Guides

Getting found on Google, and now on AI too

By Ashton Foran, director. Published 29th July 2026. Updated 9th September 2026.

Getting found on Google comes down to six free things: a complete Google Business Profile, reviews, a Bing listing, plain sentences saying where you work, a site a machine can read, and the same name and number everywhere. Most small businesses are missing the same handful of them. None of this needs an agency.

The same groundwork is what gets you named by ChatGPT and Gemini, because they read the same indexes. If that is the part you came for, we go through it properly in how to get found on ChatGPT and Gemini.

1. Your Google Business Profile

The single biggest one, and it costs nothing.

It is the panel that appears on the right when somebody searches your name, with your hours, photos and reviews. Claim it, fill in every field, pick the right categories, and add photos of actual jobs.

Then add your website to it. A surprising number of profiles say "Add website" years after the business got one, which means Google knows about the business and not the site.

2. Reviews

Reviews do two jobs. They move you up the local results, and they are what a person reads before ringing.

Ask after every job, while they are still pleased. A text with the link works better than anything else. Most people will do it and almost nobody thinks to ask.

3. Bing, which everyone skips

Bing matters more than it looks.

When somebody asks ChatGPT to recommend a plumber, it searches Bing. That is the index behind it. If you are not in Bing, you are not in the answer.

Bing Webmaster Tools is free, and Bing Places can import straight from your Google profile, so it is about ten minutes.

4. Say where you work, in words

If you cover five towns, the towns should appear on your website in normal sentences. Not stuffed in a list at the bottom, written into the page like a human wrote it.

Search engines cannot guess your area. Neither can an AI.

5. Be readable by a machine

This is the newer part. Assistants read pages differently to people. They struggle with text baked into images, sites that need JavaScript before anything appears, and pages with no clear structure.

If your prices, services and contact details only exist inside a graphic, a person can read them and a machine cannot. Put them in text. There is more on what the assistants can and cannot reach in the ChatGPT and Gemini guide, including the hosting setting that blocks them without telling you.

6. Consistency

Your name, address and phone number should be identical everywhere. Google, Bing, Facebook, directories.

"087 123 4567" and "+353 87 123 4567" and "0871234567" should all be the same string. A small thing with a real effect.

What takes time

Directory listings publish in a few weeks and get indexed weeks after that. AI assistants start naming a business at roughly two to three months, dependable at six or more, never guaranteed.

Anybody promising faster is guessing.

The bit that matters most

None of the above works if the underlying site is slow, broken, or has nothing worth reading. The listings are supporting signals. The lever is having pages worth pointing at, which is what a rebuild fixes when a site is thin, and how one satellite installer went from invisible to a page for every town he covers.