How do AI assistants decide which businesses to recommend?
AI assistants recommend businesses they can find clear, consistent and trustworthy information about. When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews for "a good electrician in Newcastle" or "a quiet café in Fremantle for a work meeting", the assistant looks for businesses whose details, services and reputation it can confirm across the web.
Nobody outside these companies knows exactly how each assistant chooses, and the systems change often. But the broad pattern is well understood. Many AI assistants can search the web for current information, and they lean on sources such as business websites, Google Business Profiles, review sites, directories and local news. The clearer and more consistent your information is across those sources, the more likely an assistant is to understand what you do and mention you.
This is sometimes called answer engine optimisation, or AEO. The good news is that it overlaps heavily with good, old-fashioned local SEO. Most of what helps you show up in Google also helps you show up in AI answers.
Why does your website matter so much for AI search?
Your website is the one place where you control the full, detailed story of your business. AI assistants often need specifics to make a recommendation, and a website is where those specifics live.
Think about what people actually ask an assistant. Not just "plumber near me", but "a plumber in the Inner West who does gas fitting and can come on weekends", or "a hairdresser in Hobart who specialises in curly hair". To recommend you for a question like that, an assistant needs to find text somewhere that says you do gas fitting, cover the Inner West and work weekends. If that information is only in your head, or in a story you posted months ago, it is hard for an assistant to use.
Social media helps, but it has limits. As we explain in do you still need a website if you have Instagram, posts are often hard for search tools to read and organise, and some content sits behind logins.
What should your website say to help AI assistants understand you?
Write plain, specific, factual answers to the questions customers ask. The aim is for any reader, human or machine, to come away knowing exactly what you do, where, for whom and why people rate you.
State the basics clearly
- Your exact business name, the same everywhere
- What you do, in the words customers use
- Where you are, or which suburbs and regions you service
- Your hours, phone number and how to book or enquire
- How long you have been operating, and any licences or accreditations
Give each service its own page
A separate page for each main service gives you room to explain it properly: what it involves, who it suits, how long it takes, roughly how you price it and which areas you cover. It also gives AI tools and search engines a clear, focused page to point to when someone asks about that exact service.
Answer real questions in an FAQ
Collect the questions you get asked on the phone and answer them on your site in a sentence or three. "Do you service Blacktown?", "Is there parking?", "Do you do gluten-free?", "How far ahead should I book?" Short, direct answers like these are easy to quote, and they help customers too.
Lead with the answer
Write each section so the first sentence answers the question, then add detail. This makes your pages easier to skim on a phone and easier for an assistant to pull a clean, accurate answer from.
What technical basics help AI tools read your site?
You don't need to be technical, but whoever looks after your website should check a few things. These help search engines and AI tools find and understand your pages reliably.
| Basic | What it means | Why it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Crawlable text | Important information is written as real text on the page, not only inside images or PDFs | Text is much easier for search engines and AI tools to read accurately |
| robots.txt not blocking | Your robots.txt file doesn't stop search engines or AI search tools you want to be found by | A blocked page can't be read, so it can't be used |
| LocalBusiness structured data | Schema.org markup that states your name, address, phone, hours, service area and more | Gives machines a clear, structured summary of your business |
| Google Search Console | Free tool showing how Google sees and indexes your site | Helps you spot pages Google can't find or has problems with |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Bing's equivalent free tool | Bing's index is used by some other search and AI products, so it is worth being properly listed there too |
| Fast, mobile-friendly pages | Pages load quickly and work well on phones | Good for visitors, and a sign of a well-maintained site |
Why do reviews and mentions elsewhere matter?
AI assistants tend to look for agreement across several sources before they describe a business as good at something. Your own website saying you are great is one voice. Customers, directories and local media saying the same thing adds weight.
- Google reviews: ask happy customers to mention the specific service and suburb in their own words, without scripting them. Reviews that say "fixed our hot water system in Kellyville the same day" carry more detail than "great service".
- Your Google Business Profile: keep it complete and matched to your website. There is more on this in Google Business Profile and your website.
- Directories and associations: make sure listings on industry bodies, trade associations and local directories are accurate and consistent.
- Local mentions: community sponsorships, local news stories and features on other businesses' sites all help show you are a real, active part of your area.
Showing your best reviews on your website also helps, because it puts that customer evidence alongside the services it relates to. Our guide to using your Google reviews on your website explains how.
Checklist: make your business easier for AI assistants to recommend
- Use exactly the same business name, phone, address or service area and hours on your website, Google Business Profile, social profiles and directories.
- Write a clear one or two sentence summary of what you do and where, near the top of your homepage.
- Create a page for each main service, naming the areas you cover.
- Add an FAQ with short, direct answers to real customer questions.
- Keep key information in text, not just in images, menus as PDFs or videos.
- Add LocalBusiness structured data to your website.
- Set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and fix any indexing problems they report.
- Check that your robots.txt isn't blocking search engines or AI search tools you want to reach.
- Keep collecting genuine Google reviews, and reply to them.
- Update your website whenever your services, prices approach, hours or areas change.
What shouldn't you do?
Avoid shortcuts. They tend to confuse the very systems you want to understand you, and some can damage trust with customers.
- Don't fake reviews or pay for them. Beyond breaking platform rules, Australian Consumer Law prohibits misleading reviews.
- Don't stuff pages with lists of suburbs or repeated keywords. Write naturally about the areas you genuinely service.
- Don't create near-identical pages for every suburb with only the name swapped.
- Don't trust anyone who promises you will be recommended by ChatGPT or any other assistant. Nobody can control what these tools say.
How can you check how AI assistants describe you?
Ask them. Try a few assistants with the kinds of questions your customers would ask, such as "who are good landscapers in Ipswich?" or "what does [your business name] do?". Note whether you appear, and whether the details are right.
If an assistant gets something wrong, such as old hours or a service you no longer offer, the fix is almost always to correct the information at the source: your website, your Google Business Profile and any directories carrying old details. Answers can vary from one day and one person to the next, so treat these checks as a rough guide rather than a score.
At Websidyn this is built into how we put sites together: clear service pages, plain answers, real reviews and structured data, so that both people and AI tools can understand a business at a glance. None of it is a trick. It is simply making the truth about your business easy to find and easy to confirm.