What changed
People used to type a few words into a search engine and scroll a page of links. Now many of them ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Google's AI answers a full question, like “who does commercial cleaning near Lexington and takes card payments?” The assistant reads the web, picks a handful of businesses and explains why. If yours isn't one of them, that customer may never see your name.
Where the answers come from
AI assistants don't make up their recommendations. When they search, they read pages much like a search engine does, and they lean on sources they can check against each other: your website, your business profiles, your reviews and your listings. ChatGPT's search, for example, draws on Bing, so a business Bing doesn't know about is hard for ChatGPT to find.
What makes a business easy to recommend
- Your information is in the page itself. Many sites load their content with scripts after the page arrives. People see it fine, but some AI crawlers only read what's in the page as delivered, and they come away with very little.
- It's labeled in a format machines read directly. Structured data tells an assistant exactly what your services, hours, locations and prices are, so it doesn't have to guess.
- Your business looks the same everywhere. The same name, address and phone on your site, your Google profile and your listings tell engines they're all one business.
- The crawlers are let in. Some sites block AI crawlers without the owner ever knowing, often through a default setting.
- It's current. Pages with real update dates, which reach search engines soon after they change, are trusted over stale ones.
- It answers real questions. Plain answers to the questions your customers actually ask give an assistant something to repeat.
What doesn't work
Stuffing pages with keywords, hiding text or buying a package of “AI rankings” doesn't make an assistant trust you. Assistants cross-check what they read. The businesses that get named are the ones whose information is clear, consistent and easy to confirm.
Why it matters now
Plenty of websites were built before anyone asked an AI assistant for a recommendation. Getting this right now can put you ahead of competitors who haven't looked at it yet, and the groundwork keeps paying off as more customers search this way.
Where ETG Works fits
Websites ETG Works builds come with this groundwork in place, from structured data to a plain-language summary written for AI assistants. The full list is under Let's get technical on the homepage.