Is AI Recommending You?

Why AI visibility matters now

A growing share of "who's the best plumber near me" style questions never reach a search results page. People ask an assistant, get three names, and call one of them. If your business is not among those three, you are invisible for that query — and unlike a search ranking, there is no page two to be found on.

What this check does

It asks an AI assistant the kind of recommendation question a real customer in your area would ask, then reports what came back: whether you were named, who was named instead, and what the assistant said about them. It is the same question a potential customer would ask, run on your behalf.

Why some businesses get recommended and others don't

Assistants draw on what is written about you across the open web, not on what is written on your own site. The businesses that surface tend to share a few traits:

• Consistent details everywhere — the same name, address and phone number across directories, so the business is unambiguously one entity.
• Substantial third-party mentions — reviews, local press, trade directories, supplier listings.
• Clear, specific descriptions — "emergency boiler repair in Leeds" is retrievable; "quality service you can trust" is not.
• Structured data — machine-readable markup describing what the business is, where it operates and what it offers.

What to do if you are not showing up

Start with the parts you control. Make sure your listings agree with each other, ask satisfied customers for reviews on the platforms that actually get cited, and write plainly about what you do and where you do it — in the words a customer would use, not internal jargon. Then re-run this check in a few weeks.

The result is a snapshot, not a ranking. Assistants vary their answers, and popular locations are cached for a day. Run it a few times before concluding anything.