I build websites, and even I nearly got left behind by AI search

I'll be honest with you.

A while back I had a slightly sickening moment. I do this for a living. I build websites, I help businesses get found online, and I opened ChatGPT one evening and asked it to recommend a web designer for a small business in my area.

It didn't mention me.

Not once. I sat there, the person who does this for other people, invisible to the exact tool my own customers were starting to use.

That was the moment it stopped being theory.

What had I got wrong about AI search?

I'd been treating AI search like a thing coming down the road. Interesting, worth watching, something to sort out eventually. Meanwhile people were quietly changing how they look for businesses, and "eventually" was already too late.

Here's what I'd missed. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI "who's good at this near me," they don't get a list to browse. They get a short answer with a couple of names in it. If you're one of those names, you're in the running. If you're not, you don't exist for that person. There's no page two to be found on. There's just the answer, and whether you're in it.

I wasn't in it. And if I wasn't, plenty of businesses I could genuinely help weren't either, and had no idea.

What did I actually do about it?

I did the unglamorous work. The same work I now do for clients, because I trust it, because I watched it move my own visibility.

I made sure my business said the same thing everywhere. Same name, same location, same description, across my site and every listing. AI cross-checks all of that to decide if you're real and which "you" it's looking at, and mine was a bit of a mess.

I stopped writing like a brochure. "Trusted experts delivering quality solutions" tells a machine nothing. I rewrote things to say plainly what I do, who for, and where. Boring, specific, clear.

I added the questions people actually ask, with proper answers. The stuff that comes up in every first chat. Pricing, process, what's included. Turns out AI loves a clear question and a clear answer, because it can lift it straight into a response.

And I asked a few happy clients for reviews that said what I'd actually done and what changed for them. Not "great service." The specifics.

Why am I telling you this?

Not to sell you a panic. To tell you the truth, which is that this caught out someone who does it professionally, so there's no shame if it's caught you out too.

Most small business websites were built for how search worked a few years ago, and nobody sent a memo saying the rules changed. If you've never checked whether you show up in AI, that's not a failing. It's just a blind spot, and blind spots are fixable.

So here's my honest ask. Tonight, open ChatGPT or Google and ask it to recommend a business like yours. See if your name comes up. It costs ten minutes and it'll tell you more than any sales pitch.