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Being found by search, and now by the AIs

People are asking ChatGPT and Google’s AI which plumber to call. Whether your site is the answer is measurable, and it is a different question from where you rank.

For twenty years “being found” meant one thing: where you came up on Google for the phrase somebody typed. That still matters. But a growing share of questions are being asked of an AI, and the AI does not show ten blue links. It gives one answer, and cites the sites it trusted to write it.

Two different questions

Where you rank for a phrase is one question. The tools for it are well known: search terms, how hard each one is to win, links from other websites, page speed. Whether an AI names you when somebody asks about your kind of business is another question, and until recently nobody could answer it.

Measuring it

It can be measured now. For a phrase, you can see how often the AI answers mention you, which questions led to it, and which of your pages they quote. You can also see how often they name a competitor instead. You can also put one question to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity and read what each one said, and whether your name was in it.

What to do about it

Mostly the same things that were always right, done more honestly. Plain pages that say what you do and where. Headings that mean what they say. A description on every page, and a site that loads fast on a phone. The AIs read the same page a person does, so write it for the person.