Guides
Guides
Plain-English help for getting AI assistants to find, understand and recommend your business.
Measure where you stand
- Measure your AI visibility before you change anything Take a dated snapshot of how AI assistants talk about your business today, so that later changes can be compared with something real.
- Write buyer questions that a real customer would ask Turn the choices your customers make into 15 realistic questions, in 5 needs with 3 wordings each, without naming your own business.
- Track AI recommendations without fooling yourself AI answers change from one run to the next. Learn to measure how often you are named across many answers, and how much a small sample can be trusted.
- Find the sources AI assistants cite, and where you are missing Collect the links assistants show, group them by site, and find pages that list your competitors but not you. Then pick the few that are worth acting on.
- See visits from AI assistants in Google Analytics 4 Use GA4's built-in AI Assistant channel, add a tested regex as a backup, and learn what these numbers can and cannot tell you.
Let AI reach your site
- Check that AI search bots can reach your website A short check of your robots.txt and your firewall, so the crawlers behind AI answers are not turned away without you knowing.
- AI crawlers explained: training, search and user bots Which bots from the big AI and search companies do what, and which ones follow robots.txt, according to each company's own documentation.
- When your firewall or CDN turns AI bots away Bot protection can answer AI crawlers with errors even when robots.txt says yes. How to test for it and which settings to look at first.
- Make sure your key facts are in the page, not just in scripts Many AI crawlers read only the HTML your server sends. How to check your raw HTML, and simple ways to get prices and offers into it.
- Help search engines notice your changes sooner Honest sitemap dates, IndexNow, Bing Webmaster Tools and internal links can help changes get noticed sooner. None can promise speed. Here is what to do.
Make your facts clear
- Add Organization markup that matches your real business Add a small block of code that states your business name, website, logo, profiles and contact details in a form machines can read. Includes a template.
- Mark up one product with its price and availability Add Product and Offer markup to a product page so the price, currency and stock status are stated in code as well as on screen. Includes a template and common errors.
- Keep your name, address, phone and hours the same everywhere A simple audit for local businesses. Compare your website with Google, Apple, Bing and directory listings, fix the differences and add LocalBusiness markup.
- Keep one facts sheet for your business and use it everywhere Build a one-page sheet of the facts about your business, with an owner and a check date for each. Then hunt down the places that disagree with it.
- What to do when an AI assistant gets your business wrong Find the wrong claim, trace where it came from, fix your own pages, ask other sites to correct theirs, and check again later. Includes a ready-to-send email.
Pages AI can quote
- Write pages that lead with the answer Put the direct answer in the first lines of a page, then the detail. A simple layout for pages that answer one buyer question, with a template.
- Write a fair "us versus them" comparison page How to compare your business with one competitor in a way buyers trust: both sides' strengths, dated facts, a table, and a legal check for the EU.
- Build an "alternatives to" page buyers will trust Many buyers search for options other than a well-known name. How to group alternatives by fit, say when another choice is better, and use a simple template.
- Keep one page with your prices, plans and policies A single, maintained page of facts about your prices, plans, limits, locations and policies, with an update log. Why buyers and AI tools both rely on one.
- Publish numbers that people can check Every statistic on your site should say where it came from, when, and how it was worked out. How to avoid vanity numbers and publish a small table others can cite.
Earn mentions and keep them
- Get onto the "best of" lists that AI answers draw on How to find the list pages that AI answers cite in your field, check you fit, and ask the editor politely to consider you, without paying for links.
- Earn honest reviews and a real presence in online communities Reviews and forum threads are places AI answers often read. How to ask real customers fairly, follow platform rules, and why fake reviews are illegal.
- Publish a small original study that others can cite A plain method for a small study your business can run and publish: the question, the sample, the raw data, the limits and a template to write the plan first.
- Earn press coverage by offering evidence, not announcements How a small business can be useful to journalists with data or real expertise, a pitch template, and what the request-for-experts services are.
- A 90-day plan to be easier for AI assistants to find and describe Twelve weeks in four stages: measure, make your pages and facts clear, earn outside mentions, then measure again. Each step points to the guide that explains it.