Go to ChatGPT right now. Type your business name and your city. Then type the service you provide and your city.
Read what it says back.
If you see something like "I don't have specific information about [your business name] in [your city]" — you've found the problem. Your business is invisible to AI search, and that matters more in 2026 than it did in 2024.
What "I Don't Have Specific Information" Actually Means
AI assistants don't search Google when you ask them a question. They draw on training data — information they've already processed, structured, and indexed. When ChatGPT says it doesn't have specific information about your plumbing business in Columbus, it means your business never gave it anything to work with.
Not because you did something wrong. Because this is new, and most local business sites were built before anyone thought to optimize for it.
The good news: AI systems are designed to ingest structured information. They follow the same signals, just different ones than Google.
The Three-Part Test
Run these three checks yourself. Each one tells you something different.
Check 1: Business name lookup
Go to ChatGPT (or Claude, or Perplexity — test all three). Type: "Tell me about [Business Name] in [City, State]."
If it returns your address, your hours, what you do, and maybe a review snippet — you're indexed. If it returns a generic response or says it doesn't know — you're not.
Check 2: Service + city lookup
Type: "Who is the best [your service] in [your city]?"
This is the real money query. It's how customers actually find businesses. If your competitors show up and you don't, the gap is structural — not about reputation.
Check 3: AI crawl check
Go to your site and type /robots.txt at the end of your URL. Look for lines that say User-agent: GPTBot or User-agent: anthropic-ai. If those lines say Disallow: / — you're actively blocking AI search engines from reading your site. Most sites inherit this from outdated WordPress or Squarespace templates.
Why AI Search Is Different From Google
Google's algorithm ranks pages based on links, authority, keywords, and hundreds of other signals. AI search works differently.
AI systems want to know: What does this business do? Who do they serve? Where are they? What questions do they answer?
The signals they respond to:
- llms.txt — a plain-text file in your site root that tells AI crawlers what your business is, what you do, and what pages are worth reading. Similar to robots.txt for search engines, but for AI systems.
- LocalBusiness schema — structured JSON-LD data in your site's
<head>that tells AI systems (and Google) your business name, address, phone, service area, and category. One block of code, enormous clarity payoff. - FAQ schema — structured Q&A pairs in your pages that AI systems can pull verbatim when answering user questions. If someone asks ChatGPT "how much does tree service cost in my city" and your FAQ answers that question with schema markup — you can literally appear in the AI's answer.
- Clear service + location pages — AI systems prefer factual, specific content. "John's Tree Service provides residential tree removal, stump grinding, and emergency services in Cleveland and surrounding Northeast Ohio." That sentence is more useful to an AI than a whole paragraph of marketing copy.
What It Takes to Fix It
The technical layer takes one deploy:
- Add an
llms.txtfile to your site root with your business description, services, and service area - Add
LocalBusinessschema markup to your homepage - Check and update
robots.txt— make sure you're not blockingGPTBot,anthropic-ai,PerplexityBot, orCCBot - Add
FAQPageschema to your FAQ or service pages
The content layer takes a few weeks to propagate:
- Write clear, factual service descriptions (not marketing copy)
- Build out your FAQ with real questions your customers ask
- Create location pages if you serve multiple cities
- Keep your Google Business Profile current (AI systems cross-reference GBP data)
None of this is technically complex. It's just new. Most agencies don't know to check for it because they built their playbooks before AI search existed.
What We Check In the Audit
Our five-module brand audit includes a dedicated AI Visibility module. When you run the audit at /start, we check:
- Whether you have an
llms.txtfile - Whether your
robots.txtis blocking AI crawlers - Whether you have
LocalBusinessandFAQPageschema markup - Whether your site has structured service descriptions AI can parse
- Whether we can find you by name in the major AI assistants right now
You get the full report in about two minutes. No sales call. No email pitch. Just the current state of your AI visibility — and a clear list of what needs to change.
The test takes two minutes. So does the audit. Start there and you'll know exactly where you stand.
— Murph, VibeTokens
