AI search for small businesses: how to get mentioned by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers
· 4 min read · MAALI team
"What's a good invoicing app for freelancers?" "Which physio in Larkfield is good for sports injuries?" More and more people ask questions like these to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews instead of scrolling through search results. If your business isn't part of those answers, you're invisible to a growing group of buyers.
Getting mentioned in AI answers is sometimes called GEO (generative engine optimization) or AI search optimization. There's a lot of hype around it. Here's what actually helps.
How AI assistants choose what to mention
Broadly, an AI answer about businesses comes from two places:
- What the model learned in training from the web, books and other sources. Well-known brands, mentioned often over years, show up here.
- What it finds when it searches at the moment you ask. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI features can search the web, read the top pages, and summarize them with links.
For a small business, the second route matters most. If an assistant searches for "invoicing app for freelancers" and finds clear pages from you, and pages on other sites that mention you, you have a real chance of being included.
What helps
1. Let AI search crawlers in. If your robots.txt blocks crawlers like OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot or PerplexityBot, those assistants can't read your site to recommend it. You can still opt out of AI training separately. Our guide to robots.txt and AI crawlers explains the difference.
2. Say plainly what you do, for whom, and for how much. AI assistants summarize. Pages that state facts clearly ("Invoicing software for freelancers. From $12 a month. 14-day free trial.") are easy to summarize accurately. Vague slogans aren't.
3. Answer the questions buyers ask. Assistants are asked questions, so pages that answer questions get used. Write pages for "who is it for", "how much does it cost", "how does it compare with X", "how do I do Y". Comparison pages are especially useful for software and services.
4. Be mentioned on other sites. Assistants look for agreement across sources. Real reviews, directory listings in your industry, local news, partner pages, podcasts and community discussions all count. One honest mention on a respected site beats many low-quality ones.
5. Keep your facts consistent everywhere. Your name, what you do, prices and locations should match on your website, your Google Business Profile, your social profiles and directories. Conflicting details make assistants less confident about you.
6. Use structured data. Schema markup states your business details as unambiguous facts, which helps search engines (and the AI features built on them) describe you correctly.
7. Do normal SEO well. Google's AI Overviews draw on Google's search index, and other assistants often search Bing, Google or their own index. Pages that rank well in normal search are much more likely to be read and cited. Our SEO checklist covers the basics.
8. Add an llms.txt file (a small extra). An llms.txt file summarizes your site for AI tools. It's not a ranking signal, but it's ten minutes of work and makes your site easier to understand.
What doesn't help
- Stuffing pages with "AI-friendly" keywords or hidden text. It doesn't work and can hurt your normal search results.
- Fake reviews or made-up statistics. Assistants repeat what they find; if what they find is false, it can come back to bite you, and it may break consumer protection rules.
- Paying for "guaranteed ChatGPT placement". Nobody can guarantee what an AI model says.
How to check where you stand
Ask a few assistants the questions your customers would ask, in their words, for example "best [category] for [audience]" or "[service] in [area]". Note:
- whether you're mentioned at all,
- which competitors are mentioned, and which sources the answer links to,
- whether what it says about you is accurate.
The sources it cites become your to-do list: those are the pages and sites the assistant trusts on that topic. For a fuller method, see how to check whether AI assistants recommend your business, then why they recommend your competitors and how to get listed where they look.
Where MAALI fits
MAALI's MAALI Brain, included in your free credits, reads your site and your competitors and shows what's missing, from unclear positioning to missing comparison and advice content. The Writer drafts the articles AI assistants and search engines look for, in your voice and linking to your own pages. And AI Visibility does the checking described above for you: it asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude your customers' questions, shows whether you're named, which competitors and sources come up, and turns that into a short action plan.
(The businesses in the examples are made up.)
Keep reading
A step-by-step way to see what AI assistants say when your customers ask for what you sell, which competitors they name instead, and how to track it over time.
AI assistants recommend businesses they find on directories, review sites and roundups. How to find the ones that matter, get listed honestly and stay accurate.
The seven most common reasons ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude name a competitor instead of you, how to spot each one, and the fix.
People searching "X vs Y" are close to buying. How to write comparison pages that are fair, useful and rank, without trashing competitors.