How to get your growing product found by AI search (an honest approach)
Been seeing a lot of spam and misunderstandings regarding AI discovery, so thought I'd start a discussion and share what's been working for my own small business.
We've been deep in the weeds on ensuring our content is getting discovered on as many channels as possible, and have insider knowledge around LLM discovery, in addition to tests and research. It's a lot simpler than people think.
The basics (boring but critical)
Your business details (name, address, phone) needs to be identical everywhere.
Not similar. Identical. Same punctuation, same format. If your Google Business Profile says "Unit 203" and your website says "#203," AI systems flag that as uncertainty and skip you.
Your Google Business Profile is everything.
It feeds Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Apple Maps, Waze, basically everything. Post weekly. Upload fresh photos. Respond to reviews. Mark special hours. The engagement signals you're real and active.
You can get a free audit of your GBP from RoastMyBusiness to see where you stand.
Add schema markup to your website.
This is structured data that tells AI what you are. It's invisible to customers but AI tools read it first. Use the LocalBusiness schema and include your name, address, hours, category, price range.
If you need help getting started with the basics, Google's SEO starter guide covers the fundamentals clearly.
What actually helps you rank
Reviews need to be consistent, not just high-scoring.
Twenty 5-star reviews from 2018 don't help. AI engines look for frequency and recency. A steady trickle of new reviews signals you're active and trusted.
Read Google’s Tips to get more reviews.
Tools like RateMyBusiness can help you gather reviews more consistently without being pushy.
Real authority signals matter more than backlinks.
Local newspaper mentions, blogger write-ups, neighbourhood newsletters, community calendars, partnerships with nearby businesses. AI engines want consensus from real sources, not sketchy directory spam.
Optimize for questions people actually ask.
AI loves Q&A format. Put the questions your customers ask most on your site and in your GBP Q&A section:
- Do you take walk-ins?
- What's parking like?
- How long does [your service] take?
- Do you offer [specific thing]?
- What are your busiest hours?
The clearer and more direct you are, the more likely you get quoted.
Create neighbourhood-specific pages.
If you're a salon in Queen West, have a page about serving Queen West locals. Include nearby transit, landmarks, and local context. Perplexity and ChatGPT use this to match you to hyper-local queries like "best haircut near Queen West station."
Use Google Search Console to keep an eye on which keywords are performing for your existing content, and which to double-down on.
Keep your site fast and mobile-friendly.
AI engines still crawl your site. If it loads slow or breaks on mobile, you lose visibility. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to get a free audit and see what needs fixing.
Own your customer relationships
AI discovery is great, but you can't rely on it alone. Build your own channels: email, SMS, loyalty programs. Repeat customers leave more reviews, share more posts, and talk about you more. That improves every AI signal. You should still be aiming to own your customer relationships and data, and the signals will come.
You don't need expensive monitoring tools (yet)
Honestly, you don't need to invest in an AI discovery monitoring tool right away. The fundamentals matter way more than tracking your AI rankings daily. Get the basics right first, then worry about monitoring if you really need it. You should still be focused on SEO just as much as AI discovery. At least for the time being. We do use some LLM monitoring tools, but that's because we have cheap access to one in particular that we use to track our content creation progress, and get ideas for new content, but it is absolutely not necessary. Uncovering topics for content is easy enough using Google or an LLM to help brainstorm.
The pattern
AI search isn't about hacks. It's about being clear, consistent, and trusted. Accurate info. Real reviews. Active profiles. Direct relationships. It’s not all that different than traditional SEO.
👉 Content is still king.
