Start with a question worth answering
To help your business become discoverable in AI search, make its services, location and supporting evidence easy to find and understand. Then check whether the relevant search systems can access that information. There is no file or wording that guarantees a recommendation. Start with a customer question that fits your actual offer, rather than a broad request to appear everywhere.
- Write down the services and locations you genuinely cover.
- Choose a small set of questions a prospective customer would ask.
- Identify the page that should answer each question.
- Check that the answer is available as readable page text.
Write the answer a customer needs
A useful answer explains the service, who it suits and what happens next. Put that explanation near the relevant heading, then support it with details and real work. A screenshot can show a website; accompanying text needs to explain your role. WOTS’s Manly Surf Hire example is a bespoke booking site feeding back into EPOS. That is useful context, while a phrase such as “innovative digital solutions” leaves the reader guessing.
| Vague statement | More useful service explanation |
|---|---|
| We connect your business. | A bespoke booking website can feed booking information back into EPOS, subject to the connected system’s available interface. |
| We create websites that do more. | Country Club connects subscriptions and virtual tokens with park bookings and its security system. |
Check access and page identity
Review whether the public page loads, uses the intended canonical address and is allowed to be indexed. Robots rules are one part of discovery; hosting and firewall restrictions can also matter. OpenAI documents separate search and model-training crawlers, so those permissions should not be treated as the same setting. For Google’s AI search features, ordinary Search eligibility and useful content remain the starting point.
- Open the intended public URL and check that it returns the right page.
- Check that staging-only noindex rules will not remain on the production page.
- Confirm that important services and contact details are not available only inside images.
- Check crawler access against the relevant platform’s current documentation.
Make the business and evidence consistent
Use the same business identity, contact information and service descriptions across the website and the genuine profiles you maintain. Explain who does the work and what each example demonstrates. Structured data should describe information already visible on the page. Optional directories such as llms.txt can organise links for systems that use them; they do not replace useful HTML or establish a ranking advantage.
Keep a small observation log
Choose the questions before checking answers, and keep their wording stable for comparisons. Record the platform, date, relevant settings and any linked sources. Repeat a sample to understand variation; do not treat one answer as a permanent ranking. These observations describe a sample of platform behaviour. A mention, a referral visit and a qualified enquiry are different outcomes.
| Record | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Exact question and intended page | Shows which customer need the check represents. |
| Platform, date and relevant settings | Provides context for an answer that may vary. |
| Businesses mentioned and source links | Separates a named recommendation from a citation. |
| Repeat observations | Helps distinguish a recurring appearance from one sample. |
| Referral visits and qualified enquiries, where measurable | Connects discovery with a separate business outcome. |
Decide what to improve next
If the relevant service page does not answer the question, improve that page first. If the answer is clear but the business details conflict, resolve the inconsistency. If access is restricted, investigate the actual hosting or crawler rule before changing content. Review the observations alongside search performance and enquiries rather than assuming that every change in an AI answer was caused by your last edit.