How to Get Your Business Found by ChatGPT and Other AI Tools

Does AI know your business exists? And if it does, does it understand who you help?

People now ask AI to recommend a business. An accountant. An HR consultant. A financial adviser. Your business could be the right fit. But if your website is vague and your profiles tell different stories, that customer may never hear your name.

Nobody can guarantee an AI recommendation. What you can control is the information you publish. This guide gives you five practical checks, in plain English.

Why does AI search matter for your business?

Search used to start with a short phrase, like “financial adviser London”. A page of links came back. The customer did the comparing.

AI search works differently. The customer explains their situation and asks for a shortlist.

Meet Sarah, an imaginary customer. She’s in her 50s and self-employed. She has pensions from three previous jobs. She asks:

Now imagine you’re that adviser. You’d be a good fit for Sarah. But this is what AI finds:

Nothing says you specialise in retirement planning for self-employed people. So AI has very little to go on, and it might recommend somebody else.

For an HR consultant, it might be helping a small business hire its first employee. For an accountant, supporting someone who has just become self-employed. That question should shape everything you publish.

What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?

Three terms. One simple way to remember them: find me, answer me, recommend me.

The good news: you don’t need three separate strategies. Clear information, useful content and a website that can be read support all three.

And SEO still matters. Google’s own guidance says its SEO best practices still apply to its AI search features, with no special optimisation required.

How to improve your AI search visibility: five practical checks

1. Clarity

Is it clear what you do, who you help and where you work?

Read your homepage as if you knew nothing about your business. Could a stranger explain what you offer and who it’s for?

• Use the words your customers use.
• If location matters, say where. If you work remotely across the UK, say that.
• Only list services and locations you really cover.

Try this: rewrite the opening of one service page so it names your service, your customer and their need.

2. Consistency

Do your website, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile and directory listings tell the same story?

Consistency doesn’t mean copying the same paragraph everywhere. It means no conflicting information about your name, services, location or contact details.

Search for your business name. Look for:

• Old phone numbers
• Services you no longer offer
• Abandoned profiles
• Descriptions written before your business changed direction

Try this: fix the three most visible profiles or listings that are out of date.

3. Useful content

Are you answering the questions your customers actually ask?

Start with the questions you answer in discovery calls, emails and meetings. For example:

• HR consultant: “What HR support does a small business need when hiring its first employee?”
• Accountant: “What records should I keep when I become self-employed?”
• IT support: “What should a small business include in an IT support contract?”

Give the direct answer first. Then the detail, the practical steps and when the answer changes. One detailed, useful answer is worth more than several brief, generic posts.

Stuck for ideas? AnswerThePublic shows the questions people ask about a topic. Treat them as prompts, not phrases to repeat.

Try this: publish one answer to a question you hear every week.

4. Proof

What shows your expertise?

• Genuine client reviews
• Relevant qualifications and professional memberships
• A short case study: the problem, what you did and what changed

Keep every claim honest. Don’t say “saved hundreds of hours” unless you can back it up. And add a short author bio to your articles, so readers know who wrote them and why your experience counts.

Try this: add one concrete piece of proof to your most important service page.

5. Corroboration

That’s simply other people or businesses backing up what you say.

Think professional directories, industry associations, event speaker pages, podcasts and articles that quote you.

This is one of the reasons networking is so valuable. If you speak at an event, ask the organiser to include an accurate bio and a link to your website.

Choose sources a customer would trust. One genuine professional profile beats a scatter of unrelated listings.

Try this: find one opportunity to share your expertise beyond your own channels.

Want these checks on one page? Get the free AI visibility guide and checklist.

Can AI tools access your website?

Clear content needs a website that AI search can read. Ask your web developer to check three things:

• Are your public pages readable?
• Does your robots.txt file, or your hosting, block search crawlers?
• Is your key information written as text, not only inside images?

Each AI tool has its own crawler. For ChatGPT search, it is called OAI-SearchBot. It is separate from GPTBot, which relates to training OpenAI’s models. You can allow one and not the other.

Two things worth knowing from OpenAI’s own documentation:

• Sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers.
• After a robots.txt change, it can take about 24 hours for search to catch up.

Don’t simply allow every AI crawler. Check each provider’s documentation and choose what suits your business. For Google, use Search Console to spot indexing and access problems.

Access is the starting point. The five checks do the rest.

How do you check whether AI recommends your business?

Run the AI test. Ask the question a customer would ask.

1. Start a fresh conversation in ChatGPT, or your favourite AI chatbot.
2. Ask it to search the web.
3. Leave your business name out.

For example: “Search the web and recommend HR consultants in London who help small businesses hire their first employee. Include your sources.”

Then check three things:

• Does your business appear?
• Are the details accurate?
• Which sources does AI cite?

Open those sources and check them. AI can make mistakes, and answers vary. So try a few versions of the question and a few different AI tools.

Not there yet? That’s your starting point. Look at the businesses AI does mention. What do they explain clearly that you don’t?

Save your results. One answer is a snapshot, so repeat the test once a month with the same questions.

How do you measure whether AI visibility brings website traffic?

A mention, a website visit and an enquiry are three different things. Track each one where you can.

• Search: use Google Search Console to see impressions, queries and clicks for your pages.
• AI referrals: check your website analytics for visits from AI tools like ChatGPT, and what those visitors do next.
• Enquiries: ask every new enquiry “How did you hear about us?”, including whether they used AI.

Referral data won’t catch everything. Someone may read an AI recommendation, then search for you by name.

Review monthly, alongside your saved AI test results. The goal is relevant visitors and qualified enquiries, not mentions.

Frequently asked questions about getting found by AI

Why is my business not showing up in ChatGPT or other AI tools?

Common reasons: pages AI search can’t read, unclear service descriptions, outdated listings, or too little relevant information online. The question, the location and the search mode matter too. Check your sources and your website access before settling on one cause.

Can I guarantee that AI will recommend my business?

No. Nobody can. Be wary of any service that promises guaranteed recommendations.

Does SEO still matter for AI search?

Yes. People still use Google, and the basics still count. AEO and GEO add to SEO. They don’t replace it.

Do I need special schema or an AI file on my website?

Google says no special schema or new AI text file is needed for its AI search features. Structured data can describe your content, but it should match what readers see. It is not a shortcut.

How long does it take to improve AI search visibility?

There is no fixed timetable. It depends on where you start, what you change and the AI service answering. Record a baseline, then review monthly.

Start with three actions this week

1. Check your profiles. Make your website and main listings clear and accurate.
2. Answer one customer question. Publish a practical answer on a relevant page.
3. Run the AI test. Save the answer and the sources as your starting point.

What comes after being found?

Being found is one part of a business that works well. When more enquiries arrive, you need the capacity to respond.

Want to see how ready your business is for AI? Take the free five-minute AI readiness assessment and get an instant scorecard.

Selina Fischer is the founder of IntegroAI Consulting and an AI Adoption & Transformation Consultant, with more than 20 years of experience across product, technology and operations.