How AI assistants find businesses
When someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation, it doesn’t pick a business at random. It usually searches the web, reads what it finds and summarizes it. So it depends on:
- Search engines. Google’s AI features are built on Google Search. Microsoft Copilot uses Bing, and other assistants draw on search results too.
- Business listings. Your Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Yelp and other directories.
- Reviews. How many you have, how recent they are and what they say.
- Your website. Clear pages that explain what you do, where you do it and what it costs.
- Other websites. Local news, “best of” lists, associations and community discussions that mention you.
If these sources are missing, out of date or contradict each other, an assistant has little reason to mention you.
What Google says
In 2026 Google published guidance on optimizing for its AI features. The short version: there’s no secret trick. AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on Google’s normal search systems, so what helps you rank also helps you appear there. Google says you don’t need special files or markup, and that making lots of near-duplicate pages to catch every question breaks its spam policies.
We follow that guidance. It also happens to be what works for the other assistants.
What we actually change
- Crawl access. We check your robots.txt so search and AI crawlers aren’t blocked by accident.
- Text in the page. If your site only shows content after scripts run, some crawlers may see an empty page. We make sure the important text is in the HTML.
- Consistency. We match your details across every important listing.
- Answers. We add short, clear answers to real customer questions on your service pages.
- Reputation. We help you earn reviews and genuine mentions, the kind of sources AI assistants quote.