AI search optimisation: why being recommended by ChatGPT now matters as much as ranking on Google

What actually changes when a machine does the recommending

Traditional search rewards a page that matches a phrase. An assistant does something different: it reads, summarises and then vouches for an answer. It will only vouch for something it can state confidently and support with clear wording it found on a site it was allowed to read.

So the winning page is no longer the one stuffed with the right keyword. It is the one that answers a real question in a self-contained, quotable way.

The benefits of getting this right

• You reach buyers much later in their decision — someone asking an assistant for a recommendation is usually ready to act.
• You appear on a list of two or three, not a list of ten, so a mention is worth far more than a mid-page ranking.
• The same work lifts ordinary Google performance: clearer headings, real answers and structured data help both audiences.
• It compounds. Once assistants can describe your business accurately, they keep doing so across thousands of conversations you never see.
• It protects you from being described wrongly — vague sites get summarised with guesswork.

Why most sites are invisible to AI assistants

• The homepage says something like "solutions that deliver" and never states plainly what the business does.
• Service areas, prices and opening details live in a picture or a PDF, so they cannot be read.
• There are no direct answers to the questions customers actually ask.
• No structured data, so the assistant has to infer your name, location and services.
• The robots file quietly blocks AI crawlers, so the site is never read at all.
• Nobody else on the web mentions the business, so there is nothing to corroborate it.

What we do about it

Pierblu runs an AI Visibility scan that reads your live site exactly the way both a search engine and an assistant would. You get two separate scores out of 100 — one for search engines, one for AI visibility — plus the blunt version of what an assistant would currently say about you and what it cannot tell.

• A prioritised fix list, split into Critical, High Priority, Recommended and Optional, each with a plain-English reason it matters.
• Ready-to-paste website copy written for your business, with the page it belongs on.
• Suggested questions and answers, so assistants have something quotable to lift.
• Structured-data code your developer can drop straight into the page.
• Ideas for getting mentioned on other sites, because assistants trust businesses the wider web talks about.
• Pages worth adding, based on subjects your customers search for that your site does not cover.
• A check on whether your site is telling AI tools to stay away — and how to stop it.

A sensible order of work

• Unblock the AI crawlers and fix anything marked Critical.
• Rewrite the homepage and top service pages so the first paragraph states what you do, for whom, and where.
• Add a genuine questions-and-answers section using the wording customers use.
• Add structured data for the business, its services and its location.
• Earn a handful of real mentions elsewhere — directories, partners, press, case studies.
• Re-scan a few weeks later and watch both scores move.

Common questions