ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and similar tools recommend businesses they can find clearly described on their own website and mentioned on other sites people trust. For most small businesses, that means good ordinary SEO, a complete Google Business Profile and real reviews. This guide is for owners who keep hearing about "AI search optimisation" and want to know what matters.
Key points
- •AI search tools build their answers from what the web already says about you, so ordinary SEO still does most of the work.
- •Clear service pages, a complete Google Business Profile, reviews and mentions on sites people trust do more than any special AI file.
- •Google says you do not need llms.txt, special schema or content chopped into small pieces for its AI features.
- •You can check where you stand today by asking the tools the questions your customers ask.
How do AI tools decide which businesses to mention?
They work from two sources: what they learned from the web during training, and pages they look up live when you ask a question. When someone asks ChatGPT for "a branding agency in Lagos that works with UK clients", it often runs its own web searches, reads the pages that come back and writes an answer from them.
That has a practical consequence. If your website does not say clearly what you do, where you work and who you work with, the tool has nothing to quote. If nobody else on the web mentions you, it has no reason to believe you.
The audience is large. OpenAI said in February 2026 that ChatGPT had reached 900 million weekly users. Some of your customers are already asking it who to hire.
Is AI search optimisation different from SEO?
Mostly, no. Google's own guide, updated in July 2026, says its AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on the same ranking and quality systems as normal Search, and that optimising for them is still SEO.
You will see the same idea sold under several names: generative engine optimisation (GEO), answer engine optimisation (AEO) and LLM SEO. The labels are new. The work underneath is largely the same work good websites have always needed.
What has changed is the payoff. When an AI answer appears, fewer people click. A study by the agency Seer Interactive found organic click-through on informational searches fell from 1.76% to 0.61% when Google showed an AI Overview, across 3,119 searches tracked from mid-2024 to late 2025. The same study found brands that were cited inside the Overview got about 35% more organic clicks than brands that were not, though the researchers said they could not prove the citation caused it.
Want to know how AI tools describe your business right now?
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What helps you get mentioned?
These are the things we would do first for a small service business, roughly in order.
- Say what you do in plain words on your own site. Each service needs its own page that names the service, the places you cover and the kind of client you work with. "We help brands grow" gives an AI tool nothing to work with. "Brand identity design for startups in Lagos and London" does.
- Answer the questions customers actually ask. Write the answer in the first sentence or two under each heading, then explain. AI tools often lift a single section, so each one should make sense on its own.
- Complete your Google Business Profile. Google's guide names it directly for local businesses. Fill in services, opening hours, service areas and photos, and keep them current.
- Collect reviews where people look. Google reviews, Clutch, Trustpilot or whichever sites matter in your field. Reviews are written by other people, which is the kind of evidence these tools lean on when they choose who to recommend.
- Get named on sites that already rank. Industry directories, local business lists, partner websites, podcasts and the occasional article. Look at which pages ChatGPT or Google cite when you ask about your field, then see whether you can reasonably be included on them.
- Show your own experience. Google asks for original content with a distinct point of view, such as first-hand experience, rather than summaries of what others have said. A short case study from real client work does more than a long generic guide.
- Keep the technical basics right. Pages that load quickly, work on a phone, can be crawled and do not hide their text behind scripts. If your site was built on a page builder years ago, this is worth checking.
What can you skip?
By Google's own account, much of what is sold as AI optimisation does nothing for Google. This is how its guidance compares with common advice.
| Common advice | What Google says |
|---|---|
| Add an llms.txt file | Google Search does not use it. It will not help or hurt your visibility in Google. |
| Add special "AI" schema markup | There is no special markup for AI. Ordinary schema markup is still useful for rich results. |
| Break content into small chunks for AI | Not needed. There is no ideal page length; write for your reader. |
| Rewrite pages for every keyword variation | Not needed. AI systems understand synonyms and meaning. |
| Buy or manufacture mentions | Less useful than it looks. Google's spam systems favour genuine quality. |
| Pay for a tool that claims inside access | No third-party tool has access to Google's ranking or AI systems. |
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
Source: Google Search Central, optimising for generative AI features, updated 10 July 2026.
Google only speaks for Google. ChatGPT, Perplexity and others have not published guidance this detailed, so an llms.txt file may matter more to them in future. It costs little to add one. We would just do it after everything in the section above.
How do you check whether ChatGPT mentions you?
Ask it. Write down five to ten questions a real customer might type, such as "who designs websites for small accountancy firms in the UK" or "best social media agency in Lagos for a restaurant". Put each one into ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity, and note:
- whether you are named
- who is named instead
- which websites the tool cites as its sources
Repeat it once a month and keep the results in a simple sheet. The cited sources are the useful part, because they show you where to get mentioned next.
If you use Google Search Console, it now includes a Generative AI performance report showing how your pages perform in Google's AI features. Set it up if you have not already.
From our work
We ran this check for Beamway in October 2026, asking ChatGPT and Perplexity for the "best branding agency in Lagos". Neither named us. Perplexity listed six Lagos agencies and leaned on review directories such as Clutch and The Manifest, quoting star ratings and review counts. ChatGPT listed four, mostly from business listings with ratings and reviews, and pointed readers to Clutch for more. Every agency named was one that other sites already describe and review. That shows us where our own gaps are: reviews on the directories these tools read, and pages that say plainly what we do and where. We are sharing the result because it is an honest starting point.
How long does it take?
It depends on what is missing. When a tool searches the web live, changes to your own pages can show up within weeks. Building the reviews and outside mentions that make you a name the tool trusts usually takes several months, and it never really finishes.
Visitors who do arrive from AI search tend to be valuable. Semrush estimated in July 2025 that the average visitor from AI search was worth 4.4 times an average organic search visitor, measured by conversion rate. Fewer people click, but the ones who do have often already made up their mind.
If your site gets visitors and still no enquiries, start with why your website gets traffic but no customers before chasing more visibility.
Questions founders ask
Make sure your website says plainly what you do, where, and for whom, and that other sites mention you in the same terms. ChatGPT often searches the web before it answers, so pages that rank and read clearly are the ones it can find. Reviews and listings on trusted sites help it decide you are a safe recommendation.
Not for Google. Google's own guidance says its Search features do not use llms.txt and that adding one will neither help nor hurt. Some other AI tools may read it, so it does no harm, but it should not be where your time goes first.
No. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode run on the same ranking and quality systems as normal Search, and calls optimising for them a part of SEO. What has changed is that fewer people click through, so each visit you do earn needs to count.
Ask them. Type the questions a customer would ask into ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity, note who gets named, and repeat every month. Google Search Console also now has a report showing how your pages perform in its AI features.
There is no fixed timeline. Changes to your own site can be picked up within weeks when a tool searches the web live, but building the mentions and reviews that make you a trusted name usually takes months.
Want your business to be the one AI tools recommend? We will show you where you stand and what to fix first.
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