If your enquiries have gone quieter this year and nothing obvious has changed, this is worth twenty minutes of your time. Until recently, finding a business worked one way. Someone searched, looked at a page of results, clicked two or three, and picked one. You could see them coming — visits, calls, a form. Now a growing number of people skip that entirely. They ask an AI assistant, in ordinary words: “who’s the best electrician in Fareham?” or “I need a company to service our forklifts near Portsmouth.” And it gives them a straight answer. Usually three names. They contact one of the three.
The customers you lose this way leave no trace. No visit, no enquiry, nothing in your figures — just a quieter month you can’t explain.
That’s the part worth sitting with. The shortlist now happens somewhere you can’t watch, before anyone visits your website. There’s no bounce rate for a business that was never mentioned.
The good news is genuinely good
Almost nobody has done anything about this yet. In most trades and most towns, the businesses being recommended aren’t the best ones — they’re simply the ones a machine can understand and verify. That is a fixable problem, and it’s mostly unglamorous housekeeping rather than anything clever or expensive. You’ll notice, working through this, that none of it is really new. It’s the same thing good marketing always asked of you: be clear about what you do, answer the questions people actually have, and be findable and consistent wherever you appear. The machines have simply made it non-negotiable.The five-minute test
Before you change anything, find out where you actually stand today. Open ChatGPT, Google’s AI results, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity — any of them, they behave similarly. Type these three questions, using your own trade and your own town. Don’t mention your business name.“Who are the best [what you do] in [your town]?”
The shortlist question. This is the one that matters most.
“I need [the specific thing you sell] near [your town]. Who should I contact?”
How a real buyer with a real problem actually phrases it.
“Tell me about [your business name].”
Now check what it says. Is it right? Is it current? Is it anything at all?
What you’re looking for
Are you named? In the first two questions, does your business come up at all — and if so, are you first, or fifth? Is what it says about you correct? Wrong phone number, an address you left in 2023, services you stopped offering, or a confident description of a completely different company with a similar name. All of these are common, and all of them cost you work. Who is being named instead of you? Look at them properly. In most cases they aren’t better at the job than you are. They’re just easier for a machine to be sure about.
Write down the three businesses it named. That list is your real competition now — not the one you had in mind.
If you only do three things
There are twenty checks worth working through, but these three move the needle furthest, fastest, for the least money.1
Give every service its own page. Nothing else changes as much. A page can only be recognised as one thing — so six services listed in a paragraph on your homepage is six things nothing can confirm you do. If you sell six things and have one page, you’re competing for one thing.
2
Write down the ten questions customers actually ask you, and answer them plainly on your site. Use their words, not yours — if they say boiler repair and you say domestic heating solutions, you’ve made yourself harder to match. Answer first, sell second. And include the one about price: pages that state real numbers get quoted, pages that say contact us for a quote get skipped.
3
Fix your Google Business Profile properly in one sitting. Categories, services, service areas, hours, photos, and replies to your reviews. It takes an afternoon, costs nothing, and is still the most-quoted source about your business anywhere.
Get the full 20-point checklist
All twenty checks, laid out with tick-boxes, plus the scoring guide that tells you whether you’re in decent shape or effectively invisible. It’s free, it’s a printable PDF, and I’ll email it straight over.
Common questions
Will AI recommend my business?
Only if it can verify what you do, where you do it, and that other sources agree. Assistants name the businesses they can be confident about, which are not always the best ones. Run the three searches above — if you are not named, the gap is usually missing service pages and inconsistent details rather than the quality of your work.
How do I check if ChatGPT knows about my business?
Open ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity and type: tell me about [your business name]. Then ask: who are the best [what you do] in [your town]? — without naming yourself. The first tells you what it believes about you; the second tells you whether you make the shortlist. Both take about five minutes.
Why doesn't my business appear in AI search results?
Usually because a machine cannot confirm the basics: several services described in one paragraph instead of a page each, business details that differ between your website and old directory listings, no recent reviews, and nothing on sites you do not own to corroborate you. It is rarely about quality — it is about being verifiable.
What is AEO, and is it different from SEO?
AEO — answer engine optimisation — means being named inside an AI answer rather than ranked in a list of links. Most of the work is the same as good SEO: clear service pages, questions answered in your customers' words, real proof and consistent details. The difference is that AI checks more carefully before it recommends anyone.
How do I get my business mentioned by ChatGPT and Google's AI answers?
Give every service its own page, answer the ten questions customers actually ask using their words, publish real prices and named results, keep your business name, address and phone number identical everywhere, and make sure you appear in at least three places you do not own. That is the checklist above in one sentence.
