your business name, services, location and contact details should match across your website, your Google Business Profile and the directories that list you. Conflicting details make your business harder to verify, and unverifiable businesses are easier to skip. That includes the industry directories and business directories for your trade: free listings in the places your sector actually uses.
Yes. AI answers lean on the wider web’s picture of your business, not only your own claims. Genuine reviews on Google and relevant platforms, accurate directory entries and mentions on other reputable sites all contribute to that picture.
This cannot be faked for long. Artificial reviews and self-written “coverage” are exactly the patterns both search engines and AI tools are being trained to discount. Ten genuine reviews describing real work help more than a hundred hollow ones. Search engines and AI tools alike treat customer reviews as evidence that real people bought from you and were happy with the work.
If you are choosing where to ask for reviews, prioritise the platforms your customers actually check. For most local and service businesses that starts with Google, as our guide to starting SEO as a small business explains.
Answer the questions customers actually ask, in plain language, on your own site. That habit predates AI and serves it well, because question-and-answer content is easy for any system to extract and quote. A short FAQ section on each service page is a good home for exactly that.
What does not help is producing thin pages stuffed with AI-sounding phrases, or publishing the same generic advice as every competitor. The citation study found engines disagree with each other constantly and that who is asking changes the answer far more than how they ask. 1 Chasing a single phrasing is chasing fog.
Write for the customer. A page that genuinely helps a person choose you is the same page an AI can confidently describe.
No. The overlap is large: clear service pages, a technically sound website, genuine reviews and a consistent presence are the foundations of both. Some agencies now call this AI search optimisation; in practice it is the same groundwork, checked through a new lens. Businesses already visible in ordinary search tend to be the businesses AI tools can find and describe.
There are differences worth knowing. AI answers vary between tools and between users, and there is no position one to aim for. Measurement is also harder: you will not get a reliable report of how often an AI mentioned you this week. Treat any service promising guaranteed AI placements with the same scepticism as guaranteed Google rankings.
If your website itself is the weak point, fix that first. Our guide to repairing versus rebuilding a website can help you decide what that involves.
Avoid paying for schemes that claim to submit your business to ChatGPT or guarantee AI citations. There is no submission process to buy into. Avoid rewriting your site in robotic “AI-friendly” language that makes it worse for customers. Avoid neglecting the boring essentials, because the boring essentials are most of the job.
Be equally wary of panic. AI search is growing, but for most small businesses Google search, maps and word of mouth still deliver the enquiries. AI visibility is worth some of your attention, not all of your budget.
There is no paid placement in ChatGPT’s recommendations at the time of writing. Advertising products around AI features are developing, but buying an advert is not the same as being recommended. Any company selling guaranteed AI mentions is selling something it does not control.
Ask them. Query ChatGPT and Google’s AI features the way a customer would: describe the service, the place and the problem, and see who is recommended. Try a few variations over a few weeks. It is an imperfect check, because answers vary by user and over time, but it shows you the picture a customer might see.
Nobody can promise a timescale. The work involved, clearer pages and a stronger reputation, pays off in ordinary search and word of mouth whether or not an AI ever cites you. That makes it one of the safer marketing investments available.
Reasonable technical hygiene helps: a crawlable site, accurate structured data and pages that load properly. It is a foundation, not a trick. Good markup also covers the details an AI may quote directly: your opening hours, your services and where you work. Markup cannot compensate for a website that says nothing useful about the business.
Read your own homepage and main service pages as a stranger would. Could a stranger, or a machine, explain from those pages what you do, where and for whom? If not, that is the first job.
Then check the wider picture: your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your directory listings. Consistency and genuine reputation are the assets AI tools can verify. Together, these make up your wider online presence.
If you would like a clear-eyed view of how your business appears in AI answers and search results, and what would change it, Bamsh can review it with you. We will tell you honestly what is worth doing and what is noise.
[1] Kern Media: AI Search Citation Study: What ChatGPT & AI Search Actually Cite (2026). https://www.kernmedia.com/ai-search-citation-study/
