A growing share of people looking for a service now type the question into an assistant and take the answer. There's no page of ten blue links to be sixth on. Either your business gets named or it doesn't.
What gets a business named is different from what ranked it in 2015. Assistants pull from structured data, from pages that answer a question directly, and from what other sources say about you elsewhere.
A model hedges when its sources disagree, and a hedge is not a recommendation.
Your name, address, phone, hours and services have to match across your site, your Google profile and every listing that mentions you. Contradictions are the most common reason a business gets described vaguely rather than recommended.
The same facts then get checked by asking the assistants directly, before the work and after it, so you can see what actually changed.
What gets a business named.
Structured data that describes you
Schema marking up who you are, what you do, where you work and what you offer, so an assistant reads facts instead of inferring them.
Answers, written as answers
Pages that state the answer in the first sentence. That's the shape an assistant can lift and attribute.
Consistency everywhere
Name, address, phone and services matching across your site, your profile and every listing. Contradictions make a model hedge, and a hedge isn't a recommendation.
Cited by other sources
Assistants weigh what independent sources say. Being mentioned and linked elsewhere matters more here than it does in classic search.
Readable by crawlers
AI crawlers don't run JavaScript the way a browser does. A site that assembles itself client-side can be invisible to them while looking fine to you.
Checked, not assumed
Asking the assistants what they say about your business, and about your competitors, and fixing what comes back wrong.
AI search questions.
Is this different from SEO?
It overlaps and it's not the same. Classic SEO competes for a position in a list. This competes to be the answer, which rewards structured data, directly-worded answers, and being corroborated somewhere other than your own website.
Does it replace normal search?
Not yet, and possibly not ever. Plenty of people still search normally and click. The work here's additive, and most of it helps ordinary rankings too.
Can you make ChatGPT recommend me?
Nobody can make it. What can be done is make sure the facts about your business are present, structured, consistent and corroborated, which is what these systems draw on. A guarantee isn't something anybody is in a position to give.
How would I know if it worked?
By asking. The assistants get asked the questions your customers would ask, before the work and after it, and you see what changed.
Start turning up in AI answers.
Tell me what your business does and the questions your customers would be asking. We'll work out what it takes to be one of the names that comes back.
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