Can ChatGPT find your business? How AI search reads a website

More people now ask an AI assistant a question instead of typing it into a search box. "Who services heat pumps near Abbotsford?" "Which bookkeeper works with small contractors?" Whether your name comes up depends on things nobody outside the big companies can see. It also depends on whether your website is easy for a machine to read, and that part is yours to fix.

What nobody can promise you

No one outside the companies that build these products can tell you exactly how they decide which businesses to mention. Be careful with anyone who says they can. What we can say is more modest. A tool that reads websites can only work with what is written on the page. If a fact is missing, unclear or hidden, there is nothing to read.

That is a useful way to look at your own site. Ask what a reader who cannot see the pictures would learn from it.

Put the basics in plain text

Your business name, what you do, where you work, your phone number and your hours should all appear as ordinary written text. Put them on the page itself, and repeat the name, address and phone in the footer of every page.

The common mistake is putting the useful part inside an image. A banner with your phone number baked into the picture looks fine to a person. To a program reading the page, it is a blank rectangle. The same goes for a price list saved as a photo, or a menu that is only a scanned PDF of a printed sheet.

Give each service its own page

Say you do kitchen renovations and deck building, and both get one paragraph on the homepage. A visitor who searches for a deck builder lands on a page that is mostly about something else. A reader, human or machine, has to guess how much of your business is decks.

A page for each service fixes that. It can be short. Say what the job is, where you do it, what a customer should expect and how to ask for a quote. One clear page per thing you sell is easier to find, easier to quote from and easier to keep up to date.

If it is not written down on the page, it does not exist.

Add structured data

Structured data is a small block of code in the page that visitors never see. It states your facts in a standard format that programs understand. For a local company, the usual type is called LocalBusiness. It can carry your name, address, phone number, opening hours and the area you serve.

This is not a trick and it is not a guarantee of anything. It simply removes guesswork. The one firm rule is that it must match what the page says. If the code lists old hours and the footer lists new ones, you have given two answers, and the tool may pick the wrong one.

Check you are not locking the door

Some sites tell search tools to stay away without anyone meaning to. The robots file is a plain text file at the root of your site that lists what crawlers may read, and one stray line can block everything. A "noindex" setting does the same job page by page. Many website platforms have a "discourage search engines" box that gets ticked while the site is being built and never unticked.

Words that only appear after a script runs, or after a visitor logs in, can also go unseen. Your web developer can check all of this in a few minutes. It is worth asking.

Keep your details the same everywhere

Your Google Business Profile, your directory listings, your social pages and your website should all give the same name, address and phone number. When they disagree, a reader cannot tell which one is current. A tool that finds three versions of your address may pick the wrong one.

A simple test you can do today

Open your homepage and look at the page source, which most browsers show if you right-click and choose "View page source". Press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F and search for your phone number. If it is not there, it is probably sitting inside an image. Do the same with your address and one of your services.

Where to start

1. Write your name, address, phone and hours as text in the footer of every page.
2. Search the page source for your phone number and your main service. Fix anything that exists only in a picture.
3. Give each main service its own short page.
4. Ask your developer to add LocalBusiness structured data that matches the visible text.
5. Check the robots file and any noindex setting.
6. Make your details match on Google Business Profile and your main directories.

None of this guarantees a mention in an AI answer. All of it makes your site easier for a person to use, which is a fair reason to do it on its own.

Next: What to fix first on a website that is five years old