A customer asks ChatGPT to recommend a security systems installer in Hertfordshire. It names three firms. If yours isn’t one of them, nothing shows up in your analytics: no bounced visit, no missed call. The enquiry simply goes elsewhere.
OpenAI says ChatGPT now has more than 1 billion weekly active users, and Google now shows AI-written answers above many of its search results. That makes AI visibility, whether AI tools mention and recommend your business, a real commercial question. Below are the questions business owners ask us most, answered as plainly as the evidence allows.
How do I check if ChatGPT recommends my business?
Start by asking it. Write 10 to 20 prompts your customers would realistically use, for example:
- “Who are the best [service] companies in [area]?”
- “Who should I call for [specific problem] near [town]?”
- “[Your business] or [competitor], which is better?”
Run each prompt in ChatGPT and in Google, where AI Overviews or AI Mode may answer it. Use a private browser window to reduce the influence of your browsing history, while remembering that answers may still vary by location and session. AI answers change between runs, so repeat each prompt more than once and record what you see: whether you’re named, whether you’re linked, and whether the description of your business is accurate.
For Google, traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in Search Console’s Performance report under the “Web” search type. Please note it isn’t broken out separately, so it shows you total search clicks rather than AI clicks on their own.
Testing by hand is fine for a first look. For ongoing tracking, SEO platforms such as Ubersuggest and DataForSEO now monitor how often a brand is mentioned across AI answers. We run this as part of our Website AI Readiness Audit.
The audit page says the report scans your website and provides an AI readiness score and recommendations, including what AI tools can see on the site. Treat that as a starting point alongside the question testing above, rather than a guarantee that a tool will recommend you.
How does my AI visibility compare with my competitors?
Run the same prompts for your competitors and keep a simple tally. A spreadsheet with five columns is enough: prompt, platform, date, which businesses were named, and which websites the answer cited as sources.
That last column matters most. The sources an AI tool cites show you which directories, review sites, trade bodies and articles it relies on in your sector. If a competitor keeps appearing because a particular trade directory lists them and not you, you now know exactly what to fix.
Why does AI recommend my competitors and not me?
Start by looking for one or more of these issues.
Other people talk about them more. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that the number of times a brand is mentioned across the web was the factor most closely linked to appearing in Google’s AI Overviews (a correlation of 0.664), well ahead of backlinks (0.218). Around 26% of brands in the study had no AI Overview mentions at all. Ahrefs is clear this shows correlation, not proof of cause.
AI tools can’t read your website. ChatGPT’s search feature relies on OpenAI’s crawler, OAI-SearchBot. If your robots.txt file blocks it, OpenAI says your site will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Firewalls and hosting settings can block crawlers too, which Google also warns about for its own crawler.
Your pages don’t answer the question plainly. A service page that opens with three paragraphs about your company history gives an AI tool little to quote. Putting the answer first, then explaining the detail, makes a page clearer for customers and gives an AI tool a direct passage to assess. That is a practical content recommendation, not a published ranking factor. We’ve written more on how to write FAQ sections that answer questions directly.
Why do I rank on Google but not appear in ChatGPT?
Because they’re separate systems. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on Google’s own index. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in them beyond a page being indexed and eligible to show a snippet. If you rank well on Google, you’re already eligible there.
ChatGPT is different. It uses its own crawler, so a site can rank well on Google while blocking OpenAI, often by accident through an old robots.txt rule or a security plugin.
Google’s AI features also use what it calls “query fan-out”, running several related searches across subtopics before writing an answer. So ranking for one phrase doesn’t guarantee you’re picked for the wider question. For the basics of how Google finds pages, see how Google search works.
What is AI invisibility costing my business?
Nobody can give you an accurate figure for your business without your own data, so be wary of anyone who quotes one. Here is what published research shows:
- Fewer clicks when AI answers appear. Ahrefs found that an AI Overview correlates with a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page (desktop data, December 2025). Seer Interactive’s newer study found an overall organic click-through rate of 2.36% on queries with an AI Overview in February 2026, compared with 3.82% where one was absent.
- Being cited helps. In Seer Interactive’s updated study, cited brands had higher average organic click-through than uncited brands on informational queries in its dataset. The association does not establish that a citation caused the difference.
- Whether AI visitors convert better is unsettled. Ahrefs reports AI search visitors converted 23 times better than organic visitors, but only on its own website. Adobe’s US retail data from early 2025 found AI traffic was 9% less likely to convert than other traffic.
UK habits are shifting too. Ofcom’s September 2026 research found 21% of UK adults had used an AI tool for news in the past month, with ChatGPT the most used at 13%. That measures news, not buying decisions, but it shows how normal asking AI has become.
A practical way to size it: take the enquiries you win from search each month and your own average job value, then model what losing a small share would cost. For example, multiply the number of enquiries you think are at risk by your actual enquiry-to-sale rate and average job value. This is a scenario, not a measured loss.
What should I fix first to improve my AI visibility?
In this order:
- Check crawler access. Make sure your robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot and Googlebot, and that your firewall or hosting isn’t blocking them. OpenAI says changes take around 24 hours to take effect. This is the quickest fix, and a blocked crawler cannot read the pages it needs.
- Confirm your key pages are indexed in Google Search Console.
- Rewrite your main service pages answer-first. If you use structured data, make sure it matches the visible text, as Google requires.
- Earn mentions. Reviews, trade body listings, supplier case studies and local press all add to how often your business is mentioned. Keep your Google Business Profile up to date, which Google lists among its recommendations.
- Re-test monthly with the same prompts so you can see direction of travel.
Start with steps 1 and 2 this week. They are relatively quick checks with clear results.
If you’d like to know where you stand, our Website AI Readiness Audit checks your site and your visibility in AI answers. For why this shift matters in the first place, read Is Your Business Invisible to ChatGPT?, or see how we help with AI for business and website optimisation.
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Frequently Asked Questions
OpenAI has started showing ads in ChatGPT. Paying for an ad is separate from being named in an ordinary answer. You cannot buy a guaranteed unpaid recommendation; making your site accessible and your business details clear gives AI tools information to work with.
No. OpenAI treats its crawlers separately: GPTBot collects content that may be used for training, while OAI-SearchBot controls whether you appear in ChatGPT search. You can block GPTBot and still allow OAI-SearchBot.
Not for Google. Google says you don’t need AI text files or new machine-readable files to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. An llms.txt file should not be treated as a substitute for accessible pages and useful content.
Google says no special schema is needed for its AI features, and any structured data should match what’s visible on the page. Schema still helps search engines understand your pages, so it’s good practice, but it won’t create AI visibility by itself.
It depends on the problem. Unblocking OpenAI’s crawler takes effect in about 24 hours, according to OpenAI. Building up mentions across the web takes longer, and there’s no reliable published data on timescales yet.
They overlap. Google’s AI features rely on the same basics as normal SEO: crawlable, indexed pages with clear content. The difference is that other AI tools use their own crawlers, and brand mentions elsewhere online are associated with appearances in Google AI Overviews.
