More of your customers now open an AI assistant before they open a search engine. They type “find me a good accountant in Leeds” or “compare these two clinics” into ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews, and they act on the shortlist it gives back. The shift is fast: in a 2026 study by BrightLocal, the share of consumers using AI tools to find local businesses rose from 6% to 45% in a single year. When the assistant answers directly, many people act on the names it gives without opening the websites behind them. If your business is not on that shortlist, you are not in the conversation.

The good news is that being recommended is not luck, and it is not a paid placement. It comes down to how easy your business is for a machine to read, understand and trust. Here is how it works, and where to start.

Why AI has become a front door to your business

Search used to send people to a page of links. An AI assistant does something different: it reads across the open web, then writes an answer in its own words and names a few businesses inside it. For the customer that is faster. For you it means the assistant now sits between your business and the person looking for it, and it will only mention you if it can find you and make sense of what you do.

This is not a niche behaviour any more. People increasingly ask AI tools for recommendations the way they used to ask a friend, and most who use them say they trust the results: in the same BrightLocal study, 63% of people who use AI tools trusted the recommendations. Most still cross-check against real reviews, which is why your reputation matters as much as your website.

How AI assistants decide who to recommend

No assistant publishes its exact method, and they do not all work the same way. But a few things clearly help across the board. They tend to favour businesses that are:

  • Easy to read. Plain, well-structured pages where the important facts are in text, not locked inside an image or a PDF.
  • Unambiguous. A clear statement of what you do, who you do it for, and where you operate, repeated consistently across your own site and everywhere else you appear.
  • Corroborated. The same details showing up in more than one place, your website, your Google Business Profile, directories and any press or reviews, so the model can cross-check and trust them.
  • Current. Facts that match. If your opening hours, services or location disagree between sources, the assistant has no way to know which version is right.

In other words, the assistant is doing quickly what a careful person would do slowly: reading you, checking you against other sources, and only repeating what it feels sure of.

What actually moves the needle

You do not need to chase every AI tool separately. They use different crawlers and draw on different indexes, but they reward the same fundamentals, so the work that helps one tends to help them all. It falls into three layers.

Start with the fundamentals. These are established, and they do most of the work:

  • Say clearly, on every important page, who the page is for and what you offer.
  • Keep your name, address, phone number and core facts identical across your website and every listing.
  • Keep the important facts in real text, not trapped inside an image or a PDF.
  • Earn a credible reputation: a complete Google Business Profile, relevant directories, genuine reviews.
  • Keep it all current. Out-of-date facts are worse than missing ones.

Then add the structured layer. Helpful, though its effect is indirect:

  • Add structured data (Schema.org) so a machine can read your business details, services and reviews without guessing.

Then the emerging, agentic layer. Newer, and worth understanding honestly:

  • Publish a machine-readable summary such as an llms.txt file. This is an emerging convention, not an established ranking factor: it is designed to give AI agents a clean version of your site to read, but no major AI search engine treats it as a signal today. Google states plainly that you do not need special AI text files to appear in its AI features. Treat it as low-cost, future-facing infrastructure for the agentic web, not a shortcut to a recommendation.

This is not separate from good SEO

If this sounds like search engine optimisation, that is because the foundations are the same. Clear structure, honest content and consistent facts have always helped you rank on Google, and they are exactly what an AI assistant needs too. The difference is that the margin for error is smaller. A search engine will still list a messy page; an assistant may simply leave you out of the sentence.

So this is not a new discipline bolted on to your marketing. It is the same discipline, done properly, with machines as a second audience alongside people.

A checklist you can act on

  1. Say plainly, on every key page, what you do, who it is for, and where you operate.
  2. Make your name, address, phone, hours and services identical on your site, your Google Business Profile and every listing.
  3. Fix anything out of date first.
  4. Keep key facts in real text, not trapped in images or PDFs.
  5. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile.
  6. Earn a few genuine reviews and honest mentions elsewhere.
  7. Add Schema.org structured data.
  8. Add an llms.txt summary if you want AI agents to read your site cleanly.
  9. Do not expect any single file to guarantee a recommendation; the fundamentals do the work.

Where to start

Start with the basics before the technical layer. Make sure every page says plainly what you do and who you serve, and that your business details are the same everywhere they appear. Then add the structured data and machine-readable summary on top.

Every site we build is built ready for this from the start, so it never needs rebuilding to keep up with AI search and assistants the way sites on some other platforms might. On Studio Care and Premium Care, that readiness is fully implemented and kept current: Schema.org markup, an llms.txt summary, structured business data and clean metadata. No technical feature can guarantee an AI recommendation, but these make your business easier to find, read and trust. You can read more on our AI-readiness page, or apply for a build and we will handle it for you.

Sources: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026; Google Search Central, AI features and your site.