How to get ChatGPT and AI search to recommend your business

More and more people are asking an AI tool for a recommendation instead of scrolling a page of search results. Someone types “who is a good brand photographer in Devon” and expects a shortlist, not ten blue links.

That changes what you need your website to do. The good news is that most of it is the same work that makes you findable on Google, just done a bit more deliberately.

How these tools actually decide

An AI answer is assembled from whatever it can find and trust about you. It is looking for clear, consistent, specific information that it can repeat without getting it wrong. If your website is vague, it has nothing to say about you.

It also leans heavily on being corroborated elsewhere. If your business says the same thing in the same way on your site, your Google Business Profile and a couple of directories, that consistency reads as reliable.

Say plainly what you do and who for

This is the single biggest one. “Bringing brands to life” tells a machine nothing, and frankly tells a human nothing either. “Brand photography, brand identity and websites for professional businesses in Devon and the South West” can be understood, repeated and matched to a question.

Put that sentence somewhere obvious, near the top of your homepage and your about page.

Answer real questions in full

AI tools love content that answers a specific question properly. A page that genuinely answers “what does a small business website cost” is far more useful to them than a clever headline.

• Use the question as the heading, in the words people actually use.
• Answer it in the first paragraph, not after six paragraphs of preamble.
• Include specifics: numbers, timescales, what is included, what is not.
• Keep one page to one question rather than covering everything at once.

Make your details boringly consistent

Business name, location, services, contact details. Identical everywhere. Different phone numbers or a slightly different business name across profiles creates doubt, and doubt means you get left out of the answer.

Be specific about place

Local intent is huge in these queries. If you serve Devon and the South West, say so in plain text on the page, not only in a footer. Name the towns you genuinely work in.

Give it evidence

Real client names where you are allowed, real testimonials with real people attached, real projects described in normal language. Case studies do double duty here: they help humans decide and give AI something concrete to cite.

The unglamorous technical bit

• Make sure your pages are actually crawlable and not blocked.
• Use proper headings so structure is obvious.
• Add basic business schema so your details are machine readable.
• Keep the site fast and working on a phone.

None of this is a trick. It is the same principle as always: be clear about what you do, prove it, and make it easy to find. The tools have changed, the homework has not.