How to Get Your Business to Show Up in AI Search

To get your business to show up in AI search, make it easy for AI tools to find you and easy for them to trust what they find. That means a Google Business Profile you’ve claimed, the same details everywhere you’re listed, other websites that mention you, and a website that says plainly what you do and where. When I checked 10 small businesses across Ontario this month, half of them weren’t named by AI once. Mine was one of them.

Most of the time, AI didn't name the business

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AI answers that named the business

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Searches where the website was in the top 10

5 of 10 businesses were never named by AI. Mine was one of them.

What it costs you when AI leaves you out

People click less when there’s an AI answer. A Pew Research Center study of US Google users found people clicked a regular search result 8% of the time when Google showed an AI summary, compared with 15% when it didn’t. They clicked a link inside the summary 1% of the time, and they were more likely to stop browsing altogether. If your business isn’t in that answer, a lot of people never get as far as your website.

Someone else gets named instead. On broader searches, Google’s AI named other fishing camps instead of the one I was checking, even though it recommended that camp by name for the searches it was best known for.

The answers keep changing. One Ontario firm was named in all four AI answers one afternoon and in one of four the next morning, about 17 hours later.

Different AI tools don’t agree. Google’s AI named that fishing camp in 4 of 7 searches. Claude, asking similar questions, named it in no more than 2 of 4 across a dozen tries.

What gets a business cited by AI

The 10 businesses I checked were an HVAC company, a water consulting firm, a remote fishing camp, two independent consultants, a training company, a photography studio, a museum, a nonprofit and my own. My check ran four everyday searches for each one and asked an AI assistant (Claude, with web search on) four questions their customers might ask. Here’s what stood out.

Being found in regular search comes first. The two businesses AI named most often were also the only two whose websites came up in the top 10 for all four of their searches. Google says the same thing in its own guide to AI search: showing up in AI search is still SEO.

Your Google Business Profile feeds the answer. Google’s guide says a Business Profile helps a business show up in AI answers. Google builds that listing from your website, other companies’ data, information people add, and you, once you’ve claimed it.

What other people say about you counts. The answers about the fishing camp drew on its Google listing and on coverage from tourism sites, fishing TV shows and a magazine. When Claude searched for the camp by name three times, the camp’s own website didn’t come back once.

AI tools have to be allowed in. Two of the 10 websites had a setting that tells some AI tools not to read them.

How to get your business to show up in AI search

1. Claim your Google Business Profile. It’s free, and it means you control the details AI tools pull from it. In Google Maps, search your business name and town, choose “Claim this business”, and follow the steps to verify. If there’s no listing at all, you can add one.
2. Get your hours right. Wrong hours send customers to a locked door. If you’re seasonal, Google says to set your hours while you’re open, say you’re seasonal in your description, and mark yourself temporarily closed in the off-season. If you only work by appointment, Google says not to list hours at all.
3. Make your details match everywhere. The fishing camp had three different postal codes across its website, its Google listing and a tourism site. Check your name, address, phone number and services on every directory and listing you can find, so no tool has to guess which one is right.
4. Get mentioned, and keep those mentions accurate. Local directories, your industry association, partners, local news. When someone writes about you, check the details. An older article about the fishing camp still listed an old phone number and linked to a page that no longer existed.
5. Let AI tools read your website. If nobody chose to block them on purpose, ask whoever looks after your website to check the setting.
6. Say plainly what you do, where you do it, and who it’s for. Answer the questions your customers actually ask, in their words. That’s how a Kingston literacy consultant’s five-page site was written to rank. You don’t need a special AI file for Google.
7. Make it easy to act on. Nine of the 10 websites had no phone number you could tap to call, and four had nothing set up to show where their visitors came from. When AI does send someone your way, they should be able to reach you in one tap, and you should be able to see that it happened.

Is your business on ChatGPT? How to check

1. Write down five questions a customer would ask. Use their words: “Who does furnace repair in Belleville?”, “Is there a good bookkeeper for small businesses in Ottawa?”
2. Search each one on Google in a private window. Look for an AI Overview at the top, and whether you’re in it.
3. Do it again the next day. The answers change.
4. Ask ChatGPT the same questions, logged out, with web search on. Then ask what it knows about your business by name. Try one more AI tool if you can.
5. Write down what they say about you and which websites they point to. Look for wrong hours, an old phone number, a service you don’t offer, or a competitor named where you should be.
6. If a tool says you don’t exist, check by hand. An audit tool I was building once told me I had no Google Business Profile and recommended I pay to set one up. I have one. It couldn’t load my listing and called that a no.

What you get when AI names you

Customers who ask about you get your real hours, your real phone number and the services you actually offer. You’re in the answer, so you’re on the shortlist. Most of the first fixes cost nothing. And you can see it working: Google Search Console now has a report showing how often your pages appear in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, once your site has enough of those appearances to show.

If you’d like a hand working through this list for your business, start with a conversation, or see how I approach websites.