A 90-day plan to be easier for AI assistants to find and describe

This plan fits a business with one person doing marketing part-time. It asks for a few hours a week. It is a schedule, not a promise: following it should help your business be found and described correctly, and we cannot say that any assistant will recommend you.

The short answer

• Weeks 1 to 2: measure where you stand and make sure AI search bots can reach your site.
• Weeks 3 to 6: fix your facts and your key pages.
• Weeks 7 to 12: earn mentions on the outside pages that assistants read.
• End of week 12: ask the same questions again and compare.

Google says that, for its own AI features, there are no additional requirements to appear and no special optimizations needed, and that normal search practices still apply. That fits the order of this plan: clear, reachable, truthful pages first, outside mentions second.

Before you start

Choose one person to own the plan. Make a folder for your notes. Give yourself a start date and write the twelve weekly dates in a calendar. Keep a single page with two headings: "What we did" and "What we saw", with dates.

Weeks 1 to 2: baseline and access

Goal: know what assistants say about you today, and make sure nothing is blocking them.

1. Write five questions a buyer would ask, in their words. See write buyer questions that matter.
2. Ask them in several assistants, more than once each, and save the answers with the date. See measure your AI visibility baseline and track AI recommendations honestly.
3. List the sources the answers cite and the businesses they name. See find the sources AI assistants cite.
4. Check your robots.txt and firewall. See check that AI search bots can reach your website and when your firewall or CDN turns AI bots away.
5. Set up a way to see visits from assistants. See see visits from AI assistants in Google Analytics 4.

Done when: you have a dated baseline, a list of cited sources, and confirmation that your site is open to the bots you want.

Weeks 3 to 6: facts and pages

Goal: make your own pages say the right things clearly.

1. Write one facts sheet and keep it as the single source of truth. See keep one facts sheet for your business.
2. Make your name, address, phone and hours match everywhere. See keep your name, address, phone and hours the same everywhere.
3. Put prices, plans and policies on one page. See keep one page with your prices, plans and policies.
4. Rewrite your key pages to give the answer first. See write pages that lead with the answer.
5. Add Organization markup, and Product markup if you sell products. See add Organization markup and mark up one product.
6. If buyers compare you with others, write fair comparison pages. See write a fair "us versus them" comparison page and build an "alternatives to" page.

Done when: a stranger could find your prices, location and what you do in under a minute, and every number on your site can be checked.

Do not try to do all six in one week. Most small businesses will do steps 1 to 4 in this period and leave the others for later.

Weeks 7 to 12: sources and mentions

Goal: get honest mentions on the pages that assistants read for your questions.

1. Pick the two or three outside sources from your week 1 to 2 list that you could realistically appear on.
2. Get onto fitting lists. See get onto the "best of" lists.
3. Ask real customers for reviews, fairly, and join the right communities as yourself. See earn honest reviews and a real presence in communities.
4. If you have data nobody else has, publish it. See publish a small original study.
5. Pitch it, or your expertise, to a short list of outlets. See earn press coverage with evidence.
6. Make your numbers easy to quote and verify. See publish numbers that people can check.

Done when: you have sent your outreach, asked every recent customer for a review, and logged what came back.

Week 12: measure again

1. Ask the same five questions, in the same assistants, the same number of times as in week 1.
2. Compare: are you named, where, with what facts, and which sources are cited?
3. Check which of your actions can be seen in the answers and which cannot.
4. Write down what changed, what did not and what you will do next quarter.

Expect noise. Assistants can answer differently from one day to the next, so a small change in one question means little. Look for patterns across questions and repeats.

Weekly rhythm

How to check it worked

• Your week 12 answers can be compared line by line with week 1, because you saved both.
• Each step on your list has a date and a note.
• Your own pages say the same thing everywhere and a stranger can verify them.

What this won't do

• It will not make any assistant recommend you. Assistants decide for their own reasons, and those can change without notice.
• It will not give fast results. Some things you do may take longer than the 90 days to show up anywhere.
• It cannot replace a business that customers like. Good service, honest reviews and clear information are the base.
• It is a rhythm, not a rule. If a step does not fit your business, skip it and note why.