Will Customers Find Your Business Through AI?
Updated: Sep 12
Potential customers no longer only search Google for phrases such as:
plumber Chester
accountant for small businesses
wedding photographer Wirral
SEO review for small business
Increasingly, they can ask an AI assistant a much more detailed question:
“Can you recommend a reliable accountant near Chester that works with small businesses, has good reviews and explains its prices clearly?”
That creates a different challenge for small businesses.
It is no longer only:
Can Google find my website?
It is also:
Can an AI system understand what my business does, find reliable information about it and decide that it is relevant enough to mention?
So, will customers find your business through AI?
Possibly.
But simply having a website is not enough.
Your business needs to be easy to identify, your important information needs to be clear and accessible, and there needs to be enough evidence around the web to support what you say about yourself.
The encouraging part is that much of this is not a completely new form of marketing.
It builds on the same foundations covered in our guide to why SEO is important for small businesses: clear services, useful content, strong trust signals, good website structure and consistent information.
What is changing is how that information may be found and combined.
Can AI Search Find a Small Business?
AI systems can use information from websites and other online sources to help answer questions about businesses, products and services.
That does not mean every AI assistant works in exactly the same way.
It also does not mean there is a simple:
“Rank number one in ChatGPT”
formula.
Different systems use different models, search systems, retrieval methods and sources.
Those systems also change quickly.
But recent official guidance from Google and independent research into ChatGPT are starting to reveal some useful patterns.
Google confirms that its generative AI search experiences use techniques including retrieval-augmented generation and query fan-out, where one question can generate several related searches behind the scenes.
Google also says the normal foundations of SEO continue to matter for its generative AI search features.
Independent analysis of ChatGPT has found similar behaviour around multiple background searches, source selection and the use of different sources for different types of information.
The practical lesson for a small business is not:
Learn a new collection of AI SEO tricks.
It is:
Make your business easy to understand, verify and trust wherever an AI system looks for information.
What Are AI Fan-Out Queries?
A traditional Google search might begin with one phrase:
accountant Chester
An AI question can contain several requirements at once:
“Which accountant near Chester is suitable for a new limited company, offers bookkeeping and VAT support, has good reviews and provides clear monthly pricing?”
An AI system may need to investigate several separate subjects before it can answer.
Those might include:
accountants serving Chester
small business accounting services
bookkeeping providers
VAT support
accountant pricing
customer reviews
business websites
qualifications or professional memberships
These related background searches are often described as fan-out queries.
Google explicitly describes query fan-out as part of how its own generative search features can gather information.
Recent analysis by Lily Ray suggests ChatGPT is also increasingly using multiple fan-out searches when web retrieval is required and that those searches can be deliberately restricted towards particular types of source.
For factual product or service information, she observed searches targeted at official brand websites.
For opinions, reviews and recommendations, searches could favour review platforms, forums or other third-party sources.
That distinction is extremely important for small businesses.
Your website may be the best place to establish:
what you do
while another website may help establish:
whether people think you do it well.
AI May Search for More Than the Exact Words the Customer Used
This is why trying to optimise a website around one exact AI prompt is a poor strategy.
Imagine somebody asks:
“Who can repair a boiler near Runcorn this week?”
The AI system does not necessarily need a page containing that exact sentence.
It could potentially investigate:
boiler repair Runcorn
emergency boiler repair
boiler repair availability
heating engineers Runcorn
local boiler engineer reviews
boiler repair company websites
The final answer can therefore be constructed from several pieces of information.
This is actually good news for small businesses with well-structured websites.
You do not need to predict every possible sentence somebody could type into an AI tool.
Google specifically warns against creating separate pages for every possible search or fan-out variation in an attempt to manipulate AI search visibility.
That fits the same principle we already recommend when deciding whether every service should have its own website page or whether you should create a separate page for every town you serve.
More pages are not automatically better.
Clearer information is.
AI May Already Have Brands in Mind Before It Searches
This is one of the more interesting findings from Suganthan Mohanadasan's research.
By examining ChatGPT network traffic, he found examples where brand names appeared inside the AI system's initial search queries even though the user had not mentioned those brands.
In other words, in those tests, the system appeared to begin with potential brands already in consideration and then searched for information about them.
This finding needs to be treated carefully.
His testing involved a limited dataset, a single account and categories weighted towards software and technology products. It should not be treated as proof that every ChatGPT recommendation works this way.
But it points towards an important principle.
Being known for something may matter before the final web page is even selected.
That means a small business should not think only about:
“How do I optimise this one webpage?”
It should also think about:
“How clearly is this business associated with the service it provides?”
If your business name appears consistently alongside your services, locations, reviews, customer experiences and other reliable references, an AI system has more information available to understand that association.
A technically perfect page cannot completely compensate for a business that has almost no recognisable presence outside its own website.
Your Website Should Be the Best Source for Facts About Your Business
There is still a very important role for your own website.
Nobody should know your business facts better than you do.
Your website should clearly state information such as:
what services you provide
who those services are for
where you provide them
how customers contact you
what your service includes
what the process involves
your opening or availability information where relevant
qualifications or accreditations
pricing or useful pricing guidance where possible
important restrictions or exclusions
what happens after somebody enquires
Suganthan's testing and Lily Ray's analysis both indicate that AI retrieval can favour an organisation's own website when looking for factual information about that organisation.
That makes sense.
If an AI system needs to establish:
“How much does this service cost?”
the business itself is an obvious potential source.
But that information needs to exist.
If your website says:
“Contact us to learn more.”
about almost everything, you are providing very little useful factual information.
This is one reason we recommend giving customers meaningful service information rather than relying on vague marketing copy.
Our guide to what trust signals a small business website should have explains the types of evidence and factual information that can help somebody understand the business before they enquire.
Put Important Facts in Normal Website Content
How information is presented matters too.
Important facts should ideally appear as normal, readable page content.
Do not rely entirely on:
images containing important text
downloadable brochures
PDF price lists
interactive elements
animations
graphics
or complicated scripts
to communicate information that customers and search systems genuinely need.
Suganthan specifically recommends keeping important facts in plain, crawlable HTML where possible. Lily Ray's analysis similarly found AI searches targeting official websites for factual information such as specifications and pricing.
For a small service business, that could mean putting:
SEO reviews start from £99
directly on the service page rather than only inside a downloadable pricing document.
Or:
We provide boiler repairs throughout Chester, Ellesmere Port and surrounding areas
directly in the page copy rather than only showing those locations on a graphic.
This is not an obscure AI optimisation trick.
It also creates a better website for humans.
Customers should not have to investigate your website like detectives to understand your business.
Your Own Website Cannot Independently Prove Everything
There is an important limitation to first-party information.
Your own website can credibly tell somebody:
what you charge
because you control the price.
It can tell them:
what services you provide
because you control the service.
It can tell them:
where you work
because you control your service area.
But suppose your website says:
“We are the most trusted electrician in Chester.”
That is different.
You are making a claim about your own reputation.
An AI system answering:
“Who is a trusted electrician in Chester?”
may reasonably want evidence from somewhere other than the electrician's own website.
That is where wider online evidence becomes important.
Third-Party Evidence Can Support What Your Website Says
Useful third-party evidence might include:
genuine customer reviews
Google reviews
relevant business directories
professional associations
trade bodies
industry listings
independent comparisons
media coverage
community discussions
credible recommendations
The exact sources that matter will vary enormously by industry.
A solicitor, restaurant, plumber, software provider and wedding photographer are unlikely to be evaluated using identical sources.
Lily Ray's analysis suggests that AI fan-out searches can vary according to the type of information being sought: official sources for facts, authoritative sources for sensitive topics and review or community sources for opinions.
That gives small businesses a much more useful way of thinking about AI visibility.
Your website answers:
Who are we and what do we provide?
Third-party evidence can help answer:
What do other people say about us?
This is closely related to traditional trust-building.
Our guide to where reviews and testimonials should appear on a small business website explains how customer evidence should also be placed where it helps people make decisions.
Do Not Manufacture Third-Party Evidence for AI
There is an obvious bad interpretation of this advice:
“AI systems look at reviews and discussions, so I should manufacture reviews and post about my business everywhere.”
Do not do that.
Fake reviews are deceptive.
Spammy forum posts are obvious.
Artificial recommendations undermine trust.
And creating discussions purely in an attempt to manipulate AI systems is exactly the sort of short-term tactic likely to become less effective as those systems improve.
Build real evidence instead.
Ask genuine customers for reviews.
Maintain accurate listings.
Join legitimate professional or trade organisations where appropriate.
Earn coverage when you actually have something worth covering.
Encourage genuine customer advocacy.
Brand reputation cannot be sustainably manufactured by posting the same recommendation from twenty fake accounts.
Retrieved, Cited, Mentioned and Recommended Are Different Things
This distinction is one of the most useful insights from the recent research.
Businesses often talk about:
“being visible in ChatGPT”
as though it is one outcome.
It is not.
There are several possible stages.
Retrieved
An AI system finds or fetches one of your webpages while researching an answer.
You may never know that happened.
Cited
Your webpage appears as a visible supporting source in the final answer.
That is stronger evidence that your content contributed directly.
Mentioned
The answer names your business.
It may or may not cite your own website.
Recommended
The AI system actually presents your business as a suitable option for the user's need.
That is commercially much more significant.
Lily Ray specifically highlights the difference between retrieval and citation, while Suganthan's network-traffic research demonstrates that many pages can be considered during research without surviving into the final answer.
For a small business, this matters enormously.
A vanity metric saying:
“ChatGPT cited your website 14 times”
does not automatically mean:
“ChatGPT recommended your business to 14 potential customers.”
The commercial objective is not merely to generate AI citations.
It is to be correctly understood and considered when somebody has a genuine need that your business can satisfy.
Being Cited Is Not the Same as Being Recommended
Imagine somebody asks:
“How much does an SEO review from SEO Improve cost?”
An AI assistant could use SEO Improve's official website to answer:
“SEO reviews start from £99.”
That would make the website a useful factual source.
Now imagine the question is:
“Which company should I use for a small business SEO review?”
That is not purely factual.
The AI system may want to evaluate:
services
pricing
location
reviews
reputation
specialism
customer evidence
independent references
and perhaps alternative providers.
The first question can potentially be answered almost entirely from your website.
The second involves judgement.
That is why AI visibility cannot be reduced to putting more keywords into your pages.
What Helps Customers Find Your Business Through AI?
For a small business, I would concentrate on ten fundamentals.
1. Make the business identity unmistakable
Use the same genuine business name consistently.
Make your main domain clear.
Clearly explain what the business does.
Where the people, expertise or history behind the business genuinely matter to customers, a dedicated About page can provide a useful first-party source for that information. See whether a small business website needs an About page for when creating one adds real value rather than simply another URL.
Avoid vague homepage copy such as:
“Helping you achieve your goals.”
That could describe thousands of companies.
2. Explain your important services properly
Each important service should have enough information for both a person and a machine to understand it.
That includes:
what it is
who it is for
what problem it solves
what is included
and what happens next.
If you are unsure how those pages should be structured, see Should Every Service Have Its Own Page?
3. Make your service area clear
For local businesses, state where you actually work.
Do not assume the address in the footer provides enough context.
Our local SEO guide for small businesses explains how service areas, Google Business Profile, reviews and website information should reinforce one another.
4. Publish useful factual information
Where practical, state:
pricing
starting prices
availability
service inclusions
qualifications
process
delivery times
coverage
restrictions
and:
contact information.
Useful specificity gives AI systems something concrete to retrieve.
5. Keep important information accessible
Put important facts in readable website content.
Images and downloads can supplement the page.
They should not be the only place important information exists.
6. Build genuine customer evidence
Encourage real reviews and testimonials.
Use customer evidence on the relevant pages.
Do not rely purely on claims such as:
“leading”
“trusted”
or:
“award-winning”
without evidence.
7. Keep business information consistent
Your website, Google Business Profile, business directories and other legitimate profiles should tell the same basic story.
Different phone numbers, old addresses, outdated service descriptions and abandoned profiles create unnecessary ambiguity.
8. Create content around genuine customer questions
Useful blog content can expand what search engines and AI systems understand about your expertise.
But do not publish hundreds of generic articles simply because AI makes them cheap to produce.
Use the principle in our small business SEO checklist:
every important page should have a clear job.
9. Connect related information
Internal links help establish relationships between:
services
customer questions
locations
trust information
and:
commercial pages.
A useful article should not sit isolated from the rest of the website.
10. Give customers an obvious next step
AI visibility has little commercial value if the resulting website visit goes nowhere.
A visitor still needs to understand:
why they should choose you
what happens next
and:
how to enquire.
Does Traditional SEO Still Matter for AI Search?
Yes.
For Google's own generative search experiences, Google explicitly says that established SEO best practices remain relevant and that its generative features use content from its Search index and existing search systems.
That means fundamentals such as:
crawlability
indexing
clear page structure
useful content
internal links
relevance
page experience
and:
avoiding unnecessary duplication
still matter.
Independent ChatGPT research also indicates that web search and retrieval can form part of how some current answers are produced.
So abandoning SEO in favour of a completely separate discipline called:
AI SEO
or:
GEO
would be premature.
The channels are evolving, but strong information architecture still matters.
Do You Need Special GEO or AEO Optimisation?
Be cautious.
You will increasingly see services promising:
GEO
Generative Engine Optimisation
AEO
Answer Engine Optimisation
LLM Optimisation
AI Search Optimisation
Some useful techniques may emerge under those labels.
But naming something does not automatically make it a new technical discipline.
Google's own guidance explicitly says that from its perspective, optimising for generative AI search remains part of SEO and warns website owners to evaluate third-party AI-search claims carefully.
For most small businesses, there are much bigger opportunities than installing another plugin or creating an obscure AI-specific file.
Ask first:
Can search engines crawl the site?
Are the important pages indexed?
Are the services clear?
Is location clear?
Is pricing clear where possible?
Is the business credible?
Are reviews available?
Does the wider web consistently identify the business?
Do useful pages answer real customer questions?
If those foundations are weak, an “AI optimisation” plugin is unlikely to solve the real problem.
Should You Create Pages for Every AI Fan-Out Query?
No.
This is one of the easiest mistakes to make.
Imagine discovering that an AI assistant searched:
best accountant Chester
accountant monthly pricing Chester
accountant reviews Chester
small business accountant Chester
limited company accountant Chester
VAT accountant Chester
You might conclude that your website needs six new pages.
That would often be the wrong conclusion.
Those searches may simply represent different pieces of evidence required to answer one customer question.
Google specifically warns against creating pages for every possible fan-out query primarily to manipulate its generative search results.
Instead, ask whether the existing pages can answer those related needs naturally.
A strong accountant service page might already explain:
who the service is for
bookkeeping
VAT support
company accounts
monthly pricing
qualifications
service area
and:
the next step.
One strong destination can cover several related questions.
This is the same principle behind deciding whether you need separate pages for every town you serve.
Do not build a bigger website merely because AI makes page creation easy.
Build a clearer website.
How Can a Small Business Check Its Current AI Visibility?
Do not turn this into an obsession with checking ChatGPT every morning.
AI answers can change.
Different models may behave differently.
Search behaviour can change.
Personalisation, location and timing can influence results.
Instead, use a small number of realistic customer questions.
For example:
“What companies offer [your service] near [location]?”
“Who would you recommend for [problem] in [location]?”
“What does [business name] offer?”
“How much does [business name's service] cost?”
“Is [business name] suitable for [type of customer]?”
Then look for several things.
Does the AI know the correct business?
Does it identify the right website?
Are your services described accurately?
Is your location correct?
Is pricing correct?
Does it mention competitors but not you?
Does it cite your website for facts?
Which third-party sources does it use?
Do not treat one answer as a ranking report.
Repeat important tests occasionally and look for patterns rather than reacting to a single result.
For Google's own AI search features, Search Console is also becoming increasingly useful for understanding generative-search visibility. Google's current guidance specifically recommends Search Console for monitoring that performance.
What If AI Gives Incorrect Information About Your Business?
First identify where the incorrect information may be coming from.
Check:
your own website
Google Business Profile
business directories
old social profiles
industry listings
review platforms
outdated pages
duplicate websites
old company information
If your website itself is vague or outdated, fix that first.
If another authoritative site contains incorrect information, correct it where possible.
Do not assume there is one central:
“AI business profile”
that can be edited to solve everything.
AI systems can gather information from multiple places.
The stronger strategy is to make the correct information consistently available.
Small Businesses Have One Advantage
Large brands naturally have more mentions, more reviews and more online history.
That does not mean small businesses cannot appear in AI-assisted discovery.
Local and specialist questions narrow the field considerably.
Consider:
“Who provides accounting services?”
against:
“Who provides bookkeeping and VAT support for small construction companies around Chester?”
The second question provides much more context.
A smaller business with:
clear service pages
specific expertise
relevant location information
genuine reviews
transparent pricing
and:
useful supporting content
may be a much better fit for that specific need than a huge national brand.
The objective should therefore not be:
Become famous enough for every AI system to know us.
It should be:
Make it extremely clear when our business is a relevant answer.
Will Customers Find Your Business Through AI? The Bottom Line
AI-assisted discovery is becoming another route through which potential customers can find businesses.
But there is no reliable shortcut for becoming an AI recommendation.
The strongest approach is still built around clear, credible information.
Your website should establish:
who you are
what you do
who you help
where you work
what it costs where appropriate
and:
what happens next.
Your wider online presence should provide genuine supporting evidence.
Reviews, relevant listings, professional profiles and independent mentions can help establish reputation in ways your own website cannot.
Recent research into AI retrieval also reinforces an important distinction:
being retrieved is not being cited
being cited is not being mentioned
and:
being mentioned is not necessarily being recommended.
The commercial objective is not an AI citation score.
It is making your business easy to discover, understand, verify and choose.
If you are unsure whether your existing website gives search engines, AI systems and potential customers enough clear information, see what we check during a small business SEO review.
SEO Improve reviews page structure, search visibility, content, services, local signals, internal links, trust evidence and conversion together.
If you want those issues identified and prioritised for your own website, see the Small Business SEO Review service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can ChatGPT recommend my small business?
Potentially. Whether it does depends on the question, the information available to the system and how relevant the business appears. There is no guaranteed method for making ChatGPT recommend a particular company.
How does ChatGPT find businesses?
When web search is used, independent research indicates ChatGPT can run several background searches, retrieve information from multiple sources and use different types of source depending on the question. The exact systems and behaviour change over time.
What is an AI fan-out query?
A fan-out query is one of several related searches generated from a broader user question. Instead of relying on one exact search phrase, an AI system can investigate several aspects of the question before constructing an answer.
Does my website need special AI optimisation?
Usually not as a starting point. Clear services, crawlable content, useful factual information, strong website structure, genuine reviews and consistent business information should come first.
Should I create pages specifically for ChatGPT questions?
Usually no. Do not create a new page for every possible AI query. Group related questions around genuine customer needs and build strong pages capable of answering them properly.
Do customer reviews help AI visibility?
Reviews can provide independent evidence about a business's reputation and customer experience. They should be genuine and useful to customers rather than created specifically to manipulate AI systems.
Is being cited by ChatGPT the same as being recommended?
No. An AI assistant can use your website to support a factual statement without recommending your company. Retrieval, citation, mention and recommendation are different outcomes.
Does traditional SEO still matter?
Yes. Google's own guidance says established SEO best practices remain foundational to visibility in its generative AI search experiences.
Should important business information be in normal website text?
Where possible, yes. Important service, pricing, location, qualification and contact information should be readily accessible in readable page content rather than existing only inside images or downloads.
Can a small local business compete with large brands in AI search?
Potentially, particularly for specific local or specialist questions. A small business that clearly demonstrates relevance, location, services and trust may be a stronger answer to a narrow customer need than a large general provider.
