What this is, in plain words
More and more customers ask an AI assistant - ChatGPT, Claude, or the AI answer at the top of Google - before they search the old way.
This is how you get named in that AI answer, so a customer hears about you, not your competitor. It's work on pages you already own. No ad spend.
Why it's worth your time
If the AI answers a buyer's question and never mentions you, that buyer never lands on your site. They don't even know you were an option.
Get picked once and it tends to stick - the AI keeps giving your page as the answer. That's why this pays back: small, one-off fixes to pages you already have.
You can do most of this yourself in an afternoon. A couple of steps you may want to hand to whoever looks after your website - that's noted where it comes up.
The five steps, in order
Step 1 - make it dead clear who you're
An AI won't name a business it can't pin down. Line these up:
- Same name everywhere. Pick one. "Acme Pty Ltd" in one place and "Acme Australia" in another reads to the AI as two different businesses. Same name and details on your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, socials.
- Your details on your own site, in the standard format. Business name, ABN, address, phone written into the page in the format AI tools expect. Most website builders have a setting for this; if not, this is the one bit to ask your web person to add (say: "add Organization structured data with our name, ABN and address").
- A free public listing. Wikidata is a free facts directory that AI tools read. A short, factual, free entry for your business helps them get you right. You add it yourself - never pay anyone for this.
This is one-off. Once it's right it stays right unless your name or ABN changes.
Step 2 - the three questions a buyer asks AI
Not search words. The actual question a customer would type to an AI before buying from someone like you - in their words, with their situation in it.
Pick three where the person asking has money to spend, you genuinely have a good answer, and the AI naming you would win the job.
Write them how a customer talks, not how you would write a headline.
Step 3 - find the page that should answer each
For each of your three questions, find the one page on your site that ought to be the answer.
Now read the first paragraph of that page the way a busy stranger would. Is there one clear, checkable fact in it - a number, a price, a timeframe, a guarantee? Or does it open with "we're passionate about..."?
If it opens with a pitch, the AI has nothing solid to quote. That's what Step 4 fixes.
Step 4 - fix the first two lines (the big one)
On each of those pages, the opening two lines need three parts:
- One clear, checkable fact - a number, a price, a date, a timeframe, a named rule. AI repeats specifics and skips waffle.
- Who is saying it - your business name and a "last updated" date, or a named source you're quoting.
- Who it's for - say it plainly: "for Australian small businesses, in 2026". The AI then offers your answer to the right people.
The rest of the page still reads for humans. The opening alone does both jobs.
Step 5 - keep the behind-the-scenes labels honest
Every page has hidden labels that tell AI and search engines what it's (an article, a how-to, a list of questions and answers). If those labels are missing, wrong, or stuffed with everything to game it, you get skipped or marked as spam.
You don't need to learn the code. Tell whoever runs your site: "make sure the page's structured-data type matches what is actually on the page, and remove anything that's not true." If a page genuinely answers a list of questions, the question-and-answer label helps a lot.
How to know it worked
It's checkable for free. Open ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI answer. Ask each one your three questions, in a customer's words.
Note whether you get named, which page it used, and how it described you. Check again once a month. It takes two to eight weeks to show up, depending on the AI.
What not to waste time or money on
- Buying backlinks. That's an old search tactic. It doesn't get you into AI answers.
- Mass AI-written "content". Pages that came out of a chatbot are what these tools avoid - they can't trust another chatbot's output.
- Stuffing every label in. Cramming in labels that don't match the page gets you ignored at best, penalised at worst.
The Australian advantage
Two things an Aussie business gets that overseas guides skip:
- Quote the Australian regulator directly - the ACCC, the privacy regulator (OAIC), or the Department of Industry. Citing the real Australian source makes you a more obvious answer than an overseas competitor pointing at theirs.
- Name the Voluntary AI Safety Standard (Australia's official AI guidance) by name, not vague "AI ethics". It marks your page as an Australian source.
Want a hand, or want it done for you
- Our AI Search service runs these five steps for you, end to end.
- Our AI Strategy service works out whether this or something else (saving staff time, cutting tool costs) pays back first for your business.
- Pair this with the 1-page AI policy template and the AI Tool Buyer's Checklist.
- How we research and what we disclose: our editorial standards.