How AI chooses who to recommend
Neither ChatGPT nor Gemini knows your business on its own. When someone asks for a recommendation, they search the internet much like a search engine does. They load a few pages and build an answer from them.
Two things follow from that. What you haven’t written about yourself anywhere, AI doesn’t know. And nobody can guarantee you a recommendation, because the tool decides that, not you and not me.
The good news is that this is no new science. Google itself says in its guidance for site owners that appearing in its AI overviews takes no special extra optimization. The same rules apply as for regular search.
A website that is ready for AI is a website where everything important is written clearly, specifically and as text.
Seven steps even a small business can handle
1. Say what you do and where, in one sentence at the top
A robot and a person both need to know right away who you are. Instead of “Welcome to our website,” write something like: “Women’s and men’s hair salon in Brno, open on Saturdays too.” Your trade, your location and what sets you apart.
2. Keep the important things as text, not as an image
A price list photographed on a phone, opening hours inside a picture, or an offer in a PDF. A person can read it, a robot often can’t. The same goes for websites where the content only loads through a script. Many AI robots don’t run scripts and see nothing but an empty page.
A quick test: try selecting the text on the page with your mouse. If you can’t, it’s an image.
3. Answer the questions people really ask
People ask AI in full sentences. “How much does it cost to replace a water heater?” “Can I pay by card?” “Do you travel outside Brno?” Put frequently asked questions on your website. The question as a heading, the answer right below it, and the main point in the first sentence.
4. Be specific
AI has nothing to take from “quality services at great prices.” It does from “women’s haircut from CZK 650.” Write prices, times, locations and numbers. If you’re unsure whether to publish prices at all, I have a separate article on that.
5. Keep the same details everywhere
Your business name, address, phone and opening hours should match on your website, in your Google Business Profile, on Firmy.cz, Mapy.cz and Facebook. When the details differ, a machine doesn’t know which to trust. It often picks the outdated one.
6. Collect reviews and mentions elsewhere
AI doesn’t only read what you write about yourself. It also reads what others write about you. Ask happy customers for a review on Google. Don’t buy reviews and don’t make them up. Five real reviews do more than fifty suspicious ones.
7. Don’t shut the door on robots
Every website has a robots.txt file that tells robots where they may go. If you block ChatGPT’s search robot in it, you won’t show up in its answers. OpenAI says so directly. On top of that, some services block AI robots by default. Ask whoever looks after your website.
The robot for search and the robot for training models are two different ones. You can opt out of training and still stay in search.
Then there is what’s called structured data. It’s an invisible label in the website’s code that tells machines your business name, address, opening hours and prices. It has to match what’s visible on the page.
What you can safely skip
- An llms.txt file. For now it’s only a proposal. Google says it doesn’t require any new files for AI. It does no harm, but don’t start there.
- “AI optimization” with a guarantee. Anyone who promises that ChatGPT will recommend you is promising something they don’t control.
- Copy written for robots. Paragraphs stuffed with keywords don’t work on people or on machines.
- Dozens of AI-generated articles. The internet is full of generic text. One article from your own practice is worth more.
How I do it on my own website
On simonweby.cz all the text sits right in the page code, so a robot can read it without scripts. Prices are given as numbers, pages have frequently asked questions and the code carries structured data. In my robots.txt file I explicitly allow the content to be used in search and in AI answers.
I think about client websites the same way. Whether AI recommends me because of that is not up to me. What is up to me is that when it looks at my website, it finds the right details.
Why it pays off even if you don’t care about AI
None of those seven steps is work for robots alone. A clear sentence at the top, prices, frequently asked questions and the same details everywhere help on Google too. Above all, they help the person who opens your website on the tram and wants to know within a minute whether you’re the right fit.
If your website isn’t bringing customers even now, start with the article Why your website brings no customers.