AI assistants now answer that question outright — three or four businesses, named, with a sentence about each. There is no page two and nobody scrolls. We run the question your customers are actually asking and show you exactly what came back.
For twenty years, being found meant ranking on Google: ten blue links, and a fair chance somebody scrolls as far as number six. A growing number of people no longer search that way. Someone who asks an assistant — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, or Google's own AI answers — does not get ten results. They get an answer. Usually three or four businesses, named, with a reason for each. There is no page two. So the question stops being where do we rank. It becomes something simpler and a great deal more uncomfortable: are we one of the names it says at all?
What you do, where you do it, when you are open and roughly what it costs. An assistant will not recommend what it cannot state.
"Near me" is a real place to an assistant. If your area is implied by your photographs rather than written in your words, you are competing for the wrong town — or for none.
Assistants lean on directories, reviews, listings and mentions elsewhere, not only on your own website. A claim your site makes and nothing else confirms reads exactly like a claim.
A phone number inside an image, opening hours in a PDF and prices "on request" are not penalised. They are invisible, which is worse.
A price list from 2019 and a Christmas-hours banner from two years ago tell an assistant the same thing: nobody is home.
Ranking and being cited overlap, but they are not the same job. Plenty of businesses sitting on page one of Google are never named by an assistant at all.
We ask the assistants the questions your customers ask. Who is a good [your trade] in [your town]. Who can come out today. What does it cost. Then we write down what each one said, word for word. That is a measurement, not an opinion, and you can repeat it yourself in a minute. What we will not tell you is that we can put you at the top. Nobody can. These are not ranked lists and they do not sell positions. What we can do is make sure the facts an assistant needs are present, readable, consistent and current — and then measure whether the answer changes. And if the check comes back and you are already being named, we will say so. There will be nothing to buy.
The same question put to four assistants, with each answer quoted as we received it and the date we asked.
The businesses that actually came back. Usually the most useful part of the report, and reliably the least comfortable.
What was missing, in plain English, shortest job first. Enough to act on yourself if you would rather.
The check is free. We need your business name, your town and what you do — nothing else. No access to anything, no login, no tracking code on your site. We send you the answers exactly as we received them, with a short note on what would change them. If you want us to do that work, we will quote for it. If you would rather do it yourself, the note is enough to work from. We would rather be the people who told you than the people who sold you something.
What people ask an assistant before they change accountant, and why the answer is rarely a firm.
A single missed enquiry here is a five-figure job. The arithmetic is on the page.
"Can somebody come out today" is the whole market, and it is asked out of hours.
Spring is eight weeks long and you spend all of it outdoors, away from the phone.
Ask it and it will name three or four businesses in the area. Whether yours is one of them depends on whether the facts an assistant needs — what you do, where, when you are open and roughly what it costs — are written down somewhere it can read. We run the question for you free and send you the answers word for word.
They lean on what they can state as fact: services described in words rather than pictures, a named town, opening hours, prices or ranges, and corroboration from directories, reviews and listings elsewhere. A claim only your own site makes reads exactly like a claim.
They overlap but they are not the same job. Ranking gets you into a list of ten; being cited gets you into an answer of three. Plenty of businesses sitting on page one of Google are never named by an assistant at all.
No, and neither can anybody else. These systems are not ranked lists and there is no position for sale in them. What we can do is make the facts present, readable, consistent and current, and then measure whether the answer changes.
Nothing, and very little. We need your business name, your town and what you do — no access to your website, no login and no tracking code. You get each assistant’s answer as we received it and a short note on what would change it.
Four required fields and two optional ones — together they are the question we put to the assistants on your behalf.