Your customers ask AI before they buy. Does your business show up in the answer?

Try this right now: open ChatGPT and ask "what's the best [your industry] company in [your city]?". Read the answer? Your customers are doing exactly that, every day, before deciding where to spend. If the answer names your competitor and not you, there's a line of customers being quietly redirected — and you will never see that line.

What changed in how people choose a business

For 20 years the path was one: search Google, open three websites, compare, choose. That path is shortening. A growing share of people skip the search and go straight to the question: "recommend a good dentist near me", "which company does automation for manufacturing?", "where do I buy X with the best value?".

The brutal difference: Google showed you a list with dozens of options — AI answers with two or three recommendations. Either you're one of them, or the game ended before you knew you were playing.

Why some businesses show up and others don't

AIs don't draw names from a hat. They build the answer from what they can read and verify about each business: what the website says, whether the information matches across channels, whether there are signals the company is real, active and trustworthy at what it does.

Businesses invisible to AI share a profile: a weak or nonexistent website, mismatched information (one phone number on the site, another on social media), and no content answering the questions customers ask. To an AI, that business is an unknown — and no AI recommends an unknown.

Making a business findable, understandable and recommendable by AI is specific technical work — it's part of what I do, and for obvious reasons the method stays with me. But the first step is yours, free and immediate: test it.

The 5-minute test

Open ChatGPT (or Google's Gemini) and ask the questions your customer would ask:

• "What's the best [your industry] company in [your city]?"
• "Recommend a trustworthy [your product/service] around [your area]."
• "What do you know about [your business name]?"

Three possible outcomes. You show up well: congratulations — protect it. You show up wrong (stale information, mixed up with another company): worse than not showing; it needs correcting. You don't show up: the competitors who do are taking the customers who ask.

Does this replace Google?

No — it adds to it. Google remains the biggest front door, and the basics still apply: a fast, clear website, a well-filled Google Business Profile, consistent information. What's new is a second door, growing fast, where whoever walks in receives three recommendations instead of thirty links. Whoever enters early takes the market while competitors don't even know the door exists.