How to show up when people ask AI for a recommendation

Search is changing under everyone's feet. A growing share of people don't scroll a list of ten blue links anymore — they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI overview, Siri, or Alexa a plain question: 'who's a good roofer in my area?' and they get a short answer with a couple of names. If your business isn't one of those names, you don't exist in that moment. There's no page two to climb to.

Getting recommended by these AI systems has a name: Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. It overlaps with classic SEO but it's not identical, and the businesses that set it up now will own that real estate while their competitors are still wondering where their leads went.

How AI decides who to recommend

These systems don't have secret knowledge of your business. They build their answer from what they can find and confirm about you across the open web — your Google profile, your website, directories, and anywhere else your business is mentioned. Their goal is to recommend something they're confident is real, relevant, and local. So the whole game is making yourself easy to find, easy to verify, and clearly the right fit for the question.

That breaks down into a handful of concrete things you can actually control.

1. Nail your NAP consistency

NAP is Name, Address, Phone. If your business name, address, and phone number are spelled and formatted identically everywhere — your website, Google profile, Yelp, Facebook, directories — the AI gets a strong, confident signal that you're one real, legitimate business. If they're inconsistent (different phone on three sites, 'St.' here and 'Street' there), it creates doubt, and doubt gets you left out of the answer.

• Pick one exact format for your name, address, and phone and use it literally everywhere.
• Hunt down old listings with a wrong number or address and fix or kill them.
• Match what's on your website to what's on your Google Business Profile exactly.

2. Make your website machine-readable with structured data

Humans read your website by looking at it. Machines read it by parsing the code. Structured data (schema markup) is a standard way to label your information so an AI can read it without guessing — 'this is a LocalBusiness, here's the name, the services, the area served, the hours, the phone.' It removes ambiguity, and removing ambiguity is exactly what makes an AI confident enough to recommend you.

• Add LocalBusiness (or your specific type) schema with your NAP, hours, and service area.
• Mark up your services and your service area clearly so the match to 'plumber near me' is obvious.
• Add an FAQ section with real questions and answers — AI systems pull from these constantly.

3. Add an llms.txt file

There's an emerging convention called llms.txt — a simple text file on your site that tells AI systems, in plain language, who you are, what you do, where you work, and how to reach you. Think of it as a cheat sheet written specifically for the models, summarizing your business so they don't have to piece it together. It's low effort and it's exactly the kind of clear, structured signal these systems reward.

4. Get cited on the open web

AI systems trust businesses that other sources talk about. A name that only appears on its own website is a weak signal; a name that shows up in directories, local roundups, a chamber listing, a news mention, and customer reviews is a strong, corroborated one. You want to be mentioned in the kinds of places an AI looks when it's building a 'best contractors in your town' answer.

• Claim and fill out the major directories and local listings for your trade.
• Get listed where your community already looks — local associations, chambers, supplier 'find a pro' pages.
• Reviews count here too: lots of real, recent reviews are a public signal that you're legitimate and active.

AI recommends businesses it's confident are real, relevant, and local. Your whole job is to be easy to find, easy to verify, and obviously the right fit.

5. Own your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile is the backbone of local AI answers — Google's own AI leans on it heavily, and other systems use it as a trusted source. A complete, active, well-reviewed profile is one of the strongest GEO signals you have. A thin or abandoned one quietly drops you out of consideration.

• Complete every field: services, hours, service area, categories, description, photos.
• Keep it active — post updates, answer questions, respond to reviews.
• Pile up honest reviews; volume and recency both matter.

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Where to start

If this feels like a lot, start by finding out where you stand. The AI visibility grader scores how likely ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI are to recommend your business, and shows you the specific gaps to close first. Fix the highest-impact ones — usually NAP consistency and your Google profile — before chasing the rest.

Here's the honest part: none of these steps is hard on its own. The problem is they're tedious, ongoing, and easy to let slide when you're running jobs all day. That's the gap AI by Q closes — it handles the structured data, the llms.txt, the profile upkeep, and the consistency checks in the background, so when a customer asks an AI for a recommendation, your name is the one that comes back. The window where this is still a competitive edge won't stay open forever.