A customer used to search "best plumber in Wakefield", scan the results and click something. Increasingly they ask ChatGPT, or read Google's AI Overview at the top of the page, and never click at all.

That is a genuine shift, and it has produced an enormous amount of nonsense advice. Here is what actually influences whether an AI system mentions your business, based on what the systems themselves have said and what is observable — and, just as usefully, what is being sold to small businesses that does nothing.

The Three Places AI Answers Come From

It helps to be precise about what you are optimising for, because these work differently:

  • Google AI Overviews: the summary box at the top of many Google results. Built from Google's own index — so ordinary SEO is what gets you into consideration.
  • ChatGPT, Claude and similar: answer from training data plus live web search. Training data is months old and fixed; live search is where a small business realistically gets picked up.
  • Perplexity and AI search tools: search the live web and cite sources. Closest to traditional search, and the easiest of the three to influence.

The common thread: all three depend on your pages being crawlable, clear and credible. There is no separate AI ranking system to game.

What Genuinely Helps

1. Answer the question directly, near the top

AI systems extract answers. A page that opens with three paragraphs of throat-clearing before reaching the point gives them nothing clean to lift. A page that states the answer plainly and then expands gives them exactly what they need.

In practice: if the heading is "How much does an EICR cost?", the first sentence after it should contain a price range. Not the fifth sentence.

2. Schema markup

Structured data tells a machine what your page means rather than making it guess. LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, Product and Review schema all make your information easier to extract reliably. This is the least glamorous item on the list and one of the most effective — and most small business sites have none at all.

3. Consistent business details everywhere

Your name, address and phone number should match exactly across your website, Google Business Profile, Companies House, directories and social profiles. AI systems cross-reference sources; contradictions make them less confident about citing you.

4. Being mentioned somewhere other than your own site

This is the one most people underrate. AI answers lean on what other sources say about you — local news, trade bodies, supplier listings, directories, review platforms. A business that exists only on its own website is much harder for a model to be confident about than one referenced in five other places.

5. Genuine, specific expertise

Content that could have been written by anyone about anywhere gets treated accordingly. Content with real specifics — actual prices, actual local knowledge, actual named products — is more useful to extract and more likely to be cited. This is the same thing Google's helpful content guidance has been saying for years; AI has simply raised the stakes.

The uncomfortable summary

Almost everything that helps you appear in AI search is something that was already good SEO. If a supplier is selling you "AI optimisation" as a separate product with a separate fee, ask them precisely what it involves. If the answer is schema, content structure and citations, you are being charged twice for SEO.

What Does Not Work

  • Stuffing "AI" into your content. No effect whatsoever.
  • Paying for AI Overview placement. It does not exist. Anyone guaranteeing it is lying.
  • Writing your pages for robots rather than people. The systems are trained on human language and specifically downweight text that reads as machine-generated filler.
  • Mass-producing AI-written pages. This produces exactly the thin, generic content that both Google and AI systems are getting better at ignoring.

What About llms.txt?

You will see this recommended. It is a proposed standard — a plain text file telling AI crawlers how to read your site, similar in concept to robots.txt. It is genuinely interesting, and as of 2026 no major AI provider has confirmed they use it.

Adding one costs ten minutes and harms nothing. Paying a monthly fee for it is a different matter.

The Local Business Angle

Here is the encouraging part. When someone asks an AI assistant "who should I use for a bathroom fitting in Halifax", the answer is assembled largely from Google Business Profiles, reviews and local websites. That is the same ground local SEO has always covered.

A business with a complete Google Business Profile, steady recent reviews, consistent details and a clear website is well positioned for AI answers — not because it did anything AI-specific, but because it did local SEO properly and AI reads the same signals.

What I'd Actually Do This Month

  1. Add schema markup if you have none. Biggest single gain for most sites.
  2. Rewrite your top five pages so each answers its question in the first two sentences.
  3. Complete every field on your Google Business Profile, including the ones you skipped.
  4. Check your name, address and phone are identical in at least five places online.
  5. Get mentioned somewhere new — a supplier's stockist page, a trade directory, a local news piece.

That is it. No separate AI strategy, no monthly AI retainer. Just the fundamentals done properly, which is what most small business websites are still missing.

Common Questions

Do I need to do anything different for AI search than for normal SEO?

Mostly no. The same foundations — crawlable pages, clear structure, schema markup, genuine expertise and third-party mentions — drive both. The main shift in emphasis is writing direct answers to specific questions rather than long preambles, and making sure your business details are consistent everywhere they appear.

What is llms.txt and should I add one?

It is a proposed file that would tell AI crawlers how to read your site, similar in spirit to robots.txt. As of 2026 no major AI system has confirmed it uses one. It takes ten minutes to add and does no harm, but treat anyone selling it as a ranking service with caution.

Will AI search reduce my website traffic?

For simple factual questions, yes — those clicks are already going. What AI answers do not replace is the click that happens when someone wants to hire, buy or book. Informational traffic falls; commercial traffic holds up much better, which is another reason for a small business to focus on the latter.

Can I pay to appear in AI Overviews?

No. There is no paid placement in AI Overviews, and anyone offering guaranteed inclusion is selling something they cannot deliver. Google assembles them from its own index.