How to get your business found on Google and in AI search

To get your business found on Google and in AI search, make your site easy to crawl, state clearly who you are and what you do, publish pages that directly answer your customers' questions, and earn mentions on other trusted sites. The same foundations serve both, because AI assistants lean heavily on what is already published and well regarded on the web.

Nobody can promise you the top spot, and you should be wary of anyone who does. What you can do is remove every reason a search engine or assistant has to skip you.

Step 1: Make sure you can be found at all

Start with the technical basics. These are unglamorous, and skipping them wastes everything else.

• Publish a sitemap and a robots file, so crawlers know what exists and what they may read.
• Give each page one clear address, with a canonical tag that confirms it.
• Keep important text in the page itself rather than inside images.
• Make sure the site works well on a phone, because Google primarily looks at the mobile version.
• Verify your site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, then submit your sitemap to both.

Step 2: Say exactly who you are

Search engines and assistants have to connect your name with what you do. Make that easy for them:

• Use the same business name, description and contact details everywhere.
• Write a plain sentence near the top of your homepage saying who you help and how.
• Add structured data describing your organisation, services and articles.
• Keep your Google Business Profile and social profiles complete and linked to your site.

Step 3: Answer real questions

This is where most of the opportunity sits. Listen to the questions customers ask on sales calls and write a page for each one.

Put the answer in the first two or three sentences, then add the detail. A direct answer is easy for a reader to use and easy for an assistant to quote. This article is written in that format on purpose.

Useful formats include pricing guides, comparisons, how-to articles and honest "is this right for me?" pages. A page like how much a business website really costs answers a question buyers genuinely type.

Write for the customer first. Pages that exist only to rank rarely earn the trust that gets them recommended.

Step 4: Let AI assistants read your site

AI tools use their own crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot from OpenAI, ClaudeBot from Anthropic and PerplexityBot from Perplexity. If your robots file blocks them, they may not be able to read or cite your pages. Check that it allows the ones you want.

For Google's AI features, Google has said no special markup is required: the normal rules for appearing in Search apply. Be cautious about paying for shortcuts. Files like llms.txt are cheap to add, but they are still an informal proposal and not a proven ranking factor.

Step 5: Earn mentions elsewhere

Your own site can only say so much about you. Reviews, directory listings, partner pages, press and guest articles all signal that real people know your business. Assistants often pull from these sources when recommending a company, so one good mention on a respected industry site is worth more than dozens of low-quality links.

Step 6: Measure what is working

• Watch impressions, clicks and search terms in Google Search Console.
• Check your analytics for referral traffic from assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.
• Ask your target questions in the assistants themselves every month and note who gets named.
• Ask new leads how they heard about you. It is simple, and it catches what the tools miss.

Frequently asked questions

How long does SEO take to work?

New pages can be indexed within days, but steady rankings usually take months, especially on a new domain. Treat it as compounding work rather than a one-off job.

Is SEO different from optimising for AI search?

They overlap heavily. Good crawling, clear content and a strong reputation help with both. AI search rewards direct, quotable answers and mentions on other trusted sites even more.

Do I need to publish a lot of content?

No. A small set of genuinely useful pages beats a large volume of thin ones. Start with the ten questions you hear most often.

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