Why does AI recommend your competitor, not you?
AI assistants can only recommend what they can find and understand. Fix these three things.
When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude or Google's AI for "the best bakery near me" or "a good contract lawyer", the assistant pulls from pages it can read and sources it trusts. Getting named in those answers is often called AEO (answer engine optimisation). Nobody can guarantee a mention, but these steps make you far easier to find and to quote. Tick them off as you go.
1Clear answers
Pages that answer the exact questions people ask, in plain words, with the answer at the top.
- List the 10 questions customers actually ask you (emails, calls, DMs are the best source).
- Give each important question a heading on your site, phrased the way people ask it.
- Answer in the first one or two sentences, then add detail. No fluff before the answer.
- Say what you do, for whom and where, in one plain sentence on your homepage.
- Make sure the text is real text on the page, not only inside images or loaded later by scripts.
2People talking about you
Reviews, local guides and articles. When trusted sites mention you, it shows.
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile (and Bing Places, Apple Business Connect).
- Ask happy customers for reviews that mention what you did ("fixed my lease in 2 days").
- Get listed in the directories and "best of" guides for your city and industry.
- Pitch one story a month to a local blog, newsletter or industry site.
- Answer questions in public places your customers read (forums, Reddit, LinkedIn).
3Facts a machine can read
Your name, what you do and where you are, the same everywhere, and marked up on your site.
- Use exactly the same business name, address and phone number on every profile.
- Add structured data (schema.org) to your site so machines read your details without guessing.
- Link your official profiles from your site, and link back to your site from them.
- Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Make sure robots.txt does not block search engines or AI crawlers you want to be found by.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Bakery",
"name": "Sugar Lane",
"address": "12 Mill Street",
"openingHours": "Mo-Sa 08:00-18:00",
"sameAs": ["your Google Maps link", "your Instagram link"]
}
Swap "Bakery" for your type (LegalService, Restaurant, Store...). Ask Claude to write yours: paste your details and say "write schema.org JSON-LD for my business".
Independent guide. Not affiliated with Anthropic, OpenAI or Google. Results vary and nobody can guarantee placement in AI answers.