When someone asks ChatGPT for a business like yours, does it say your name?
Your customers have stopped searching and started asking… The AI gives them one answer, sometimes three. I make sure you’re in it, and I’ll show you where you stand right now for nothing.
Check what AI says about meSomeone in Bingham, this morning: “can you recommend a good electrician near me?”
Sure. Based on local reviews and availability, I’d suggest a business that isn’t yours, a business that isn’t yours, or a business that isn’t yours.
Nobody scrolls past this. There is nothing to scroll past.
What AI visibility actually means for a small business
It’s the difference between being on a list and being the answer.
With a normal Google search you get ten blue links. You can sit at number eight and still get found, because somebody determined will scroll. Slow, but survivable.
An AI assistant doesn’t hand out lists. It hands out an answer. One name, maybe three, the way a friend would if you asked them who to ring. Fewer seats, and no scrolling to a lower one.
So the question stops being “where do I rank” and becomes “am I one of the ones it mentions”. If the AI can’t find clear, consistent information about you, it doesn’t wonder why. It names somebody else and moves on. You’re just not in the room.
I’ve been checking this for businesses across Nottingham for months now, and the pattern is depressingly consistent. Lovely business, twenty years in the village, everyone local knows them. Ask ChatGPT and it recommends someone in Grantham who’s been going eighteen months and has a tidier website.
How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT
There’s no secret button. AI tools build an opinion of you from whatever they can read, so the job is making sure there’s plenty to read and it all agrees with itself. Four things do most of the work.
A website a machine can read
Loads of small business sites hide the important bits inside images or behind scripts that only fire when a human clicks. Beautiful to you, blank to anything without eyes. Plain text, real headings, your services and your towns written out in words.
The same details everywhere
Same business name, same phone number, same address, on every listing you’ve ever made. Three versions of your number floating about and the AI gets twitchy and drops you. More on why that matters here.
A Google profile that’s actually finished
Categories, hours, services, photos, and reviews that keep trickling in rather than stopping in 2023. This is the single biggest source AI tools draw on for local recommendations, and most profiles are half done.
Structured data and an llms.txt file
The technical layer. Schema tells a machine what your prices, hours, services and areas are without it having to guess, and llms.txt is the emerging way of handing AI tools a clean summary of your business. Almost nobody local has either.
If you want the longer version, I wrote about how AI picks which business to name and what makes a website readable to Google and AI.
What I actually do
Two parts. A one-off job that fixes the foundations, then a cheap monthly thing that watches whether it’s working. You can have the second without the first if you reckon your house is already in order.
The Get Found setup
- Google Business Profile rebuilt properly. Categories, services, hours, photos, the lot.
- Bing Places and Apple Maps sorted. The two everyone forgets, and Bing is what a fair chunk of AI tools read from.
- Listings corrected across the directories so your details finally say one thing.
- Full schema on your site. Services, prices, areas covered, hours, FAQs, written in the format machines read.
- llms.txt published so AI tools get a clean, deliberate summary of you rather than scraping around for one.
- A booking or contact route an AI agent can actually follow. This is the bit that matters in about eighteen months, and it costs nothing to get right now.
Then Watch, every month
- I ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your customers would ask and screenshot what comes back. Live browser, not a summary. If it says your name, you’ll see it.
- Your Google, Bing and Apple listings get checked against the master record in case something has drifted.
- You get a one-page report you can read in two minutes. Where you showed up, what moved, who got mentioned instead of you.
- If something breaks, I get the alert, not you. That’s the only time you hear from me unexpectedly.
What it costs
I ask the AI tools about your business and send you a one-page report. Useful even if you never hire me.
About two months of work. First ten businesses pay £499. Watch is included from month two.
The monthly AI check and listings check. Start here on its own if you’d rather let the first report make the case.
Everything in Watch plus me doing the posts, the review replies and the listings by hand. Limited places.
Full breakdown on the pricing page. No long contract, thirty days’ notice on the monthlies.
What I won’t promise you
Nobody can guarantee ChatGPT will name your business. Anyone telling you otherwise is either selling something or hasn’t looked properly. The answers shift, they vary between people, and they change again when the model updates.
What I can do is make sure that when an AI tool goes looking for a business like yours, it finds you, and finds you saying the same thing everywhere it looks. That’s the work. Then I watch it every month so you know whether it’s working.
I sell the work and the watching. I’ve never sold a position and I’m not about to start.
Questions I get asked about AI visibility
How do I get my business into AI answers?
Same foundations as everything else, mostly. A complete Google Business Profile, reviews that keep coming, and your name, address and phone number saying the same thing everywhere. Then make sure your website can actually be read by a machine. That’s the bit people skip.
Which AI tools actually matter if I’m a local business?
ChatGPT and Google’s AI overviews, mainly. Gemini and Perplexity after that. I check all four for clients, but if you only worry about one, worry about ChatGPT. It’s the one your customers are already using without telling you.
Is this different from normal SEO?
It overlaps a lot, which is good news for you. A tidy Google profile and consistent details help both. The extra bits are the technical layer, schema and llms.txt, and the fact that I test the actual AI answers each month rather than just watching rankings.
Does my website need anything special?
It needs to be readable. A lot of small business sites put the important information inside images, or behind scripts that only load when a human clicks something. A tool reading the page gets nothing. Plain text, clear headings, your services and your area written out in words.
How long does it take to show up in AI answers?
Weeks rather than days, and it depends what state you’re starting from. If your listings are already tidy, you can see movement in a month. If there are three versions of your phone number floating about, sort that first and give it longer.
Can I check this myself?
Yes, and you should. Open ChatGPT and ask it to recommend a business like yours in your town. Do it a couple of times, because the answers vary. If you’re not in there, now you know. If you’d rather I did it properly across four tools and wrote it up, that’s the free check.
Do you only work with businesses in Nottinghamshire?
That’s where most of my clients are, from Bingham and Cropwell Bishop out to Newark and Grantham. But none of this work needs me in the room, so if you’re further afield and you like how I do things, get in touch.
Find out what the AI says about you.
I’ll ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity about your business, screenshot what comes back, and send you a one page report. Free, and genuinely useful even if you never hire me.
Get my free visibility check