How Do You Show Up in AI Search?

Where are businesses actually being named?

We asked three AI systems — ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews — who the best provider was in each business's trade and city.

• 70 of 91 businesses were named by at least one.
• ChatGPT named 59. Perplexity named 54.
• Being named by both was common, and was the strongest position.

The first number is worth sitting with. If you have assumed you are invisible to AI, you may simply be wrong — check before you spend anything on fixing it.

The checklist, in the order we would actually do it

1. Find out where you stand

Ask an AI assistant the question a customer would ask. Not your business name — the category question: "Who's the best [trade] in [your city]?" Write down who comes back. If you are already there, your job is to widen and defend, which is a different job from getting in.

2. Fix your Google Business Profile properly

Correct primary category, full service list, accurate hours, real photos, service areas that match reality. It is the most consistently referenced source about a local business and the cheapest thing on this list to get right.

3. Build review velocity

Not a review total — a steady flow. Reviews are third-party text that naturally mentions your service and your area, and they refresh constantly. Google first, then wherever your industry gets reviewed. Facebook reviews matter more in some trades than others.

4. Get listed where your industry gets listed

Licensing bodies, trade associations, chambers of commerce, reputable local directories. Consistency matters more than volume — the same business name, address and phone number everywhere.

5. Earn a mention you did not write

Local press, a supplier case study, a community sponsorship, an industry roundup. One genuine third-party mention is worth more than a page of self-description, because it is corroboration rather than assertion.

6. Speak in category language

This is the one most businesses get wrong, us included. A page can answer the question perfectly and still not be cited, because it uses internal vocabulary instead of the words buyers use. If customers search "emergency plumber", "24/7 rapid response solutions" will not match, however good the service behind it is.

7. Then check the site can be used

Once something sends an AI reader to your site, it needs to be able to read it. See what agentic browsing is and what an llms.txt file does.

What does not work as well as people claim?

Two things, based on our own data rather than opinion.

Rebuilding a working website. Of the 21 businesses not named, 12 had technically clean sites. The website was not the obstacle. A rebuild would have cost them money and changed nothing.

Publishing an llms.txt and stopping. Useful hygiene, not a lever. We found no clean relationship between having a valid llms.txt and being named.

How long does it take?

We are not going to give you a number, because we do not have one we can stand behind and the honest answer is that it varies enormously by market and by how much third-party presence you already have.

What we can tell you is how to judge it: re-run the same questions monthly and look for a pattern. AI answers vary between runs — we have seen different names come back minutes apart on the same question. One check is an anecdote. Three months of checks is a trend.