AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude recommend businesses they can find clear, consistent and trustworthy information about. That information comes from your own website and from the wider web: your Google Business Profile, directory listings, reviews, media coverage and social profiles. To be recommended, make your website easy for these systems to read, keep your details identical everywhere, earn genuine mentions from other sources, and answer the questions your customers actually ask.
By Claudia High Impact Marketing, Brisbane
Where AI assistants get their answers
Most AI assistants that recommend businesses draw on live search results as well as what they learned in training. Google's AI features draw on Google's own index. Other assistants draw on search indexes including Bing's, along with their own crawlers. In practice this means the foundations of search still matter: if search engines cannot find and understand your business, AI assistants will struggle to as well.
The difference is that an assistant gives one answer rather than ten links. It tends to favour businesses it can describe confidently, which means businesses whose details are specific, consistent and backed up by other sources.
Make your website easy to read
Give every service its own page that says plainly what it is, who it suits and how it works. Give every area you genuinely serve its own page with real local detail, like our pages for Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. Answer common questions in plain language near the top of the relevant page, because that first paragraph is what gets quoted.
Behind the scenes, add structured data that tells machines what your business is, where it operates and what it sells. Check that your robots.txt file lets the main AI crawlers in. A short plain text summary of the business at /llms.txt is also a simple, low effort addition. To see whether assistants already name you, run our free AI visibility checker.
Keep your details identical everywhere
Your business name, phone number, website and service area should read exactly the same on your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and every directory you appear in. Small differences, like an old address or an old domain, make it harder for any system to be sure it has the right business.
If you have changed name, domain or address, update every listing you can find and set up permanent redirects from the old website to the new one.
Earn genuine mentions
AI assistants give more weight to what others say about you than to what you say about yourself. Google reviews, reviews on industry directories, articles in business publications, podcast appearances, awards and speaking roles all count. Each one is an independent source confirming that your business is real, active and good at what it does.
The most reliable way to build these is steady and genuine: ask happy clients for reviews and reply to every one, offer useful comment to journalists, appear as a guest on podcasts in your field, and enter the awards that matter in your industry.
Answer the questions people ask
People ask assistants full questions: how much does this cost, which is better, how do I choose, who is good at this near me. Publishing clear, specific answers to those questions on your own site gives assistants something accurate to draw on. Articles like this one exist for exactly that reason.
Write for the customer first. Be specific about what you do, where you do it and who it suits. Specific answers are far more useful to both people and machines than broad claims.
Keep your Google Business Profile complete
For local recommendations, your Google Business Profile is one of the strongest signals available. Choose the most accurate primary category, set your real service areas and hours, list every service with a short description, add genuine photos, and keep reviews coming in steadily. Register your website in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools too, and submit your sitemap to both.
Check what the assistants say about you
Once a month, ask the main assistants the questions a customer would ask, such as who is a good provider of your service in your city, and note whether your business appears and how it is described. If the description is wrong, trace it back to the source that is wrong and fix that source. Bing Webmaster Tools now also shows how often your site is cited in AI answers.
This is slow, steady work rather than a quick fix, and the businesses that do it consistently are the ones that get named. It is part of our SEO and search and AI and automation work, and if you would like a hand with it, get in touch.
Related services: SEO and Search, AI and Automation, Content Creation.