More and more, your next customer is not typing into Google and scrolling. They are asking ChatGPT or Claude "who is good for this near me?" and acting on the answer. If your business is invisible to AI, you are invisible to them. The good news: making yourself visible is mostly within your control.
The short version
- 45% of people used AI tools to find local businesses in the past year, up from 6% a year earlier.
- AI is now the third biggest discovery channel, behind only Google and Facebook.
- AI assistants answer from what they can read, trust and cite about you across the web.
- The work is called AEO or GEO. The basics are practical and you can start this week.
Why this matters now
The shift is fast. By 2026, 45% of consumers said they had used AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity to find local business recommendations in the past year, up from just 6% a year before. ChatGPT passed 800 million weekly users, and Google's AI Mode passed a billion a month. When AI answers a question directly, around 83% of those searches end without a click to any website. The answer is the destination, so being inside that answer is the new front page.
If a customer asks an AI "who is good for this near me?", you want to be the answer, not the search result they never scroll to.
How AI search actually works
An assistant does not crawl the web the way old Google did and rank ten blue links. It pulls together what it can find about you from many places, your site, directories, reviews, mentions, and forms a view. Then it answers in plain language, sometimes citing sources. So the goal is not to "rank". It is to be readable, consistent and trustworthy everywhere the AI looks, so it is confident enough to name you.
The practical checklist
1. Make your site easy for AI to read
Clear, factual copy beats clever copy. Say plainly what you do, where, for whom, and what it costs. Add structured data (schema) so machines can parse your business details, services and FAQs. Many sites now also publish an llms.txt file, a plain summary written for AI assistants.
2. Answer real questions
AI loves question-and-answer content because that is the shape of what users ask. A proper FAQ with honest, specific answers gives the assistant exactly what it needs to quote you.
3. Be consistent everywhere
Your name, address, phone and description should match across your site, Google Business Profile, social profiles and any directories. Contradictions make AI uncertain, and uncertain AI leaves you out. Linking your profiles together (the sameAs signal) helps it connect the dots.
4. Earn mentions and reviews
AI weighs what others say about you, not just what you say. Genuine reviews and being referenced on other reputable pages build the trust that gets you named.
5. Do not block the AI crawlers
Check your robots file is not quietly blocking AI bots. You cannot be cited if you cannot be read.
How to check where you stand
Start simple: ask ChatGPT and Claude what they say about your business and your sector, and see whether you appear. For a proper read, our own product FoundByAI scans how visible you are across AI tools, grades it, and tells you what to fix. It is free to scan, which is the fastest way to know whether this is a problem for you yet.
Common questions
Do people really use AI to find businesses?
What is AEO or GEO?
How do I check how visible my business is to AI?
Sources
- Cheers / BrightLocal data, How Consumers Use AI to Find Local Businesses in 2026.
- Bain & Company, How Customers Are Using AI Search, 2025.
- Search Engine Land, AI search adoption rises as consumer trust declines.