Is your website ready for AI search?

What AI assistants read

BrightLocal's 2026 study of 1.9 million sources found that, for local searches, AI assistants lean most on a business's own website (42% of the sources they mention) and its Google listing (28.6%). Both are yours to change.

For Google's own AI answers, mentions on other sites matter most, according to Ahrefs. So the work is in three places: your website, your listing, and what other sites say about you.

Google's own guidance for site owners says there's nothing extra to do to appear in its AI features: the basics that make a page good in search are the same. That's worth remembering when someone offers you a special trick.

Your website: say it plainly

• Say what you do, where and for whom in the first lines of your home page, in the words a buyer would type: “Commercial roofing in Leeds and Bradford”, not “Excellence in every project”.
• Give every service its own page, with what's included, who it's for, the area you cover and, where you can, a price or a starting price.
• Answer the questions buyers ask, on the page: how long it takes, what it costs, what happens first.
• Keep your name, address and phone number the same on every page, and everywhere else they appear.
• Show why you can be trusted. Years trading, accreditations, insurance, the people behind the business, and customer stories told with the customer's permission. A buyer and an assistant look for the same reasons to believe you.
• Put your words in words. Text inside pictures and sliders is hard for any machine to read.
• Make it fast. Google's target is for the main content to appear on a phone in under 2.5 seconds, and Google's free PageSpeed Insights test shows where you are.
• Let the crawlers in. Open yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt. If it says Disallow: / under User-agent: *, it asks every crawler to stay out, search engines and AI assistants included.

Your Google listing: fill in every part

Your Google Business Profile is the listing that shows on Google Maps and beside your name in Google's results. Claim it if you haven't, and fill in every part: the right main category, your services, the area you cover, your hours and real photographs of your work.

Choose the main category that matches what buyers search for, then add any others that genuinely fit. List each service with a line about it, and keep your hours right, holidays included.

Ask every customer for a review as a matter of course: Google's rules for its listings forbid asking only the happy ones. Reply to every review, good or bad, and keep the details exactly as they are on your website.

Get mentioned on other sites

Start with the places your buyers already look: the directories and trade bodies of your industry, your local paper, suppliers' and partners' sites, and the “best of” round-ups for your trade and town. Each mention should carry the same name, address and phone number as your site.

Customer stories help twice: on your own site as proof, and on your customer's site when they're happy to say who did the work.

See where you stand today

Ask the assistants yourself. Type the questions your buyers ask into ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity, for example “who fits commercial kitchens near Wakefield” or “best office cleaners in Leeds”. Note whether you're named, who is, and which sources they point to. Ask each one again on another day, because the answers move.

Keep each answer in a simple sheet with its date, and look again every month. When an assistant names a source, such as a directory, a trade body or a review site, that's a place worth being listed.

Nobody can promise an AI ranking

AI answers change with almost every question, as SparkToro found, so a place you see on Monday may be gone on Tuesday. Anyone who promises you a ranking in them is guessing. What can be promised is what's in your control: a clear, fast, secure site, a complete listing and steady mentions elsewhere.

We don't promise AI rankings either. What we do promise on a Growth Website is in writing on its page: the speed at launch, and a price fixed for the agreed scope.

Where to start this week

If you do only three things, do these, in this order.

1. Rewrite the opening of your home page so its first two lines say what you do, where, and for whom.
2. Fill in every part of your Google Business Profile, and ask your last ten customers for a review.
3. Ask the assistants your buyers' questions, and write down who they name and which sources they point to.