Why AI doesn’t recommend your business — and what to do about it

Last month a woman who runs a shop two towns over asked me a question I’ve now heard a dozen times: “Somebody told me I should be showing up in ChatGPT. Is that a real thing, or is that just something people are selling?”

It’s a real thing. And the honest answer is that she probably isn’t showing up — not because her business isn’t good, but because her website is written for people and almost nothing else.

I’ve now run more than a thousand local business websites through the same set of checks. Here’s what the numbers look like: the average score is 46 out of 100. More than nine in ten score below passing. That includes beautiful sites, expensive sites, sites built by people who knew what they were doing.

So if this is a problem you have, you have a lot of company. That’s actually the good news, and I’ll come back to it.

What actually changed?

For twenty years, the game was ranking on a page of blue links. Somebody typed “oyster bar Newport Oregon,” got ten results, and picked one.

That still happens. But a growing share of people now ask a question first — in ChatGPT, in Perplexity, in the AI summary that sits above Google’s results — and they ask it in plain language. Where should I take my in-laws for dinner on the coast if one of them doesn’t eat seafood?

The AI doesn’t hand back ten links. It hands back two or three recommendations. And to make a recommendation, it has to be able to do three things: find you, understand what you do, and trust that you’re a reasonable answer to that particular question.

Most local websites fail at the first one.

Why does a crawler come back with a blank page?

Here’s what surprises business owners most. When I run their site through a crawler — the same kind of automated reader an AI search engine uses — a lot of pages come back nearly blank.

Not because there’s no content. Because the content is assembled in the visitor’s browser after the page loads, and most automated readers don’t wait around for that. Your homepage looks great to you and reads as an empty room to a machine.

Even when the text does come through, there’s usually nothing on the page that states, in a form a computer can parse, this is a business, this is its name, this is where it is, this is what it sells. Humans infer that from the logo and the photos. Machines don’t infer. They read a small block of structured data called schema, and on most local sites that block simply isn’t there.

That’s not a design failure. It’s a translation failure. Your site says everything a person needs and nothing a machine needs, and now the machine is the one making the introduction.

What decides whether you get recommended?

1. Can a machine read your page at all?

Open your site, right-click, and choose View Page Source. That’s roughly what an automated reader sees. Search that page for a sentence you know is on your homepage. If you can’t find it, neither can they.

This is the one that has to be fixed first, because everything else sits on top of it. Adding structured data to a page that doesn’t render is like putting a sign inside a locked building.

2. Does anything say who you are?

Somewhere on your site there should be a block of structured data that states your business name, your address, your service area, your phone number, and a link to your other profiles. It’s invisible to visitors. It’s the single most useful thing you can add for AI search, because it’s how an engine goes from “there’s a website here” to “this is a specific business I can describe.”

Without it, an AI has to guess who you are from context. Sometimes it guesses right. Often it just recommends somebody else.

3. Do you answer the questions people actually ask?

This is the part most people skip, and it’s the part that does the most work.

AI search engines are answering machines. They’re looking for content shaped like an answer. If a page on your site asks How much does a bathroom remodel cost in Lincoln County? and then answers it plainly in the next paragraph, that’s a passage an engine can lift and cite. If your services page says “quality craftsmanship since 2009,” there’s nothing there to quote.

The questions aren’t hard to find. You already know them — they’re what people ask you on the phone before they book. Write down the last ten. Those are your headings.

4. Does anyone else vouch for you?

AI engines cross-check. What your site claims matters less if nothing else on the internet confirms it.

A Google Business Profile with real reviews, a consistent listing in the chamber directory, a mention in a local news piece, a link from a supplier or an industry association — those are corroboration. They’re also, conveniently, the same things that have always made a small business look legitimate to a human being.

Make sure your business name, address, and phone number are spelled exactly the same way everywhere. Not close. The same. “Suite B” and “Ste. B” are two different businesses to a machine.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a new website to fix this?

Usually no. If your site renders properly and you can add code to it — most Squarespace, WordPress, Shopify, and Webflow sites can — this is a fix to the site you have, not a rebuild. The exception is a site whose pages come back empty to a crawler. That one can’t be patched from the inside.

How long before I see a difference?

Search engines re-crawl within days. AI answers update on a lag that nobody outside those companies fully understands. Expect weeks, not hours. Anyone promising faster is guessing.

Is this different from SEO?

It overlaps. Good SEO helps. But traditional SEO is about ranking on a list, and this is about being described accurately enough to be recommended. A site can rank respectably on Google and be completely uncitable by an AI.

Can I do this myself?

Most of it, yes. The question-writing is the part only you can do, and it’s the part that matters most. The structured data is fiddly but not mysterious — it’s a block of code you paste into your site’s header.

What does it cost to have someone do it?

For a typical small business site with no structural problems, this is contained work with a clear end. Get a specific quote and a specific list of what’s being changed. If someone quotes you a monthly retainer before they’ve looked at your site, keep calling.

What would I do this week?

1. View your page source and confirm your actual copy is in there.
2. Write down the ten questions customers ask you before they buy.
3. Turn those into headings on your homepage and your main service page, with a plain answer under each.
4. Claim and fill out your Google Business Profile, and ask five recent customers for reviews.
5. Make your name, address, and phone identical everywhere they appear online.

That’s four of the five done without spending a dollar, and it will move you further than most paid tools will.

Why is this good news?

Remember the number: nine out of ten local business sites are failing this right now. Your competitors are in the same boat, and most of them don’t know it yet.

That’s an unusual situation. Normally getting found online means outspending somebody. Right now it mostly means being the first business in your category to translate your website into a language machines can read — and that’s a weekend of work, not a war chest.

The field is wide open. It won’t stay that way.

Jeremy Burke — twenty years in newspaper publishing on the Oregon Coast, where the job was understanding a business well enough to help it grow. Now doing the same thing with different tools.