AI search3 min read
When the customer asks ChatGPT instead of Google
A growing slice of your customers don't search. They ask. "Where can I get office catering in Fitzroy?" And an assistant answers with two or three names. Getting into that answer is the new being on page one.
Assistants read, they don't browse
An AI assistant doesn't admire your photography or your animations. It reads text and structured facts: what you sell, where, when you're open, how ordering works, what things cost. If those facts aren't stated plainly somewhere on your site, the assistant either skips you or, worse, guesses.
The five facts test
Can a stranger find, in plain text on your site: what you sell, your service area, your hours, how to order, and roughly what it costs? Read your own site pretending you know nothing. Most owners are shocked by how much lives only in their head, or in an Instagram post from 2023.
Fixing this is unglamorous work: a clear FAQ, stated hours, a service-area sentence on the right pages. It takes an afternoon and it makes you legible to every assistant at once.
The takeaway: make your five basic facts findable in plain text. It's the cheapest visibility win of the decade.