Compass/Resources
ResourcesReal answers. Nothing to download.
Here's the part most firms keep behind a form. Clear, useful answers about getting recommended by AI — things you can act on today, whether or not we ever talk. If it's helpful, that's the point.
How AI decides which businesses to recommend
When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google's AI for "a good roofer near me" or "the best dental office in St. Pete," the AI isn't guessing from thin air. It assembles an answer from what it can find about you across the open web: your website, your Google Business Profile, directory listings, reviews, and the structured data on your pages.
Here's the part that matters: AI rewards clarity and consistency. It recommends businesses whose core facts — what you do, who you serve, where you are, what you're known for — are stated plainly and repeated the same way everywhere it looks. When your hours say one thing on Google and another on your site, or your services are buried inside an image instead of written in text, the AI grows less confident — and a less-confident AI recommends someone it understands better.
You don't win by being the loudest. You win by being the clearest.
The takeaway: make your essential facts unambiguous and identical across every place a customer — or an AI — might look.
5 things you can do this week to show up in AI answers
None of these require us. They're the foundation we'd check first anyway — and you can do them yourself.
- Finish your Google Business Profile — categories, services, hours, photos, service area. It's the single biggest source AI leans on for local recommendations.
- Put your facts in plain text on your site — who you are, what you do, who you serve, where, and your hours. Not trapped inside a logo or image AI can't read.
- Answer real customer questions in writing — a genuine FAQ in plain language gives AI exactly the content it quotes.
- Make your name, address, and phone identical everywhere — every mismatch chips away at how confidently you can be recommended.
- Ask happy customers for specific reviews — "mention what we helped with" beats "leave us a review," because specifics give AI the language to match you to a request.
What "structured data" actually is
You'll hear this term a lot, and it sounds technical. It isn't, really. Structured data is just labels added to your website that tell a machine what your content means — "this is our business name," "these are our hours," "this is a customer review," "this is a service we offer."
Your human visitors never see it. But AI and search engines read it directly instead of trying to interpret your page by guessing. It's the difference between handing someone a labeled folder versus a pile of loose paper and hoping they sort it out.
You don't need to learn to code it. You just need it to exist and be accurate. Most small-business websites are missing it entirely — which is exactly why getting it right is one of the highest-leverage things you can do to get recommended.
If you only fix one thing first, fix this
Owners often want to do everything at once. The higher-leverage move is to start where AI looks first: your Google Business Profile and the plain-text facts on your homepage. Those two sources carry an outsized share of what AI knows about a local business.
Get your name, category, services, hours, and service area complete and consistent across both, and you've done more than most of your market has. Everything else — structured data, reviews, deeper content — builds on that foundation.
A strong, consistent base is what lets the more advanced work actually pay off.
How to see what AI says about your business right now
You can run this in two minutes, for nothing. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity and ask two questions:
"What do you know about [your business] in [your city]?"
"Recommend a [your type of business] in [your city]."
Then read the answers like a customer would. Do you show up at all? Are the facts right — hours, services, location? Does it mention what actually makes you good, or something generic?
Whatever you find is your starting line. If the AI doesn't know you, or doesn't have you quite right, that's not a verdict — it's a to-do list. And it's exactly the gap the steps above start to close.
If you'd rather not sort the to-do list alone, that's the conversation we're here for.
Want this done with you, not just explained to you?
We'll look at exactly where you stand, tell you what's worth doing in what order, and handle the parts you'd rather not. Twenty minutes to start.
Book a ConsultationNo cost. No obligation. Twenty minutes.