How to check if ChatGPT and Google's AI can find your business

More customers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI answers which local business to use, instead of scrolling a list of links. If those tools cannot read your website, or it does not say clearly what you do and where, you are left out of the answer. This guide shows how to check where you stand by hand, the seven things AI tools need from your site, and a free audit that checks them for you in a couple of minutes.

Why this matters now

Search used to mean ten blue links and a map. Now Google often writes an AI answer above its results, and plenty of people skip Google altogether and ask an AI assistant directly: who fits boilers near me, which salon in Norwich does balayage, is there a landscaper who covers Wymondham.

Those answers are put together from what the web says about you, and your own website is the source you control. A site that is easy to reach, clear about who you are, and full of plain answers to real questions gives an AI tool something good to work from. A site that is slow, vague or hidden from crawlers gives it very little.

The good news is that most of what AI tools need is the same as what Google has always needed. If you have done the basics of local SEO, you are partway there already.

Can you just ask ChatGPT?

Yes, and it is worth doing, as long as you do it fairly and do not read too much into one answer.

• Ask what a customer would ask. Not "tell me about Your Business", but the job and the place: "Who does patio cleaning in Norwich?" or "Best sports massage near the Norwich Lanes".
• Use more than one tool. ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI answers often name different businesses for the same question.
• Ask on more than one day. Answers change from one day to the next, and with small changes in wording.
• Write down what you see. The question, the tool, the date, whether you were mentioned, and who was named instead.

One answer proves very little either way. Being left out once does not mean an AI tool cannot see you, and being mentioned once does not mean it always will. What you can control is the thing those tools read: your website.

What AI tools need from your website

These are the seven areas that decide how easily search engines and AI tools can find, read and quote your business. Each comes with a check you can do yourself.

1. Pages they can actually reach

If a page carries a noindex tag, or your robots.txt file blocks crawlers, search engines and AI tools may never read it. This is more common than it sounds: a "discourage search engines" setting left switched on after a WordPress launch is a classic. Check yourself: visit yourwebsite.co.uk/robots.txt and look for Disallow: /, and in WordPress check Settings, then Reading.

2. Clear business details

Your business name, what you do, where you work and how to contact you should be stated plainly and the same way everywhere: on your site, your Google Business Profile and the directories that list you. Check yourself: could a stranger tell, from your homepage alone, what you do and which towns you cover?

3. Answers to the questions customers ask

AI tools quote pages that answer a question directly. A page with the question as a heading and a short, clear answer underneath is far easier to quote than a wall of text. Check yourself: write down the five questions customers ask you most, and see whether your site answers each one in plain words.

4. Pages with substance

A service page that says "we offer quality landscaping" gives an AI tool nothing to work with. One that says what is included, the areas covered, roughly how long it takes and how to get a quote does. Check yourself: does each service have its own page, with a clear next step?

5. Structured information

Schema markup is code that labels your business details for machines: your name, address, opening hours, services and reviews. It does not guarantee anything on its own, but it removes guesswork. Check yourself: paste a page into Google's Rich Results Test and see what it finds.

6. Local presence

For a local business, AI tools look for where you work and what customers say. Your areas, your address if customers visit, and reviews you can point to all help. Check yourself: is your Google Business Profile complete, and does your site link to it? Our guide to why a competitor shows above you covers the map side in detail.

7. A site that works on a phone

Most people asking an AI tool are on a phone, and so are most people who then click through. A slow mobile page loses them. Check yourself: run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile result.

The quick way: a free AI search audit

Checking all of that by hand takes an evening. We built a free tool that does it in a couple of minutes: the Brava AI search audit. Enter your web address and it reads your homepage and up to seven key pages, respects your robots.txt, and asks Google PageSpeed Insights how your homepage performs on a phone.

It runs 36 checks across the seven areas above and gives you a score out of 100, a score for each area, and your top findings, free and straight away. Enter your email and the full report adds an action plan and every check you passed, also free. You can add a competitor's address too and see both scores side by side.

Every finding says what was found, why it matters and how to fix it, and quotes the evidence from your own pages. Findings are ranked by how much they matter and how much work they take, so you know what to do first.

The full report also includes a snapshot of the AI side: it asks an AI assistant with live web search three questions your customers might ask, and shows whether you were mentioned and who was named instead.

What a score can and cannot tell you

A score is useful for one thing: showing whether the foundations are in place, and which ones are not. It measures what is on your website, which is the part you control.

What it cannot do is promise that any AI tool will recommend you. Nobody can, because those tools decide their own answers and the answers change between tools and from day to day. Be wary of anyone selling an "AI ranking" or guaranteed mentions. That is why the audit scores the foundations, and shows the AI answers separately as a dated snapshot rather than folding them into the number.

What to fix first

Start with anything that stops your pages being read at all, because nothing else matters until that is fixed: a stray noindex, a blocking robots.txt, pages that will not load.

Then make your business details clear and consistent, give each service its own page that answers real questions, and add schema that matches what each page shows. Finish with speed on a phone, which often comes down to oversized images. Our list of five SEO jobs you can do yourself covers several of these.

If you would rather have it done for you, that is what our AI search optimisation work does, and it is part of Growth Plus.

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