A real share of who-should-I-call now happens inside ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and the assistant built into a phone. A search results page has ten links and being fourth still earns clicks. An AI answer is a paragraph naming two or three businesses. Fourth is nowhere. Getting named is a specific, mostly mechanical job, and it is part of building the site properly.
Why some businesses get named and others don't
These systems don't browse the web at the moment you ask. They assemble an answer from what they can retrieve and what they were trained on, and then they have to decide which specific businesses are safe to name. Naming a business is a commitment, and the model avoids committing to anything it can't stand behind.
So the businesses that get named are, overwhelmingly, the ones whose facts are stated plainly, are machine-readable, and are corroborated somewhere other than their own website. That's it. It is much less mysterious than the emerging industry around it suggests, and much less amenable to tricks.
What actually moves it
State facts as facts
What you do, where you do it, what it costs, when you're open, what your licence number is. Written as direct declarative sentences, not folded into marketing copy. "We've been proudly serving the community for decades" is unusable to a machine. "Licensed plumber in Torrance since 2009, CSLB #123456, open 7am to 6pm weekdays" is a fact it can repeat.
Mark it up so it can be read without interpretation
Structured data — the invisible layer that says this string is a phone number, this one is a service area, this one is a price range. It removes the guesswork, and a model that doesn't have to guess is far likelier to commit to naming you. This site does it too; it's in the page you're reading.
Answer the actual question on the page
People ask assistants questions in full sentences: how much does it cost to replace a water heater in Redondo Beach. A page that asks and answers that question directly, in the customer's words, is quotable. A page headed "Services" with a bullet list is not. This is the single largest piece of writing work, and it's the same work that wins regular search — which is why I don't treat it as a separate product.
Be corroborated somewhere else
Your own site claiming you're the best plumber in the South Bay is worth approximately nothing. Your Google Business Profile, review sites, a local news mention, a supplier's dealer listing, a trade association — all saying the same name, address and phone number — is what turns a claim into something a model will repeat. Inconsistency across those listings is the most common and most fixable problem I find.
Be fast and let it be read
Retrieval bots have short patience and many sites block them by accident, sometimes via a security product nobody remembers switching on. A page that is slow, requires JavaScript to reveal its text, or quietly 403s the crawler can't be cited no matter how good it is.
What I won't tell you
That I can guarantee placement. That there's a submission process. That there's a monthly retainer's worth of ongoing AI-optimisation work for a business with one location and eight services. There is a real, finite piece of work here, most of it one-off, and then there's upkeep — which looks a lot like the upkeep ordinary search needs and for the same reasons.
The honest summary: this is mostly the discipline of being unusually clear about who you are and what you charge, made machine-readable. It happens to be the same discipline that makes a site convert better for humans, which is the real reason to do it. If AI search turns out to matter less than the industry currently insists, you still end up with a better site. If it matters more, you're already there.
How to check where you stand right now
Before hiring anyone — me included — spend ten minutes on this. Open ChatGPT and ask it the three or four questions a customer would ask to find a business like yours, with your city in the question. Do the same in Google's AI mode. Write down which businesses get named and whether anything said about you is wrong.
That list is your actual competition in this channel, and it's frequently not the same set of businesses that outrank you in normal search. If you're already being named, the job is keeping the facts current. If a competitor is named and you aren't, the gap is almost always corroboration — they're cited somewhere you're not.
Where this applies
- Websites for plumbers
- Websites for electricians
- Websites for hvac contractors
- Websites for roofers
- Websites for landscapers
- Websites for general contractors
- Websites for pool services
- Websites for pest control companies
Or by city, if you'd rather start there: Hawthorne, Inglewood, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, El Segundo, Torrance, Palos Verdes, Culver City, Santa Monica, Los Angeles.
Common questions
Is this different from SEO?
It overlaps heavily but the goal is different. SEO tries to rank a link in a list. This tries to get your business named inside an answer where there is no list. The technical groundwork is largely shared, which is why I don't sell it separately — it's part of building the site properly.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend me?
No, and nobody can. There's no submission form, no ranking dashboard, and the models change under everyone without notice. What can be done is make your business easy to cite and hard to get wrong. Anyone promising a guaranteed AI ranking is selling something that doesn't exist.
How would I even know if it's working?
You ask. Type the questions your customers would ask into ChatGPT, Google's AI mode and Perplexity, and write down what comes back — before any work starts and again a couple of months later. It's crude, but it's the honest measurement available today, and it beats a dashboard metric that was invented to look reassuring.
Does this cost extra?
Not as a separate line item. Most of it is doing the ordinary things properly: stating facts plainly, marking them up, keeping your listings consistent. If you already have a site I'll quote it as a fixed piece of work after looking at what's there.
My customers are older. Does this actually matter yet?
For some trades, not much yet. For others it's already a meaningful slice. I'd rather tell you it's a small effect for your business than sell you an urgent-sounding package — the underlying work makes the site better for regular search anyway, so it isn't wasted either way.