How to get your business found and recommended by AI search

Executive overview

AI has become the new search layer: Google's AI mode issues dozens of sub-queries, pulls from 250 million+ local listings, and surfaces results the same way a well-informed person would. Businesses that rely purely on ads and traditional SEO are missing the ranking signals AI actually uses.

The fix is not a new channel — it's the same best practices applied with a different reader in mind: the AI, not the human.

Invest in PR and authoritative content so AI cites you, not just people.

How AI mode works under the hood

• Uses query fan-out: a reasoning model generates dozens of related sub-queries from one user question.
• Executes those sub-queries as real Google searches, then synthesises results.
• Pulls from knowledge bases: 250M+ real-world places, 50B+ shopping products, live inventory updated 2B times/hour.
• Claimed and updated Google Business listings are directly eligible for this context.
• Ads do not influence organic AI recommendations — only web content and Google's knowledge graph do.

What this means for business visibility

• A mention in a top-10 list or public article signals reliability to the AI, just as it would to a person.
• PR now works even if no human reads the article — the AI finds it and uses it.
• Standard SEO best practices still apply: clear, helpful content on your website remains the baseline.
• AI increasingly handles complex, multi-sentence queries ("Italian, date night, light, bookable in advance") — optimise for intent, not just keywords.
• Reviews can surface in AI recommendations; genuine helpful reviews matter more than volume.

Agentic search: AI making calls on your behalf

• Google's agent can make phone calls to local businesses with no web presence, gather pricing and availability, and email results back.
• Demonstrated live: three grooming salons called, prices returned ($74–$105), one unreachable business flagged — all in 10 minutes.
• Businesses with no website are still reachable via phone; having a clear phone presence and answering calls matters.
• This extends to booking restaurants (OpenTable/Resy integration) and shopping with live stock data.

Tools to understand what people are searching for

• Google Trends: real-time trending data, underused by most businesses.
• Google Ads traffic estimator: shows volume estimates for keywords before you spend.
• Search Console: tracks how your site appears in search results.
• AI use cases skew toward "how to" queries, purchase decisions, and life advice — create content in those areas.
• Multimodal queries (images, voice) growing fast; Google Lens up 70% year-over-year.

Building products in the AI era

• The barrier to building software is falling — natural language is replacing code for many tasks.
• More builders means more competition; what differentiates is the quality of the idea, not technical difficulty.
• Find product-market fit by watching 10–12 people use a prototype; check if they still use it two months later.
• Key interview questions: "When did you realise you wanted to use this forever?" and "When did you decide to stop?"
• For consumer products, daily habit is the signal; for utilities, demographic willingness to pay is the signal.