What do AI tools say about your business?

More people now ask ChatGPT, Copilot or Google's AI answers for a recommendation, the same way they'd ask a friend: a good electrician in Leicester, a café open late in Nottingham. The answer they get is pieced together from what those tools can find about businesses online. If your details are thin, out of date or contradict each other, you might be left out or described wrongly.

Start by asking

Open ChatGPT, Copilot and Google, and ask the kind of question a customer would. Then ask directly: "What do you know about [your business name] in [your town]?"

Note what's right, what's wrong and what's missing. Do it again in a couple of months to see what's changed.

What these tools draw on

They each work a little differently, and none of them publish exactly how they choose who to mention. What they have in common is that they use what's publicly available about you.

What helps

• Say clearly on your website what you do, where, and for whom. A sentence like "We're a family-run electrical firm covering Leicester and Loughborough, for homes and small businesses" is easy for a person and a machine to understand.
• Give each main service its own page, so each one can be found and described on its own.
• Answer the questions customers ask you on the phone: the areas you cover, how quickly you can come out, prices if you publish them.
• Keep your name, address, phone number and opening hours the same everywhere they appear. Small differences, like "St" on one listing and "Street" on another, or an old number on a directory, make it harder to tell they're all you.
• Keep collecting genuine reviews, and reply to them.