The short answer: AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews recommend businesses they can find, understand, and trust. To show up, make sure AI crawlers can reach your site, answer the questions your customers actually ask in plain language, describe your business the same way everywhere, and earn mentions and reviews on other sites. There’s no secret trick; it’s mostly good SEO, done thoroughly.
More and more people ask an AI assistant “who should I hire to…” instead of searching. This fall I worked through all of this on PowerUp’s own site, and the checklist below is what made the difference.
How do AI assistants decide which businesses to mention?
When an AI assistant answers a question about the real world, it usually searches the web, reads the most relevant pages, and summarizes them, often with links to its sources. So the question isn’t “how do I get into the AI.” It’s “when the AI goes looking, will it find my site, understand what I do, and trust what it reads?”
Google is clear that its own AI features run on the same foundations as regular search. Its guidance says there are no additional requirements or special optimizations needed to appear in AI Overviews; the usual SEO best practices apply (Google Search Central).
Step 1: Make sure AI crawlers can actually reach your site
This is the step most often missed. Check two places:
- Your robots.txt file (at
yourdomain.com/robots.txt). Make sure it isn’t blocking the crawlers AI search tools use, such asOAI-SearchBot(ChatGPT search),PerplexityBot, andGooglebot. - Your security or CDN service. Cloudflare, which sits in front of a huge number of websites, started asking new sites to block AI crawlers by default in 2025 (Cloudflare). That’s a reasonable choice for publishers, but a small business that wants to be recommended usually wants the search crawlers allowed.
Step 2: Answer the questions your customers ask
AI tools quote pages that answer a question directly. Look at what customers ask you before they buy: what it costs, how long it takes, what’s included, whether you work with businesses like theirs. Then make sure your site answers each one clearly:
- Lead with the answer, then explain.
- Use real numbers where you can. “Plans start at $50/month” is quotable; “affordable pricing” isn’t.
- Use questions as headings, so the answer is easy to find.
- Add a short FAQ to your main service pages.
Step 3: Describe your business the same way everywhere
AI tools cross-check. If your website, Google Business Profile, social profiles, and directory listings disagree about your name, location, services, or prices, they’re less confident recommending you. Pick one clear description and use it everywhere. When I audited PowerUp’s site, the most important fix was exactly this: an old file was giving AI crawlers out-of-date prices that didn’t match the rest of the site.
Step 4: Add structured data
Structured data (schema markup) is behind-the-scenes code that tells search engines exactly what a page is about: your business name, address, services, prices, FAQs, and who wrote an article. Visitors never see it, but it removes guesswork for search engines and the AI tools built on them. Most SEO plugins add the basics; a developer can add the rest.
Step 5: Show there’s a real person behind the business
AI tools, like people, trust named experts more than anonymous websites. Put a name and a face on your About page, say how long you’ve been doing the work, and attach a byline to anything you publish. First-hand detail from real projects is something generic content can’t fake.
Step 6: Get mentioned on other sites
This is the part you can’t do on your own website, and it matters a lot. AI tools give weight to what others say about you:
- Google reviews, and replies to them
- Listings on relevant directories and industry sites
- Partners, clients, or local organizations that link to you
- Your profiles on LinkedIn and other platforms, kept up to date
What about llms.txt?
llms.txt is a proposed standard: a plain-text summary of your site written for AI tools. It’s cheap to add and does no harm, but it’s not yet clear how much the major AI companies use it, so don’t treat it as a substitute for the steps above.
How long does it take to show up?
Technical fixes like unblocking crawlers can matter within weeks, as sites are recrawled. Content and reputation build over months. It’s the same patience regular SEO needs, which is why it’s worth starting now.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on how your site looks to search engines and AI tools, get in touch. I’m happy to take a look.