Try this before you keep reading: open ChatGPT or Perplexity and ask exactly what your business offers: the way a potential customer would ask. Does your business show up in the answer? For most people trying this for the first time, honestly, the answer is no. Here’s why that happens, and what you can actually do about it.
It’s a different problem than “I’m just not on page 1”
With Google, the usual problem is familiar: you’re just not ranking high enough. With AI systems, the issue is often more fundamental. It’s not about being in position 3 instead of position 8. In a lot of cases, the AI simply doesn’t know your website exists, or can’t pull anything concrete from what little information it finds. That’s a different problem than a weak ranking, and it needs a different approach too.
How do AI systems even “know” anything about a website?
Roughly speaking, from two sources: the massive amounts of data a model was trained on, and live searches that some AI tools (like Perplexity, or ChatGPT with web search enabled) run in the background when answering a question. For your business, that means it’s worth working on both fronts: getting mentioned as often as possible in trustworthy places online, and making sure, technically, that a live search can actually parse your site properly.
The self-test: how visible are you, really?
A few simple checks you can run yourself in about five minutes:
Ask directly about your business. “What does [your business] do?” or “Who offers [your service] in [your city]?” If nothing comes back, or something wrong does, you now know where you stand.
Look at your own website the way a machine would. Are there clear headings? Is there, somewhere, a single clear sentence that says exactly what you offer, without needing to read three paragraphs of marketing copy to figure it out?
Check whether structured data exists. Google’s Rich Results Test is a quick way to check this. If it’s completely missing, machines are missing an important point of reference. We explain why this matters technically in Why the Most Beautiful Website Won’t Help If Google Doesn’t Understand It.
Google your own business and see what else comes up. Google Business Profile, directory listings, social media profiles: does the information there match your website, or are there inconsistencies?
What actually helps
- Clear statements instead of hints. Say directly what you do, for whom, and what it costs or how the process works: better too clear than too vague.
- Add structured data. Schema markup is essentially a translation of your content into a language machines can understand without ambiguity.
- Consistency across platforms. Name, address, services: when this matches everywhere online, it reads as more trustworthy to every system checking it.
- Real substance over pure marketing language. Concrete information, examples, numbers: that’s what gets cited, not “we’re your partner for…” phrasing.
Is this more important than classic SEO now?
Not more important, but increasingly just as important. The two overlap a lot. Anyone who works carefully here usually helps their classic Google ranking too. We cover the core difference between SEO and AEO in SEO vs. AEO. If you’d like to look together at where your website currently stands, just get in touch, no obligation.