Ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity to recommend a company like yours in your city. Read the names it gives you. If yours is not among them, you are not alone, and the reason is usually not the quality of your work.
We ran this test on ourselves. We asked an AI assistant to recommend B2B marketing agencies in Cairo. It named several. It did not name us. When we looked at why, the answer had very little to do with our website and almost everything to do with what the rest of the internet says about us.
This article explains how that works, how to check your own position in about fifteen minutes, and what to change.
How an AI assistant decides who to recommend
When someone asks an assistant for a recommendation, the assistant is not opening your website and judging your services. It is looking for a confident answer, and confidence comes from agreement.
Assistants that search the web while they answer pull from pages that already rank and from sources that summarise a category: directories, review sites, comparison articles, news, and lists written by people who are not the company itself. Assistants that answer from what they learned earlier lean on the same kind of material, because that is what was widely published about a category.
So the businesses that get named tend to share one thing. Several independent sources describe them in a similar way: what they do, where they are, who they work with. When an assistant sees the same facts repeated in different places, it treats them as safe to repeat.
A company that only describes itself, on its own site, gives the assistant one source. One source is easy to ignore.
Why a good website is not enough
Most companies we speak to have invested in their website. That still matters. Clear service pages, plain answers to common questions and a fast, well-structured site all help, and our GEO vs SEO guide covers that side in detail.
But your website is your own claim about yourself. Assistants are built to be careful about repeating claims that nothing else supports. What moves you from "possible" to "named" is outside confirmation:
- a listing on the directories that cover your industry and city, with the same name, phone number and description as your website
- reviews and ratings from real clients on platforms other people use to compare suppliers
- case studies or mentions that someone other than you published, such as a client's announcement, an industry article or a partner's page
- consistent basic facts everywhere, so the assistant is never unsure whether two listings are the same company
When we looked at the agencies that were named in our own test, each of them had at least some of this. We had almost none.
How to check what AI assistants say about you
You can see your own position quickly. Use a private or logged-out browser window, so your history does not shape the answers, and try each assistant you think your buyers use.
- Ask the buyer's question, not your question. Write it the way a client would: "Who are the best [your service] companies in [your city] for [your type of client]?" Not your company name.
- Ask a second, narrower version. Add the detail that makes you different: industry, size of client, language, budget level.
- Ask about you directly. "What do you know about [your company name]?" Note anything wrong, missing or out of date.
- Ask where the answer comes from. Assistants that search the web can usually show sources. Write down which sites they cite.
- Repeat in a month. Answers change. One test is a snapshot, not a verdict.
The most useful output is the list of sources in step 4. It tells you exactly where the assistant looks for companies like yours, and that is where you need to be.
What to change, in order
1. Make your basic facts identical everywhere
Choose one version of your company name, one phone number, one description of what you do and one list of services. Use them on your website, your Google Business Profile, your LinkedIn page and every directory. Small differences, such as an old phone number or a different name spelling, make it harder for an assistant to be sure all of these are the same company.
2. Get listed where your category is compared
For B2B services, that usually means the directories buyers use to shortlist suppliers, plus your Google Business Profile. For local businesses, it means maps and review platforms. Start with the sources the assistants cited in your test. Fill every field, use the same description, and add real work examples where the platform allows it.
3. Collect reviews from real clients
A short, specific review from a named client on a platform that verifies reviews is worth more than many testimonials on your own site. Ask the clients who are genuinely happy, and make it easy: send the link and suggest they mention what you did and what changed. Never write reviews for them or pay for them.
4. Publish answers, not slogans
Assistants quote sentences that directly answer a question. Pages full of slogans give them nothing to quote. For each service, write plain answers to the questions buyers ask before they call you: who it is for, what it includes, how long it takes, how you measure results. Our guide to questions to ask before hiring a marketing agency is an example of the questions buyers actually bring.
5. Earn mentions you did not write
This is the slowest step and the strongest. A client announcing that they started working with you, a partner listing you as a recommended supplier, an industry publication quoting you on a topic you know well. Each one is an independent source that agrees with your own description of yourself.
Three situations and what to do first
You are a new company with a good website and little else. Start with step 1 and step 2. They take days, not months, and they create the first outside sources an assistant can find.
You are an established company that assistants describe wrongly. Find where the wrong information lives, usually an old directory listing or an outdated article, and correct it at the source. Then make sure the correct version appears in more places than the wrong one.
You are named, but only for a narrow question. Look at which sources mention you and which mention your competitors for the wider question. The gap is usually a category directory or comparison article where you are missing.
An honest caution
Nobody can promise that an AI assistant will name you. The assistants change how they choose sources, answers vary from one day to the next, and different assistants give different answers to the same question. Anyone who guarantees a placement is guessing.
What you can do is make sure that when an assistant looks for companies like yours, it finds consistent, independent sources that describe you clearly. That also happens to help the human buyers who check those same directories and reviews before they call.
Common mistakes
- Writing your own reviews or listing fake ones. Platforms remove them, and they damage trust with the buyers who read them.
- Different descriptions on every platform. Pick one and reuse it.
- Testing once and drawing conclusions. Answers vary. Test the same questions monthly and look at the trend.
- Only fixing the website. Your site is one source. Assistants look for agreement across many.
If you want help checking how AI assistants describe your company and what to fix first, our SEO and GEO service starts with exactly that test.