Someone just asked an AI to recommend a business like yours. Did it pick you?

Post three. We’ve talked about getting found online, and we’ve talked about your Google profile. Now for the new kid on the block, the one quietly changing how people find local businesses while half the high street hasn’t even noticed.

People have started asking AI assistants for recommendations. Not searching. Asking. “Who’s a good electrician near Bingham?” “Recommend a dog groomer in Bottesford.” And ChatGPT, or Gemini, or whatever’s living on their phone, just answers. A name. Sometimes three. Not a page of ten links to wade through, an actual recommendation, like asking a mate who somehow knows everyone.

Here’s the bit that should make you sit up. If the AI can’t find clear, consistent information about you, it doesn’t recommend you. It doesn’t pause to wonder why. It picks someone else and moves on. You’re not rejected. You’re just not in the room.

Why this is different from normal Google

With a normal search you get a list. You can be eighth and still claw your way up over time, and a determined customer might scroll down and find you anyway.

An AI assistant doesn’t really do lists. It gives an answer. One, maybe a small handful. So the stakes are higher and the seats are fewer. You’re either the business it names, or you’re the business it’s never heard of. There isn’t much in between, and that’s a proper shift in how this all works.

What the AI tools actually look at

They read your website, assuming they can. Some sites are built so that only a human with eyes can make sense of them, and a tool trying to read the page comes back with nothing useful. If a machine can’t read you, it can’t recommend you.

They also read your Google profile, your reviews, your listings on other sites, and any mentions of you knocking about online. Basically, the AI forms an opinion of you from whatever it can scrape together. If that information is thin, out of date, or says three different things about your phone number, the AI gets nervous and quietly leaves you off.

Consistency is the whole game. Same name, same number, same address, everywhere. Reviews that back up the story. A website that isn’t a locked box to anything without a pulse.

What you can actually do about it

Good news: if you’ve read the first two posts, you’re already halfway there. The solid Google profile, the steady reviews, the matching details, all of that feeds straight into how the AI sees you. It’s the same foundations doing double duty.

On top of that, make sure your website is readable by machines and not just gorgeous to humans. Keep a few honest reviews trickling in. And describe what you do and where you do it in plain words, so there’s no guesswork about whether you cover Radcliffe on Trent or only Newark.

The point of all this

This is early days. Most businesses across the Vale of Belvoir haven’t given AI search a single thought yet. And that, if you ask me, is exactly the opportunity. Being the business the AI already knows and trusts while everyone else is still catching up is a lovely place to be standing.

Curious what the AI tools say about you right now? That’s part of my free visibility check. I’ll genuinely ask ChatGPT and the others about your business and show you, in black and white, whether you came up or whether it recommended someone in Grantham instead. Then I’ll send you a simple one-page report on what to do about it.

Better to find out now, while it’s quiet, than the day you realise the phone’s been ringing for someone else.

Becky Halls – websites, Google profiles and AI visibility for local businesses across Nottinghamshire and the Vale of Belvoir. beckyhalls.com