AI findability
What an AI assistant reads, and why it names someone else
Assistants answer the question your customer types, and most of the time they answer it with an intermediary. These pages report what we counted across thousands of stored answers, explain what a site can actually change, and set out the method behind every number.
Start here
- For business owners
How do I check what ChatGPT says about my business?
A ten-minute method: what to type into ChatGPT and Claude, why one answer proves nothing, and how to read a result where a directory got named instead of you.
- For agencies and freelancers
How do I explain AI findability to my web design clients?
For freelancers and small agencies: the numbers that make the case, the fixes that live in the site you built, and how to show a client the problem live.
- For business owners
What is llms.txt and do I need one?
A plain text file at /llms.txt that tells an AI reader what your site is and which pages matter. What belongs in one, what it cannot do, how to check yours.
- For business owners
Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my business?
AI assistants named a directory in 1,407 of 2,232 stored hire answers and the business asked about in six. Why that happens, and the fixes worth doing first.
The evidence
- The dataset
What the probed dataset shows, at cohort level
Three cohorts, two countries, 7,488 stored AI answers: the intermediary rate in US weddings, Phoenix home services and Utrecht installers, with the readiness scores underneath and the limits stated.
- Finding
Ask AI who to hire locally and it names a directory, not a business
Across 5,904 stored AI answers in nine US cities, 63 percent of the answers to who-should-I-hire questions named The Knot, WeddingWire, Yelp, Zola or Thumbtack. Six named the local business the question was about. The counts, per city.
- Finding
The security defaults that hide a business from AI
A website went from 60 to 93 on our audit in one day. Nothing changed in its design or copy: two Cloudflare defaults were turned off. What those settings do, and how to check yours.
- Finding
We asked two AI engines about 173 wedding vendors. 153 were never named.
ChatGPT and Claude were asked the questions couples ask in Austin, Nashville, and Charleston. Most wedding vendors never appeared in a single answer. The counts, per city, from stored evidence.
Your own site
Find out what an AI reader sees on yours
The same audit behind every number on these pages, run on your address, with the exact line quoted behind every deduction.