How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Other AI Search Tools

The way people search online is changing.

For years, businesses focused primarily on appearing on the first page of Google. Today, customers are increasingly asking tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot questions like:

• “Who is the best web designer near me?”
• “What are the best accounting firms for small businesses?”
• “Which company provides SEO services in Australia?”
• “What should I look for when choosing an IT support provider?”
• “What are the best local businesses for this service?”

Instead of simply displaying ten blue links, AI-powered search tools can summarise information, compare businesses and recommend websites or sources directly within their answers.

This creates a new challenge for businesses:

How do you make your website more likely to be discovered, understood and referenced by AI search tools?

The answer is increasingly being described as AI SEO, Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) or Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).

However, AI SEO does not mean abandoning traditional SEO. In fact, many of the fundamentals remain exactly the same.

What Is AI SEO?

AI SEO is the process of improving your website so that both traditional search engines and AI-powered search experiences can easily discover, understand and trust your content.

Traditional SEO typically focuses on improving rankings for keywords.

For example:

“SEO services Melbourne”

AI search queries tend to be longer and more conversational:

“Which SEO agency in Melbourne can help a small business improve its Google rankings?”

or:

“What company can help my website appear in ChatGPT and Google AI results?”

This means businesses need to think beyond individual keywords.

Your website should clearly explain:

• Who you are
• What services you provide
• Where you provide them
• Who your services are for
• What problems you solve
• Why customers should trust you
• What experience or expertise you have

The easier this information is to understand, the easier it becomes for search engines and AI systems to correctly interpret your business.

Can You Guarantee That ChatGPT Will Recommend Your Business?

No.

There is currently no legitimate SEO technique that can guarantee your company will be recommended by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Copilot or another AI platform.

AI search systems consider multiple signals, sources and search results when creating their responses.

What businesses can do is improve their eligibility and increase the likelihood that their website becomes a useful source.

For example, OpenAI states that public websites can appear in ChatGPT search. Website owners should make sure they are not blocking OpenAI's search crawler if they want their content to be discoverable.

Google similarly states that there are no special technical requirements for appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond the core requirements for appearing in Google Search.

So rather than looking for an “AI SEO trick”, businesses should build a strong digital presence that search engines can crawl, understand and trust.

1. Build Strong Traditional SEO Foundations

One of the biggest misconceptions about AI SEO is that traditional SEO is becoming irrelevant.

It isn't.

Google has explicitly stated that its existing SEO best practices continue to apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode.

The same principle applies across other AI-powered search experiences because many of them rely on search indexes, crawlers and external web sources to retrieve current information.

That means your website should still have:

• Crawlable pages
• Proper indexing
• Logical site architecture
• Fast loading speeds
• Mobile-friendly design
• Internal links
• Descriptive page titles
• Clear headings
• Relevant service pages
• Useful original content
• Accurate business information

If search engines struggle to crawl or understand your website, your chances of gaining visibility in AI-powered search are also likely to suffer.

2. Create a Dedicated Page for Each Important Service

A common SEO mistake is putting every service on one general “Services” page.

For example, an IT and digital agency may provide:

• Website development
• Shopify development
• WordPress development
• SEO
• Local SEO
• Google Ads management
• IT support

Instead of mentioning all of these services briefly on one page, create detailed pages explaining each major service.

For example:

/seo-services/

/local-seo/

/shopify-development/

/wordpress-development/

These pages give search engines much clearer information about what your business actually does.

They also give AI systems more specific content to reference when someone asks a detailed question.

3. Answer the Questions Your Customers Actually Ask

AI search is highly conversational.

Your content strategy should therefore include real questions customers ask before making a purchase.

Instead of only targeting:

SEO Melbourne

you could create content answering questions such as:

• How much does SEO cost in Australia?
• How long does SEO take to work?
• Is SEO worth it for a small business?
• What is Local SEO?
• How can a business appear in Google AI Overviews?
• Can ChatGPT recommend my business?
• What is the difference between SEO and AI SEO?
• Do small businesses need SEO in 2026?

This approach can help you build topical authority while capturing longer, more specific search queries.

Blog posts, FAQs, service pages and guides can all play a role.

4. Give Clear Answers Before Going Into Detail

Good AI-friendly content is usually easy for humans to understand as well.

Avoid writing unnecessarily long introductions before answering a question.

For example, if your heading is:

How Long Does SEO Take?

A useful answer could begin with:

“SEO commonly takes several months to produce measurable improvements, although the timeframe depends on your website, competition, market and starting position.”

You can then provide additional detail.

This structure makes your page easier to scan and makes individual passages easier to understand independently.

Useful content structures include:

• Question-and-answer sections
• Short explanatory paragraphs
• Bullet points
• Comparison tables
• Step-by-step guides
• Clearly labelled headings
• Definitions
• FAQs

Microsoft's current guidance for AI search similarly recommends clear structures, descriptive headings, useful tables and FAQ-style content that makes information easier to understand and reference.

5. Demonstrate Real Experience and Expertise

One of the best ways to differentiate your website is to publish information that competitors cannot easily reproduce.

Generic AI-generated articles are becoming increasingly easy to create.

That makes first-hand information more valuable.

Consider adding:

• Original examples
• Case studies
• Project results
• Screenshots
• Before-and-after examples
• Industry observations
• Original research
• Customer scenarios
• Your own processes
• Expert commentary

For an SEO agency, instead of simply writing:

“SEO can improve your website traffic.”

you could explain:

“We regularly find that local service businesses have service pages targeting overly broad keywords while their Google Business Profile and location pages are under-optimised.”

That provides an observation based on actual experience rather than repeating generic information.

Google's current guidance for generative AI search particularly emphasises creating unique, valuable and non-commodity content rather than producing information that already exists across hundreds of other websites.

6. Make Your Business Information Consistent Across the Web

AI search visibility is not only about your website.

Search engines may encounter information about your business from many different sources.

Your core business information should therefore remain consistent across:

• Your website
• Google Business Profile
• Bing
• Social media profiles
• Business directories
• Industry websites
• Review platforms
• Professional profiles

Pay particular attention to:

• Business name
• Location
• Phone number
• Website
• Services
• Opening hours
• Service areas

For local businesses, this is particularly important.

If one website describes your company as a web development agency, another says IT consulting, and your own website barely explains either service, it becomes harder to establish a clear understanding of your business.

7. Strengthen Your Local SEO

For businesses serving specific locations, Local SEO remains extremely important.

A Hobart customer may ask:

“Who provides WordPress website development in Hobart?”

while a Melbourne business owner may ask:

“Recommend an SEO company for a small business in Melbourne.”

Your website should make your geographic relevance clear.

This can include:

• Optimising Google Business Profile
• Creating useful location pages
• Including your service areas
• Collecting genuine customer reviews
• Maintaining consistent business details
• Publishing locally relevant content
• Building relevant local citations

Don't create dozens of nearly identical location pages simply by changing the suburb name.

Each important location page should provide genuine value.

8. Use Structured Data Where Appropriate

Structured data, commonly referred to as schema markup, gives search engines machine-readable information about a webpage.

Depending on the website, useful structured data may include:

• Organisation
• LocalBusiness
• Product
• Article
• Breadcrumb
• Event
• Person
• Review-related structured data where eligible

Structured data can help search engines interpret information correctly.

However, schema should not be treated as a shortcut for appearing in AI results.

Adding hundreds of schema properties will not automatically make ChatGPT or Google recommend your business.

It should support good content rather than replace it.

9. Make Sure AI Search Crawlers Can Access Your Website

This is one of the more technical parts of AI SEO.

Website owners sometimes unintentionally block important crawlers through:

• robots.txt
• Security plugins
• Firewalls
• CDN settings
• Bot protection systems

For ChatGPT search specifically, OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot if you want your content to be eligible to appear in ChatGPT search results.

Your SEO team should therefore review your website's crawling and indexing configuration rather than assuming every search platform can access it.

10. Build Your Brand Beyond Your Own Website

Strong brands are discussed in more than one place.

If your company is mentioned by reputable websites, industry organisations, customers, directories and other relevant sources, these references can strengthen your overall online presence.

Businesses should work toward earning:

• Quality backlinks
• Industry mentions
• Customer reviews
• Local citations
• Partnerships
• Expert contributions
• Media coverage
• Relevant directory listings

Avoid buying hundreds of low-quality backlinks or creating artificial mentions.

The goal should be genuine authority and recognition.

11. Keep Important Content Accurate and Updated

AI search tools increasingly deal with questions where freshness matters.

An old page describing discontinued services, outdated prices or former locations can create confusion.

Regularly review important pages such as:

• Service pages
• Pricing information
• Team pages
• Location pages
• Product pages
• Business details
• Statistics
• Guides and comparison articles

Updating content should not mean changing the publication date without making meaningful improvements.

Review whether the information itself is still useful and accurate.

12. Track AI Search Visibility, Not Just Google Rankings

SEO reporting is also evolving.

Traditional metrics such as:

• Organic traffic
• Rankings
• Clicks
• Impressions
• Leads
• Conversions

remain important.

But businesses can increasingly look at AI visibility as well.

For example, Bing Webmaster Tools now provides AI Performance reporting that can show when content is cited in supported Microsoft AI experiences.

Google has also begun introducing dedicated generative AI visibility reporting within Search Console for eligible websites.

Businesses can additionally monitor:

• Referral traffic from AI platforms
• Brand mentions
• Pages frequently referenced by AI tools
• Questions where competitors are recommended
• AI-generated search visibility over time

The objective should not simply be “rank #1”.

The broader objective is to make your business visible wherever your potential customers are researching their options.

SEO Is Changing, But the Fundamentals Still Matter

AI search represents an important change in how people find businesses online.

However, it does not mean businesses should abandon everything they have learned about SEO.

The strongest strategy combines:

Technical SEO + useful content + authority + Local SEO + strong brand signals + AI search optimisation.

Google itself continues to emphasise that existing SEO fundamentals remain relevant to its generative AI search experiences.

The difference is that businesses now need to think about more than rankings.

Your content needs to make your company easy to find, understand, trust and reference.

Improve Your Visibility Across Google and AI Search

At MY IT STUDIO, we help Australian businesses improve their online visibility through practical SEO strategies designed around how customers search today.

Our SEO services can include:

• SEO audits
• Technical SEO
• Keyword research
• On-page SEO
• Local SEO
• Content strategy
• Website structure optimisation
• Google Business Profile optimisation
• Search Console analysis
• AI search visibility optimisation
• Ongoing SEO monitoring and improvement

Whether you want to improve your traditional Google rankings or prepare your website for emerging AI-powered search experiences, the starting point is the same: build a website that clearly demonstrates what your business does and provides genuinely useful information to potential customers.

Want to improve your business's visibility on Google, ChatGPT and other AI search platforms?

Contact MY IT STUDIO to discuss an SEO strategy for your website.

MY IT STUDIO PTY LTD.
ABN 92 665 343 537
Phone:
03 6169 5503
Email:
info@my-it.com.au
Location:
Hobart: Level 2, Room5 64/68 Liverpool St, Hobart TAS 7000