The short answer: when an AI assistant looks up a business, it reads the same public information a careful customer would: your website, your Google Business Profile, directory listings, reviews and mentions on other sites. It looks for clear, matching facts. Gaps and contradictions make it less likely to recommend you.
Where does an AI get information about your business?
An AI gets its information from public sources across the web, not from a private file about you. These are the main places it reads:
- Your website: the services you offer, where you work, prices, hours and answers to common questions.
- Your Google Business Profile: categories, services, hours, photos, posts and reviews.
- Directories and listings: Yelp, Bing, Apple Maps, industry directories and the data aggregators that feed them.
- Reviews: how many, how recent, what customers say, and whether you reply.
- Other sites: local news, chambers of commerce, partner sites and social media that mention you.
Different AI tools lean on different sources, and none of them publish exactly how they choose. That’s why the safest approach is to make every source say the same correct thing. If your website, profile and listings all agree, it doesn’t matter much which one a given tool reads first.
What does it look for?
It looks for four things: facts that match, answers it can quote, proof that customers trust you, and a clear way for the customer to act.
Facts that match everywhere
Same name, address, phone, hours and website on every source. If two sources disagree, the AI has to guess which is right, and it may simply leave you out.
Small differences add up. “Smith Plumbing LLC” on one site, “Smith’s Plumbing & Drain” on another, and an old phone number on a directory you forgot about can make you look like several different businesses, or like one that isn’t well maintained.
Plain-text answers it can quote
Short, direct answers on your website, under question headings, are easy for an AI to repeat. Information that only exists inside images, videos or PDFs is easy to miss.
A good test: could someone copy a single sentence from your site and have it fully answer a customer’s question? “We clean homes in Fort Thomas, Bellevue and Newport, and standard cleans start at $X” works. “We’re passionate about excellence” doesn’t tell anyone anything.
Proof that real customers chose you
Recent reviews, replies to reviews, photos of real work and project examples all show an active, trusted business.
Keep the proof honest. Google’s review policies don’t allow offering incentives for reviews or selectively asking only happy customers. A steady habit of asking every customer builds the kind of review history that reads as real. We cover this in more depth in how reviews decide whether AI recommends you.
A way to act
A phone number that is answered, a booking link that works, and prices or price ranges. AI tools increasingly help customers take the next step, not just read about you.
Google has already announced that Search can help customers book local services, and for some categories call businesses for them. If you want to understand what that means for you, read Google’s AI can now call and book your business.
A checklist you can run today
- Search your business name and check that every result shows the same name, address, phone and hours.
- Open your Google Business Profile and fill in every empty field, including services and service areas.
- Read your home page and ask: does it say, in words, what we do and where?
- Check that your prices or starting prices appear somewhere on your site.
- Look at your last 10 reviews. Did you reply to each one?
- Ask ChatGPT and Google AI Mode about your business and correct anything they get wrong at the source.
- Make sure your site has business schema (structured data) and, ideally, an llms.txt file that summarizes your business for AI tools.
How to fix what the AI gets wrong, step by step
You usually can’t edit what an AI says directly. You fix it by fixing the sources it reads. This is the order we recommend:
- Write down your correct facts once. Exact business name, phone, website, hours, service area and main services. This becomes the master copy everything else must match.
- Fix your Google Business Profile first. It’s the source Google relies on most, so it should match your master copy exactly.
- Update your website. Make sure the same facts appear in plain text, not only in images, along with prices or starting prices and answers to common questions.
- Clean up listings. Correct or claim your profiles on major directories, and remove or update duplicates and old locations.
- Ask the AI again. After some time has passed, ask the same questions and see what changed. Results don’t update on a fixed schedule, so check back periodically.
- Keep it current. Any time your hours, phone or services change, update every source on the same day.
Common mistakes that confuse AI tools
- Forgetting old listings. A directory profile from a previous address or phone number can keep contradicting you for years.
- Putting key details only in images. A price sheet saved as a picture or a PDF menu is easy for AI to skip.
- Vague service descriptions. “Home services” doesn’t tell anyone whether you fix roofs or clean gutters. Name each service.
- Leaving the service area unclear. If you never list the towns you serve, an AI can’t confidently recommend you for them.
- Ignoring reviews. Unanswered reviews, especially critical ones, suggest nobody is minding the business.
- Trying to trick the AI. Stuffing pages with keywords or posting fake content tends to backfire. Clear, true information wins over time.
A hypothetical example: the electrician who moved
Say you run an electrical contracting business in Fort Mitchell, KY, and a while back you moved your shop and changed your phone number. You updated your website and your Google Business Profile, but not the directories you signed up for years ago.
A homeowner asks an AI assistant for an electrician near them. The AI finds your website with one phone number, several directories with the old one, and an old listing that still shows your former location. It can’t tell which is current, so it suggests a competitor whose details match everywhere. You never learn the customer existed.
The fix isn’t complicated. You write down your correct details, update or remove the old listings, add your service area and starting prices to your site, and reply to your recent reviews. Nothing guarantees the AI will recommend you next time, but you’ve removed the contradiction that was holding you back.
Which fixes matter most?
Start with what is wrong, then what is missing. Wrong details (an old phone number, a closed location) actively hurt you. Missing details (no prices, no service area) just hold you back. Listings and your Google Business Profile fix the wrong details fastest; answer engine optimization fills in what is missing on your site.
If you only have an hour this week, spend it on the wrong details. Correcting an old phone number or a closed location removes a real contradiction. Once the facts agree everywhere, adding prices, service areas and plain-language answers to your website is the next best use of your time, because that is the information customers and AI tools both go looking for.
Frequently asked questions
Can I just tell ChatGPT to correct information about my business?
Not reliably. Telling a chatbot the right answer in your own conversation doesn’t change what it tells other people. The lasting fix is correcting the public sources it reads, starting with your website and Google Business Profile.
What is an llms.txt file?
It’s a short plain-text file on your website that summarizes who you are, what you do and where to find key pages, written for AI tools to read. It’s a helpful extra, not a replacement for a clear website and accurate listings.
Does social media affect what AI says about me?
It can, as one of the “other sites” that mention you. Keep your name, phone, website and service area consistent on your social profiles, just like everywhere else.
How can I tell if AI is already recommending my business?
Ask the tools directly, ask new customers how they found you, and check your analytics. In GA4, visits from AI tools often show up as referrals from sites like chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com. Our guide on how to tell if AI is sending you customers explains where to look.
Want to know how your business looks to AI right now? Start with a free AI Visibility Snapshot, or book a free strategy call and we will walk through it with you.
