How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and Other AI Assistants

I asked an AI assistant, “Who are the best suppliers of websites?” It named six companies: Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, Framer and Hostinger. 914Digital wasn’t one of them. I tried five more ways of asking. Zero out of six.

That matters because AI assistants don’t work like search. Google gives a buyer ten results and lets them choose. An assistant names three or four companies and explains why. There’s no second page, and you’ll never see the inquiry you didn’t get in your analytics.

The good news: assistants recommend companies whose information is easy to read and easy to verify. That’s fixable, and none of it involves tricks. Here’s how to do it, step by step.

Step 1: Find out where you stand

Before you change anything, measure. Ask the questions your buyers would ask, and see who gets named.

You can do this by hand in ChatGPT or Perplexity, or use our free AI Visibility Check. It writes the questions a real buyer in your category would ask, runs them through an AI assistant with live web search, and tells you how often you came up, who got named instead, and what to change. It takes about a minute, with no account.

Run it three times:

• Your company, to get your baseline.
• Your top competitor, to see what “good” looks like in your category.
• The words a buyer would use when they don’t know your name yet.

Be specific about what you sell. When I entered “websites,” I got compared with Squarespace and Wix, which aren’t my competition. “Custom WordPress development for manufacturers” produced questions and competitors that made sense.

Step 2: Say what you do in plain words

An assistant can only recommend you for something if your site clearly says you do it. Taglines like “Elevating digital experiences” tell it nothing.

Your home page and each service page should state, in one or two plain sentences: what you do, who it’s for and where you work. For example: “We build custom WordPress websites and WooCommerce stores for manufacturers and B2B companies in Westchester and South Florida.” Use the words your buyers type, not your industry’s jargon.

Step 3: Get your important information out of PDFs and images

This is the big one for manufacturers and technical companies. Specifications, data sheets, price lists and capability statements often live in PDFs or images. A person can read them. An assistant scanning your site for an answer mostly can’t use them.

Put that information on real web pages as text. Keep the PDF as a download for people who want it. Once your specs are on the page, they become findable, quotable and citable.

Step 4: Add structured data

Structured data (Schema.org markup) is a block of code that labels your information for machines: this is a business, this is its logo, this is a product, this is what it costs, this is who it’s for. It’s invisible to visitors and very clear to software.

On WordPress, a plugin like Yoast SEO handles the basics. Fill in its “Site representation” settings with your organization name, logo and social profiles. Products, services and locations usually need custom work on top.

Don’t assume it’s done. When we audited our own site, our organization data was missing entirely.

Step 5: Answer the questions buyers actually ask

Buyers ask assistants comparison questions. Which product suits my application? What’s the difference between these two options? What should I use for this job? How much does it cost?

If you don’t have a page that answers those questions, the assistant cites whoever does, often a distributor or a competitor. Write those pages: comparison guides, “which one do I need” pages, honest pricing ranges and FAQs written in your customers’ words.

Step 6: Get other sites to confirm you exist

Assistants weigh independent sources heavily, because that’s how they check whether a claim is credible. Your own site saying you’re the best doesn’t count for much on its own.

• Claim and complete your Google Business Profile.
• Get listed in the directories and associations for your industry.
• Ask happy clients for reviews on the platforms your buyers check.
• Pitch trade press and local business coverage. A single mention in a respected publication carries real weight.

Make sure your name, address and phone number match everywhere.

Step 7: Make sure AI crawlers can read your site

Some sites block AI crawlers without anyone realizing it, through a security plugin, a firewall or an old robots.txt rule. Visit yoursite.com/robots.txt and check that it doesn’t block crawlers like OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot or ClaudeBot.

Also check that your main content appears in the page itself, not only after JavaScript runs. If your text loads in late, some crawlers never see it.

Step 8: Check again every month

AI answers change as assistants update and your competitors make moves. Re-run your check monthly so you can see whether your changes are working and catch drops early.

If you score well, keep doing what you’re doing. If you score zero, as I did, you now know something most of your competitors don’t. That’s not a bad place to start.