How to Get Your Business Found in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Other AI Search Tools
A potential client asks ChatGPT to recommend a company that offers your service. Another asks Google how to solve a problem your team handles every day. A third uses Perplexity to compare suppliers.
Does your business appear in those answers? If it does, is the description accurate? To improve your chances of being found in AI search, your website needs to be accessible, explain your services clearly, and answer the questions buyers ask when choosing a provider. You also need to check what the tools currently show. There is no setting that guarantees a mention or citation.
The good news is that you can check some of this yourself. The harder part is working out why your business appears for certain questions and is missing from others.
Skip ahead: Help our brand to be found on AI search
What does “being found in AI search” mean?
Your website might appear as a link in a Google AI Overview, a cited source in a ChatGPT or Perplexity answer, or one of several companies named in a recommendation. A tool might also describe your business without linking to it.
Those outcomes matter in different ways. A link can bring someone to your website. A mention may lead them to search for your company later. An inaccurate description may put them off before they ever speak to you.
For a B2B company, appearing somewhere is less useful than appearing when a potential customer is researching a service you want to sell.
How do you check if your site appears in Google AI Overviews?
Start with Google Search Console.
Select your website property, go to Performance, and open the Generative AI performance report (Search).
Look at impressions over time, then open the Pages tab to see which URLs from your site have appeared in Google’s AI search features. You can also review the countries and devices where those impressions occurred.
This report covers AI Overviews and AI Mode together. An impression means a link to your site was shown to a user in one of those features. It does not give you the exact question behind every impression or tell you whether the person clicked. If you cannot see the report, Google lists insufficient impressions among the possible reasons.
Then test a few questions yourself in Google. Choose questions your buyers actually ask, such as “Who provides national POS fulfilment in South Africa?” or “What should I look for in procurement software for a manufacturer?” Note whether an AI Overview appears and, if it does, which companies and pages it links to.
One manual search is a snapshot. The Search Console report shows a broader pattern, while your own searches let you read the answer and judge whether it represents your business well.
How do you check if your business appears in ChatGPT?
There are two useful checks.
First, open Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition. Look at Session source / medium for visits from chatgpt.com. Check which pages those visitors reached and whether they went on to enquire. OpenAI says links from ChatGPT search results include utm_source=chatgpt.com, which helps identify this traffic.
Second, ask ChatGPT the questions a prospective client would ask. Request current web information, then inspect the answer and its source links. Is your business named? Does it cite your website, another website, or neither? Is the description correct?
GA4 shows visits, not every appearance. Someone may see your company in an answer and never click. Conversely, one test question cannot tell you how often other people see your company. Use both checks, and keep a record of the questions you test.
How do you check Claude and Perplexity?
Ask each tool a consistent set of buyer questions and inspect its answers and citations.
In Claude, make sure web search is enabled when you want to check answers grounded in current web sources. Anthropic says Claude’s web-search answers include citations.
For Perplexity, check whether your business is named, whether your website is cited, and which competitors appear. Do the same for Claude. Then check GA4’s Traffic acquisition report for visits attributed to either platform.
These manual checks show what happened for your chosen questions at the time you asked them. Analytics shows visits that reached your site. Together they are useful, but they do not amount to a complete count of every mention across either tool.
Why might a competitor appear in AI overviews instead of you?
Sometimes the answer is technical: An important page cannot be found or read. More often than not though, the problem is less glamorous: Your website does not explain what your business knows.
Imagine you offer software as a service. Your website says you provide “end-to-end solutions”. A competitor’s site explains that it offers software, AI, and data solutions for manufacturing and industrial companies in Cape Town.
A IT manager asks: Who can connect our information, migrate it to the cloud, and turn our data into digital insights? The competitor’s website contains a clearer answer to that question. It is easier for the buyer to assess, and it gives a search tool more relevant information to draw on. That does not guarantee the competitor will be cited, but it shows where your page needs work.
The gap might also sit elsewhere. Perhaps your service page is strong, but a buyer is asking how providers compare. Perhaps you have an article that answers the question, but nothing links to it from the rest of your site. Perhaps another website describes your company differently from the way you describe it yourself.
That is why an AI visibility review needs to look at the questions, the answers, and the underlying pages, rather than counting mentions alone.
What should you do to improve your chances of being visible on AI overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc?
Start with the service you most want to grow. Then work through these steps:
Start with an SEO / GEO audit. Your website might have some technical issues that need attention first, before we start building SEO / GEO visibility. As an experienced technical auditor, I help businesses plug the leaky holes in their websites so they can retain and grow their SEO and GEO equity.
Find the buyer questions. Use your search data, enquiries, and sales conversations. Include questions people ask before shortlisting a provider, not only broad searches for your service name. A freelance digital marketer with GEO and SEO expertise, like myself, can help here.
Check the current answers. Search those questions in Google, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Record the companies mentioned, pages cited, and any inaccurate or incomplete descriptions.
Review your own pages. This can be tough, especially if your company has its own lingo or understanding of brand, products, and services. A freelance digital marketer can help you understand if a reader quickly understands what you provide, who it is for, where you operate, how it works, and what makes your offer suitable. If a useful answer is missing, decide whether it belongs on a service page or in a supporting article.
Check access and indexing. Confirm that Google can index your important pages and that relevant search crawlers are not being blocked unintentionally. OpenAI and Perplexity provide guidance on access for their search crawlers. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible for a Search snippet to be eligible as a supporting link in its AI features.
Measure what changes. Revisit Search Console, GA4, and the same set of buyer questions over time. Look for relevant page visibility and qualified enquiries, as well as citations and mentions.
The right fix depends on what you find. One company may need a technical change. Another may need to rewrite its main service pages. A third may have good pages but be missing answers to the questions buyers ask before making contact.
Can anyone guarantee that AI tools will recommend your company?
No. You can make your business easier to find, understand, and assess. You can’t demand Google, ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity include it in an answer. Paid media can help in traditional search spaces if you want guaranteed visibility.
Be wary of a guaranteed citation or an “AI optimisation package” proposed before anyone has reviewed your site. There are literally no shortcuts, no silver bullets in SEO and GEO. Just consistent, steady work, and optimised content creation.
How I help B2B companies get found
I work with B2B companies on SEO and GEO, or generative engine optimisation. I start with the services you want to grow and the questions buyers ask before they enquire.
I then do a site audit, review your search and analytics data, test relevant AI answers, examine competitors, and audit the pages those tools can find. The result is a prioritised plan: which technical issues need fixing, which pages need improving, and which buyer questions deserve new content. I can also write the service pages and supporting articles that put your expertise into clear words.
If you want to know why your business is missing from the searches and AI answers that matter to you, send me your website and the service you most want to grow. I’ll give you a snapshot of your website’s AI health score. We grow from there.
Contact me