A few years ago, when someone needed a plumber, an accountant or a mobile mechanic, they Googled it. Today, more and more Australians open ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity and simply ask: "Who's a good electrician near me?" — and take whatever the AI recommends.
That's a big shift. The AI's answer is now the shortlist. If your business isn't in it, you're invisible to a fast-growing slice of customers — and most business owners have no idea whether they're in that answer or not.
The good news: getting found on ChatGPT and AI search isn't magic. It runs on fundamentals you can actually control. Here's how it works in plain English.
Why is AI search suddenly worth caring about?
Because a real and growing number of buying decisions now start with an AI answer instead of a list of blue links. Research over the past couple of years has shown a steep rise in people using generative AI to get product and service recommendations — a behaviour that barely existed before.
The point isn't the exact percentages — it's the direction. AI is quietly becoming a front door to your business, and it's only getting bigger.
What is AI search optimisation (AEO and GEO)?
You'll hear two acronyms thrown around. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) both describe the same idea: structuring your content so an AI can pull a clear, factual answer straight from your business.
Old-school SEO was about ranking a page in Google's top 10. AI search is about being the source the AI quotes. That means shorter, clearer answers, question-based headings, and machine-readable business details — the exact opposite of a wall of marketing fluff.
How do ChatGPT and AI tools decide who to recommend?
This is the part most people get wrong. ChatGPT doesn't sit and crawl your website live. It leans on sources it trusts — Bing's index, Google Business Profile data, directories, review platforms, and clearly written web content. It then stitches together an answer from what those sources say about you.
So the businesses that win are the ones that show up consistently and positively across many trusted places. Interestingly, plain brand mentions and reviews across the web tend to matter more for AI visibility than raw backlinks. If your name, address and phone number are consistent everywhere and your reviews are strong, you're far more "recommendable".
The mental model: Google asks "which page is most relevant?" AI asks "which business does the whole web seem to agree is good?" Your job is to make the answer obvious — and consistent.
How to get your business found on ChatGPT & AI search
Here's the practical checklist. None of it is exotic — it's the same fundamentals that help you on Google, pointed at AI:
- Claim and polish your Google Business Profile and Bing Places. Bing in particular feeds ChatGPT and Copilot, so don't skip it.
- Collect reviews consistently. Steady, recent reviews signal to both people and AI that you're active and trusted.
- Answer real customer questions on your website. Use plain question-and-answer content (like the FAQ at the bottom of this page) that an AI can lift word-for-word.
- Add structured data (schema). This is machine-readable code that spells out your business name, services, location and hours. Google's structured data guide explains why it matters, and the vocabulary itself lives at schema.org.
- Keep your details identical everywhere. Same business name, address and phone across your site, directories and social — inconsistency confuses both search engines and AI.
- Add an llms.txt file. A simple text file that hands AI crawlers a clean summary of what you do — a small edge most competitors haven't done yet.
Does traditional Google SEO still matter?
Absolutely. AI search sits on top of good SEO, not instead of it. Most AI answers pull from the same well-structured, well-reviewed pages that already rank on Google — and Google's own AI Overviews are literally built on normal search results. Do the fundamentals well and you show up in both places at once. Neglect them and you lose both.
If you're weighing where to spend your effort, this is the same "respond first, be findable first" logic we covered in winning the work you've already quoted — visibility is only useful if the enquiry that follows actually turns into a booked job.
How TradieScape handles this for you
Getting all of this right — schema, reviews, directories, Bing, llms.txt, clear answer-first content — is fiddly and easy to get wrong. It's exactly what our AI SEO for service businesses service is built to do: get you found on Google and AI search, done for you. It pairs with our Smart Websites & Local SEO so the website AI reads is already built to be recommended.
We practise what we sell — this very site uses structured data, an llms.txt file and open access for AI crawlers, so it can be cited by the same tools we help you appear in.
Frequently Asked Questions
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