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How to get your business found in AI search

More people now ask ChatGPT or Google's AI for local recommendations. What gets a small business named in those answers, what's hype, and what to check first.

Published by the Delaware Valley Tech team. About 7 minutes to read.

Illustration of a hand holding a phone with a chat conversation on screen, a green line running from the phone to a warmly lit corner shop while two gray storefronts beside it fade into the background

“Who’s a good accountant near West Chester?” A growing number of people now type that question into ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode, or Microsoft Copilot instead of scrolling through search results. The AI writes back a short answer that names a few businesses, and the customer may call one of them without ever visiting a website.

That raises a fair question for any small business: how do you end up in that answer? The honest answer is less mysterious than a lot of “AI SEO” sales pitches suggest, and most of it is work you can check yourself.

Do people really use AI to find local businesses?

Yes, and the jump has been sudden. In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 U.S. consumers, 45% said they had used ChatGPT or another AI tool to find or get recommendations for local businesses in the past year, up from 6% the year before. That made AI tools the third most common source of local recommendations in the survey. The same survey found 40% of consumers trust AI platforms to recommend a business.

Google search itself is changing too. When the Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025, about one in five Google searches produced an AI summary at the top of the results.

Does AI search mean fewer people visit your website?

Often, yes, which makes what the answer says about you more important. Pew found that people clicked a regular search result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when it didn’t. They clicked a link inside the summary itself on just 1% of visits.

In practice, the AI answer is increasingly the first impression. If it describes your business accurately and names you for the right services and towns, the customer may call you directly. If it leaves you out, or gets your services wrong, you never hear about the lost call.

Is “AI SEO” or GEO different from regular SEO?

Mostly no, and Google says so directly. Its guidance for site owners states that “there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary,” and that you don’t need “new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup” or any special structured data to appear. To be eligible, a page simply has to be indexed and able to show in Google Search with a snippet.

So be wary of anyone selling a secret AI-ranking trick. The work that helps is the same work that has always helped customers find you: a site that search engines can read, content that clearly answers real questions, and accurate information about your business everywhere it appears. The terms “GEO” (generative engine optimization) and “AEO” (answer engine optimization) describe a real shift in where people see results, but the foundations haven’t changed.

How do AI tools decide which businesses to mention?

Nobody outside these companies knows the exact formula, but they draw on the same public information a careful researcher would. That means websites they’re allowed to read, search indexes, business listings, and reviews. Pew found the sources cited most often in Google’s AI summaries were Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit, with government sites cited more often than in regular results.

For a small business, the practical takeaway is consistency. When your website, your Google Business Profile, your other listings, and your reviews all say the same things about what you do and where, an AI tool has solid, matching evidence to work from. Conflicting hours, old addresses, or vague descriptions give it less to go on.

Can AI search tools actually read your website?

Check this first, because it’s the one problem that can shut you out completely. Each AI company uses web crawlers, and your site’s robots.txt file and security settings decide which ones get in. OpenAI, for example, says sites that block its OAI-SearchBot crawler “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.” That’s separate from GPTBot, which OpenAI uses to collect training data. You can block training and still allow search.

This matters more than it used to. Since July 2025, Cloudflare, a widely used web security and hosting service, asks every new site whether to allow AI crawlers at all. Blocking crawlers used for training is a reasonable choice. Blocking the ones used for search keeps you out of those answers. If someone set this up for you, ask which crawlers are allowed.

Two other common blind spots:

  • Important details only in images or PDFs. A menu, price list, or service list that exists only as a picture or a download is harder for any search tool to use. Google’s guidance specifically recommends keeping important content in text.
  • Pages missing from search entirely. If a page doesn’t appear when you search Google for its exact title, AI features that rely on Google’s index can’t cite it either.

What should your website say so AI can recommend you?

Say plainly what you do, who it’s for, and where, on the pages where someone would look for it. AI tools answer questions, so pages that answer questions clearly are easy to use. Compare these two lines:

  • “Excellence and integrity in every engagement.”
  • “Tax preparation and bookkeeping for small businesses and families in Media, Wayne, and across Delaware County.”

Only the second tells a person or an AI tool what the business does and where. A few habits make a big difference:

  • Give each main service its own page or clear section, with a heading that names it the way customers do.
  • Name your real service area. List the towns and counties you actually serve rather than “the surrounding area.”
  • Answer the questions customers ask before calling: what it costs to get started, how long things take, what to bring, whether you work evenings. A short FAQ written in plain language does this well.
  • Keep your name, address, phone, and hours identical everywhere, on your site and on every listing.

Why do reviews and your business profile matter so much?

Because AI tools, like customers, lean heavily on what other people say about you. In the same BrightLocal survey, 97% of consumers said they read reviews for local businesses, and 82% said they read AI-generated summaries of reviews. Google’s guidance for AI features also recommends keeping your Business Profile information up to date.

You can’t control what customers write, but you can make reviews easy to leave, respond to them professionally, and make sure your profile’s categories, services, hours, and website link are correct.

How can you tell if AI search is mentioning your business?

Ask the tools yourself, the way a customer would. Try questions like “best [your service] in [your town]” or “who can help with [a common problem] near [your town]” in ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode, Copilot, and Perplexity. Use a private browser window, try a few wordings, and note whether you’re named and whether the description is accurate. Results vary from one try to the next, so look for patterns rather than a single answer.

Free tools help too:

  • Google Search Console includes clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode in its normal web search totals.
  • Bing Webmaster Tools added an AI Performance report in February 2026 that shows how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI answers.
  • Your website analytics may show visits referred from sites like chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai.

What should you do first?

Start with access and accuracy, then clarity, then everything else.

  1. Make sure search and AI crawlers can reach your site, including any security or hosting settings, and that your key pages appear in Google.
  2. Fix anything wrong or inconsistent: hours, address, phone, services, and your Google Business Profile.
  3. Rewrite vague headlines and service descriptions so they say what you do, for whom, and where.
  4. Add answers to the questions customers actually ask, in plain text on your site.
  5. Check the AI tools every month or two and see whether what they say about you improves.

None of this is exotic. It’s the same checklist we follow on our own site. If you’d like a second pair of eyes, our website design and management work covers exactly this, and ongoing website care keeps it current. If you’re not sure whether your site has bigger problems, start with how to tell if your website is costing you customers.

If you’re in Southeastern Pennsylvania and want to know how your business shows up in AI search today, get in touch. We’ll look at what these tools currently say about you and tell you plainly what we’d fix first.

Where do these numbers come from?

Every figure above comes from the original source, linked below.

Tell us what’s slowing you down.

A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. We’ll listen, ask some pointed questions, and tell you plainly whether we’re the right people to help.

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