Ask an AI assistant to recommend a business like yours.
Watch what it says about the ones it names. Each gets a short, confident summary: who they serve, what they are known for and why they might fit.
Now the harder question. Could an assistant write that summary about you, and would it match what you want to be known for?
Nobody outside the AI companies can give you the exact recipe. Our read is that assistants favour businesses they can describe with confidence, and they can only do that when your website, your profiles and your reviews tell the same simple story. So get the story down to one paragraph, then make every surface repeat it.
Assistants recommend what they can describe
An assistant building a recommendation gathers what it can find about a set of businesses and tries to describe each one well enough to help the person asking. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a "query fan-out" technique, running multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources before writing a response.
A business with a consistent story is easy to describe. Its website and its reviews say roughly the same thing as every listing, and the summary writes itself.
A muddled business is hard work. Its website says "full service creative solutions." Customers review the fast plumbing repairs. LinkedIn mentions consulting, and an old directory listing still describes a service they dropped years ago.
Faced with that, an assistant has less to go on. A vague business is a risky recommendation.
AI does not reward the business that does the most things. It rewards the business whose one thing is stated the same way everywhere it looks.
We have covered becoming an entity, reviews as the new backlinks and getting cited. This is the layer underneath all of them. If the story is inconsistent, every other tactic works harder for less.
Where your story splinters
Most businesses never decided to be inconsistent. It happened over years.
The website was written for an old version of the business. Services changed and so did the ideal customer, but the copy stayed put.
Profiles were filled in by different people at different times. Google Business Profile says one thing and LinkedIn says another.
Reviews describe what customers experienced, which may not match what you are trying to sell more of.
Articles and guest posts chased topics when they could have built up one area of expertise.
The positioning keeps shifting because it was never written down in one sentence everyone agrees with.
None of these is a disaster on its own. Together they make you look like three different companies depending on where someone lands. A human visitor might piece it together, but a machine summarising a dozen sources in a few seconds is more likely to fall back on the blandest description that fits them all, or to pick a competitor that is easier to explain.
Write the story in one paragraph first
Before you fix a single profile, write the story you want told.
- Who you serve. Be specific about the type of customer and where they are.
- What you do for them. Your main service or product, in the words customers use.
- What you are known for. One thing that makes you different, stated as a fact and never as an adjective.
- The proof. Credentials, years in business, results. Anything that makes the claim believable.
If you cannot get this down to a short paragraph, an assistant will not manage it either.
You can write it in under an hour.
- Start with your best work. List the jobs or clients from the past year you would happily repeat twenty times. The story should describe more of those, not everything you have ever done.
- Borrow customer language. Read your best reviews and enquiry emails. Use the words customers use for the problem, not the industry term.
- Replace adjectives with facts. Swap "experienced" for the number of years and "specialist" for the specific thing you specialise in. If you wrote "trusted", name the licence or the industry membership.
- Cut what you do not want to be known for. If a service is a small side line, leave it out of the story, even if you still offer it.
- Read it aloud to someone outside the business. Ask them to repeat back who you serve and what you are known for. If they cannot, sharpen it.
Make every surface say it
Once the story exists, the work is repetition across everything that describes you.
Your website. The homepage headline and the service pages should state the same positioning in plain language. Remove old services you do not want to be known for.
Your About page. Treat it as the factual reference document for your business. Who, what, where, since when, for whom, and what makes you different.
Structured data. Google says Organization markup on your home page helps it understand your organisation's details and tell it apart from others. Include your name, your address and the links to your official profiles, and make sure the markup matches the visible text on the page.
Profiles and directories. Update the description on every profile to match the core story. Use the same business name, address, phone number and categories on each one. Close or correct outdated listings.
Articles and content. Publish consistently in the areas you want to own. Twenty posts on one topic send a far clearer signal than one post on each of twenty.
Consistency does not mean pasting the identical paragraph everywhere. Each platform has its own format and character limits. Keep the substance fixed: the same audience, the same core service and the same facts. Change the wording to suit the platform and leave the message alone.
A worked example: the builder with three identities
Say you run a building company on the Sunshine Coast. Over fifteen years you have done a bit of everything, but for the last five your best work, and your best margins, have come from coastal home renovations for retirees.
Look at how you appear online. The homepage says "Quality construction for residential and commercial clients." Your Google Business Profile category is general contractor. LinkedIn describes "project management and construction services." Most reviews are about bathroom renovations, and an old directory listing still advertises commercial fit outs you stopped doing years ago.
Ask an assistant who to call for a coastal home renovation in your area and it has little reason to name you.
So you write the paragraph: a Sunshine Coast builder specialising in renovating coastal homes for retirees who want to age in place, known for managing the whole job so owners never chase trades, with fifteen years of local experience. The homepage headline changes to match. Every profile and directory listing is rewritten around the same facts, and the dead commercial listing is closed. Review requests now ask, "What was it like renovating your home with us?" New articles cover coastal materials and renovating while living on site.
The business is the same and only the story moved. This scenario is made up, but the pattern holds: the fix is rarely new work. You are making the existing work say one thing.
Shape the story others tell
You do not control reviews, but you can influence what they talk about.
When you ask for a review, ask a guiding question. "What problem did we solve for you?" or "What would you tell someone in your situation?" Customers who answer that tend to describe the outcome you want to be known for.
Look for mentions elsewhere too: local press, plus the suppliers and venues that write about you on their own sites. Send them your one paragraph, a current logo and the link you want used. Most people are grateful for accurate copy, because it saves them guessing from an old listing.
If three staff members describe the business three different ways on their LinkedIn profiles and in proposals, that inconsistency leaks onto the web. Give everyone the same short description and ask them to use it.
Check what the machines currently think
Ask a few AI assistants direct questions about your business and your category. Who is this business? What do they do, and who are they best for? Who would you recommend for this service in this area?
Note what they get right and what they get wrong, then work out where the wrong information might be coming from. Outdated pages and old listings are common culprits. We walk through this check in more detail in your customers are asking AI about you.
Repeat this every few months. Keep a note of each answer with the date, so you can see whether the description is moving toward your paragraph after you make changes. Expect it to take time.
The clarity audit
- Write the one paragraph story and get the owners to agree on it.
- Rewrite the homepage and About page to match it, starting with the headline a visitor sees first.
- Update every profile description, starting with the most visible.
- Fix outdated listings and remove old services from the site.
- Guide review requests toward the outcome you want to own.
- Plan content around your core expertise and ignore whatever is trending.
Be easy to summarise
The businesses that get recommended are not always the biggest. In our view they are the easiest to understand.
This week, write your one paragraph. Then open your website, your Google listing and your LinkedIn page side by side. If a stranger would think they describe three different businesses, you have probably found why the machines are unsure about you. Every part of the fix is in your hands.
If you want a hand sharpening the story and rolling it out across your site, structured data and profiles, that is a core part of how we approach SEO and AI search at LIQID NOISE. Clear story first, then everything else points at it.
Frequently asked questions
How does ChatGPT decide which businesses to recommend?
The AI companies do not publish an exact formula. Assistants draw on what they can find about businesses in a category, such as websites and reviews, then summarise the options. A business described the same way across those sources is easier to summarise with confidence. A contradictory online presence gives the assistant less to work with, which makes you a riskier recommendation.
How do I make my business easier for AI to understand?
Write one short paragraph covering who you serve, what you do, what you are known for and the proof behind it. Then make your homepage, About page, structured data, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directory listings all state the same substance. Close outdated listings and remove services you no longer want to be known for.
Why does AI describe my business incorrectly?
Usually because the sources it reads disagree or are out of date. Old directory listings, a website written for a previous version of the business, and profiles filled in by different people all send mixed signals. Ask assistants what they know about you, note the errors, trace them to the likely source and correct it there.
Do reviews affect AI recommendations?
Reviews are one of the sources assistants can draw on when describing a business, so what customers write can shape how you are summarised. You cannot control reviews, but you can guide them by asking a specific question, such as what problem you solved for them. Customers who answer it tend to describe the outcome you want to be known for.