How to Check If AI Recommends Your Business (And What to Do If It Doesn't)

Millions of people now ask AI assistants for local business recommendations instead of scrolling through Google results. The question is: when someone asks "What's the best [your business type] in [your city]?" — does AI mention you? Here's how to find out.

How to Run the AI Test

Open each of these platforms and ask the same question. Replace [type] with your business category and [city] with your location:

Query: "What's the best [type] in [city]?"

Test on:

ChatGPT (chatgpt.com) — The most-used AI assistant with over 800 million monthly users
Google (google.com) — Look for the AI Overview summary at the top of results, which appears in ~55% of searches
Perplexity (perplexity.ai) — An AI search engine that cites its sources, growing rapidly
Bing Copilot (bing.com) — Microsoft's AI assistant, which powers ChatGPT's search

Screenshot every result. This is your baseline.

What If You're Not Mentioned?

Don't panic — most small businesses aren't showing up in AI results yet. That's actually good news: it means the competitive landscape is wide open. The first businesses in each market to optimize for AI will own those recommendations.

Here's why AI might not be mentioning you:

Your website lacks structured data. Without Schema.org markup, AI can read your text but can't confidently categorize your business. Adding structured data makes you 3x more likely to be cited.

Your site blocks AI crawlers. Many websites — especially WordPress sites with security plugins — accidentally block GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and other AI crawlers in their robots.txt file. If AI can't read your site, it can't recommend you.

You don't have enough entity presence. AI verifies businesses across multiple sources. If you only exist on your own website, AI has low confidence. You need consistent presence across Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Wikidata, and relevant directories.

Your content isn't AI-friendly. AI extracts answers from clear, declarative statements. If your website is full of marketing fluff without concrete facts — what you do, where you're located, what you specialize in — AI has nothing to extract and cite.

What Can You Do Right Now?

Start with a free AI Visibility Check to see exactly what's missing from your website. The report will show you which technical elements are present or absent and give you prioritized recommendations.

The three highest-impact actions for most small businesses are: (1) add Schema.org structured data, (2) create or complete your Google Business Profile, and (3) ensure AI crawlers can access your site. These three changes alone can dramatically improve your chances of being cited by AI.

If you want the full treatment — including llms.txt, conversational content optimization, FAQ schema, and ongoing maintenance — get in touch. We build sites that AI recommends.