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Join for freePosted: Tue 3rd Nov 2026
Ask ChatGPT to recommend a business like yours in your area. Does your name come up?
More customers are asking AI tools who to call and what to buy. If your business isn’t in the answer, you never find out the enquiry existed.
In this Lunch and Learn, Richard Thomas-Pryce runs live searches across Google, ChatGPT and Gemini to show which businesses get recommended and why.
He explains, in plain English, what the businesses that get named are doing differently, and what you can fix this week without rebuilding your website.
A two-minute test to see whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Google recommend your business today
The signals that tend to get a business named, and why fixing your Google profile and reviews usually comes before a new website
Three free fixes you can make this week to improve your chances of being recommended
Richard is a British entrepreneur and the founder of SEO Pages, a London digital marketing agency that helps local service businesses get found on Google and in AI search.
He also owns All Well Property Services, a South East London property services firm he founded in 2020, which was SEO Pages’ first client.
Before running his own companies, he spent 20 years in financial services, including time at Funding Circle working with small business borrowers.
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Lightly edited for clarity.
Caitriona O’Connor: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s Lunch and Learn. My name is Caitriona, and I’ll be your host today. For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses.
I’m pleased to introduce Richard Thomas-Pryce, who’s the founder of SEO Pages. In this session, Richard will run live searches across Google, ChatGPT and Gemini to show which businesses get recommended and why.
If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat, and we’ll do our best to answer them at the end of the session. Today’s webinar will be recorded, and we’ll send a follow-up email to you with the recording and further resources later today. Over to you, Richard.
Richard: Thank you, Caitriona. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope all is well, and thank you for joining us today to go through this presentation.
The title is “Will AI recommend your business?” Hopefully, by the end of this, I’ll have given you some insights into how AI is looking for and finding this information, and helped you get your business recommended in ChatGPT and Google. My name’s Richard, as Caitriona said, and I run SEO Pages, a digital marketing agency based in London.
So, briefly, about me. I’ve got 20 years in finance and worked for a few big banks, including Citi. Then for a couple of years, I worked in fintech at Funding Circle, working with small business owners as a credit risk officer.
In 2020, during COVID and lockdown, I started All Well Property Services, which is a property services company – a building company, essentially – in south-east London. I’ve always been good at designing websites and digital stuff for various businesses and ideas of mine. So I created SEO Pages at a similar time to do my own marketing, and that’s a bit of an origin story about how we got here.
So where are we today? AI has taken the world by storm. It’s crazy to think that ChatGPT was launched only three years ago, and the adoption rate has been off the curve.
As you can see here, the way people are searching for things is changing as well. Historically, it’s been Google – or, if I show my age, Ask Jeeves and Lycos. But it’s moved beyond just the Google search box now, towards more conversational search with AI, Perplexity and so on.
This is Semrush, which is a digital marketing platform. They show some stats and predictions here: traditional organic search is on the decline, whereas answer engine search and AI search are on the incline.
It’s coming from a low base, because most product and service discovery still happens on Google, and some on Bing, of course. But the trend is up, and I think this is where the opportunity is for you and your business to make sure you’re fully optimised to be one of those recommendations.
It’s no longer just a blue link on a list of blue links. It’s actually a conversation that people are having with search. So it’s an industry trend that’s going up and to the right, and it’ll be good for all of us to make sure we’re positioned well enough to take advantage.
Next, I wanted to give a bit of a before-and-after summary of traditional SEO and AI search optimisation. Historically, for websites to rank on the first page of Google, a lot of it was based on keywords. Keyword stuffing – putting as many keywords as you can on a page – would help Google rank it higher and see it as more relevant.
Backlinks were a big thing. They still are, because search is still a huge part of the market even though AI is getting bigger. But it was all about backlinks, getting domain authority and putting that keyword density in there.
Search intent was more about a fixed query, such as “best running shoes”, “best plumber” or “best electrician”. For the most part, Google’s PageRank was the only algorithm that mattered. Whereas now, it’s a bit more dispersed, and we have AI models.
Another change is that instead of using exact-match keywords, it’s more of a semantic search, and I’ll go through what semantic search and semantic triples are in a moment. With traditional SEO, we were optimising for human readers and search crawlers. Now, with AI search, it’s a little bit different.
We can optimise for AI-powered search, answering questions so the AI algorithms understand what you do. Before, we used to write pillar posts, small blog posts and as much content as possible. Whereas now, it’s more targeted.
It’s about going for the long tail, answering those frequently asked questions and being as helpful as possible, so you show up in AI and AI understands what you do, what you sell and why you’re brilliant. That’s a bit of the lay of the land between traditional SEO and AI search optimisation, and I’ll get into it more as we go through the presentation.
If you like, you can try this now. Open ChatGPT and ask about your business. You could say, “Recommend a financial planner in Clapham,” or in Tottenham, wherever you are based, and see what comes up.
If you sell products online, you can ask, “What’s the best candle for people between 35 and 45?” – whoever your ICP is. Then check whether you’re named or not, because that can give you a starting point as to where the gap is. We’ll look at how to unravel the puzzle a bit more shortly, but just keep it there in the background.
So, again, what’s changed? Customers used to search, scroll and click, and now more of them just ask and get one answer. I’ve seen with my property business how many people come through Perplexity, and they’re a much easier customer to sell to.
The conversion rates are a lot higher because the trust in what ChatGPT or any of these AI models say is high. That’s because it’s conversational. It’s also personalised – if you’ve used any of these AI models, it gets better and better as it knows who you are, and it paints a picture of who you are and what your needs are.
Also, it’s not just “Here’s the link. Click here, and then find out for yourself.” Now the output of an AI model gives you a summary of why it’s recommending them, or what’s great about this product or this service. So there’s definitely a lot more trust that’s built from that.
Earlier today, for example, I asked: if your boiler broke down, who gets the job? On the left, I’ve got a Google Maps example, where I searched “best plumber in Fulham for boiler repair”. You can still see that sponsored ads take the first two spots.
This is becoming more and more of an issue that people complain about with Google: it’s so hard to be at the top because everything’s pushed down. You’ve got people paying for Google Ads on normal search, and the map pack, which you can see here, also has sponsored ads. Then you get to the normal unpaid websites.
But you can see that the answers are quite different. You’ve got Emergency Plumber Fulham, which, from a keyword perspective, is very close to what I’m looking for. That’s probably why Google Maps has put it as the first result – it’s got Fulham in there.
Whereas ChatGPT, in the middle, said, “For boiler repairs, I’d recommend Smart Home Rescue Plumbing and Heating in Fulham as my first choice.” So it’s giving you a bit of context. It’s like a conversation – it’s like you’ve asked a friend, essentially.
Today, Claude and ChatGPT are our best friends, for the most part, and I’m constantly having conversations with them. You can see here that it’s giving you a bit more assurance as to why it’s recommending Smart Home Rescue Plumbing and Heating in Fulham. Then it’s got Ninja Plumbers as a second.
On the right, there’s a Google AI Overview. As you may have seen, Google is now embedding AI Mode within its search, and it’s becoming a lot more conversational, moving away from its traditional search or offering an alternative experience. Here, again, we’ve got Ninja Plumbers.
We’ll look into the variables as to why it might be recommending Ninja Plumbers or these companies. But these are just examples of how different AI is from Google Maps, which is very, very key for local businesses. As I mentioned, if you get recommended in any of these AI models, there’s a high chance they’re going to call you, and an even higher chance they’ll go with you, as long as the price is right.
We’ll do a live search shortly. By the way, if you want me to search for your business, drop a message in the chat. When it’s time, we’ll pick one and go through an example.
So, what’s the pattern among the businesses that get named? As mentioned before, traditional search is very much around keywords and PageRank. PageRank is a Google-owned proprietary algorithm – it’s their IP – and a big part of that algorithm is backlinks and keywords.
What you must also realise is that your website is almost like a document. The name of your URL is essentially the file name, and the contents of your web page are just the words within that document, like a Word doc or a Google Doc. So it’s just going for a close match.
But why do businesses get named in AI now? Plenty of recent reviews. Reviews, reviews, reviews are super important, mainly for local businesses and mainly on Google Business Profile.
If you have a Google Business Profile, the number of your reviews is important, what is said in those reviews is important, and so is the velocity of those reviews. If your last review was six months ago, it’s stale. It’s saying that you’re not really a going concern, or there’s some reason why you’re closing down.
So it’s the number of reviews you get on a consistent basis, and also what the customers are saying. Having a five-star review is great, but a one-word answer is not that great – you want your customers to be a bit more descriptive.
It’s hard getting customers to leave reviews, don’t get me wrong, and I have a hard time getting them to sit down and write one. But when they do, if you can give them a little prompt and ask them to mention certain things and make it a bit more complete, that goes miles. That’s because these AI models read these reviews.
They can read the stars, but the context of those stars is in the words. So when these AI models are looking for the best X in Y area, they’re looking at the reviews on Google Business Profile, but also at the reviews on other review sites.
Trustpilot is a huge one, and there are others aligned to your category that we might come across later. There are various review sites, and AI is bringing all this information into consideration. When you do get reviews, especially on Google Business Profile, it’s also very important that you reply to them, as that adds to it.
Having a complete Google Business Profile is key. There’s a completion bar you’ll probably see if you log in, and having that green with a tick is fundamental. Your Google Business Profile is almost like a social page – like your Instagram or Pinterest – but it’s much more powerful than that.
So it’s very important that you add your services and have the right primary category, and you can add four or five secondary categories. The primary category is super important, but it’s also important to add other categories that may be adjacent to or embedded within your business.
Under those categories, you can add services. It’s super important to fill out those services, because you can also have a description there. So keeping your Google Business Profile up to date with as much information as possible is a key factor.
Be clear about what you do and where. Maybe this is a good time to mention semantic triples. I don’t know if anyone knows much about them, but it’s a school of thought around semantic SEO, where AI is looking more at what you’re doing semantically.
It goes subject, predicate, object. So we could say, “SEO Pages is a digital marketing agency that provides digital marketing services for small and medium businesses.” The object is small and medium businesses, the predicate is “provides digital marketing services”, and the subject is SEO Pages.
You want to be very clear about who you are, what you do and why you’re great, and you want that to be repeated across many platforms. You can have a short, medium and long description of your business, but you want to be consistent across all your different profiles as to what you do. That will help build a confidence score around your business.
The other one here is being mentioned on other sites. You want to get into the directories, the local press and trade bodies. Getting your website mentioned wherever you can is super key, because that’s where AI is pulling all this information from.
I’ve got this FOUND score framework, a five-point check that gives businesses an idea of where they are and what they can improve. F is for findability: does Google show you for what you do and where you do it? O is for online reputation: how many reviews you have and how recent they are, as I mentioned.
U is for user experience. Do you have a WhatsApp click-to-message on your website, or a sticky “Call now” button? N is for next step: can the user go from browser to potential customer?
D is for digital authority. That’s about where else on the interwebs your business is mentioned, and what it’s saying. It’s almost like online reputation – the two kind of marry up in a way.
I’ll go through them individually. On the F, findability: can people find you for what you do and where you do it? On your Google Business Profile, make sure your main category says exactly what you do.
I was speaking to an accountant earlier today whose Google Business Profile just says “accounting firm”, I think, whereas all their competitors say “accountant”. So there’s one quick fix there.
Also, their description was just one very small sentence, whereas their competitors have paragraphs. You need to give AI more meat on the bone to understand the context – that’s very important.
On the O, online reputation: wherever your reviews are, try to give yourself a target. You want to have at least 4.5 stars at minimum, and if you get below that, you need to really dig in and get a few more five-star reviews. But you don’t want your last review to be more than 90 days old, because that’s stale.
You want to make sure you reply to all of your reviews and have at least 20 reviews, but also look at your competitors, because it’s relative. The number of reviews you have will determine your position in the map pack, which is still super important for both AI search and traditional search.
On the U, user experience: put what you do and the area on your home page. The H1 – the header, right at the top of the fold – is super important, so label clearly what you do and where you serve. That gives more context, and it drives the message home.
Also, clearly have your phone number somewhere easy to find. If there’s a contact form, put the button there, at the top of the fold, as well as your Google reviews or any stars and credentials you have. Put that at the top of the fold, because that increases trust.
As soon as a customer comes on your website, you want to show why you’re brilliant. You want to show you’ve got 4.9 stars from 100 customers and you’re fully accredited. You want all those things at the top of the fold, and that will build the trust for them to go to the next step, whether that’s scrolling down or contacting you.
On the N, next steps: again, just make it very easy for them to contact you. I did a website the other day for a mobile tyre fitter, and their most-clicked contact button is a sticky bar at the bottom with two buttons, “Call now” and “WhatsApp”. That has been the most effective conversion point.
On the D, we’ll look at this just after this page, but we can find where ChatGPT is getting its information from and what it’s citing. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but when ChatGPT gives you an answer, you can see the sources at the bottom.
I think those sources are the best piece of information we can use to see where our competitors are and close the gap. They’re also the trusted sources that AI is looking at, so you want to get into them.
I’m conscious of time, and I want to go through a live example, so here are three fixes for you to do this week. Make sure your Google category and the areas you cover are correct. Optimise your Google Business Profile – it’s a good time to do it – and create those service and product pages as well.
Ask five recent happy customers for a review. Send them a text message – you can grab the link very easily from your Google Business Profile.
Think about what you do, where, and why you’re brilliant, and create your business description. Rewrite it if needed, put it on your about page, and then be consistent with it across your profiles.
Then try asking ChatGPT the same question in a month. Keep checking where it’s citing, because that will give you an idea of whether your AI visibility is improving.
So I wanted to jump into an example. I don’t know if anybody’s left their business name or an industry to search.
Caitriona: We’ve had lots of people volunteering. Here’s a good example. We have Beata Cosgrove, a photographer based in Bath specialising in proposal photos, and the name of the business is Beata Cosgrove Photography.
Richard: So where is it based? Bath. So, a photographer based in Bath for proposals. Let’s go – the moment of truth.
It says, “If you’re planning a surprise proposal in Bath, Somerset, I’d recommend choosing a photographer who specialises in surprise engagements rather than a general wedding photographer. My top three proposal photographers are...” Oh, they’ve all got five stars. And there’s Beata Cosgrove Photography – that’s the person.
So you’ve been doing well on your online reputation. You’ve got 153 reviews, all with a five-star rating. This is excellent – this is exactly where you want to be.
Your competitor has 136, so you’ve done well to beat that, and then there’s one with 118. There are lots of reviews, so it’s a high bar, but hopefully you’ve got a lot of volume. As you’re creating those magic moments for people, they don’t hesitate to give you a review, so very well done.
Caitriona: Brilliant. Can we try another one? We have one just underneath Beata, from Susie. Susie is from Designfix, a show home design and property staging business across the North West.
Richard: So maybe if we put in “show home design and property staging across the North West”. We just had a typo on “staging”. So we have three recommendations here, and Designfix is number two – fantastic.
It’s labelled you as the best all-round service. One thing is that there’s a little bit of a review gap there. Your competitor has 21 reviews, and you have 14, so it’s not a big gap to close – quite an easy thing.
Here we go: it says why it shortlisted you, as a particularly interesting option if you need both show home installations and coverage across the North West. So you’re doing well, and you’ve got quite a few service pages here as well.
The case study page is excellent – this case study page is gold. If you don’t have one, you definitely need to create one, because this is all the proof in the pudding, and AI has a look at that as well.
I think that’s a good example, and you’re even beating this one here with 27 reviews. Let me go and ask the same question on Gemini. Normally, it’s generally quite consistent across platforms.
There we go – look at that: Designfix. It’s great to see it on the other platforms as well.
Caitriona: That was brilliant. Thank you so much for the demo. We’ve had quite a few questions, so do you mind if we take a few? I’m just conscious of time as well.
We have a great question here from Doug, who’s asking, “How do you get AI to recommend your business when prospective clients describe the problem they’re facing rather than search for the service you offer? For example, I help business leaders decide whether hiring is the right answer, but they’re more likely to ask, ‘My team is overstretched. Do I need to hire?’ rather than search for SME workforce advisory. How do you bridge that gap?”
Richard: That’s why people say it’s answer engine optimisation. On your website, you want to create an FAQ page. The way I typically do it is to create an FAQ hub page, and then for each question, you can create an answer page.
You want to answer the questions that people are asking AI on your website, because it shows authority. It’s called topical authority – you want to show authority on your topic. By doing that, AI will see you as a trusted source of good information.
You can see here that when it’s got its sources, it will have a reference there. Even small things like that could help you drive traffic to your website and get more business.
Caitriona: Thank you. Do you have any advice for someone at the beginning of this journey, if you’ve just created a new business and you have a new website?
Richard: Try to create as many profile links as possible. There’s something called entity stacking, where essentially you create as many profiles across different websites as possible for your business. For example, a Pinterest account or an Instagram account – even though you don’t use them proactively, you want to create them.
On your Google Business Profile, you can add seven social profiles for the main ones, so LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and so on. You want to have that as a minimum. Then you want to look at the directories in your industry.
You can search “directories for my industry” in ChatGPT and see what it recommends, and you should target being listed on those directories. Most of them are free, but some of them you have to pay for. Your local chamber of commerce is also a good membership to have.
If there are any local forums, those are good too. I have one near me that costs about £120 a year just to be listed on the website as a backlink, and it’s another trusted source, essentially. So that’s what I would say.
Caitriona: Thank you. Then we have a question from Kelly, who’s asking, “Do blog posts still have value for SEO?”
Richard: Yes, blog posts have value, but not as much. Maybe 10 years ago, we used to write hundreds and hundreds of them. But now, as I mentioned before, it’s more about topical authority, so you want to answer the questions that people are asking.
It’s also even more important not to just use AI for your answers, but to have your unique perspective. So have an FAQ section on the page that’s relevant to the service or product you’re offering, or have a specific FAQ page with the various questions your ideal customer will be asking, with your answers.
Guides as well – if there are any helpful guides, I think there’s still value in doing that, but not necessarily informative blog posts, or not as many. You can still publish one a week or one a month, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t necessarily help with ranking or AI search as such.
Caitriona: Thank you so much. We’ve had a few people asking about the recording as well. Just to confirm, the session’s been recorded, and we’ll send a follow-up email to you with the recording later today.
We’ve come to the end of the session now. Thank you so much, Richard, for delivering your session today, and thank you to everyone for joining us.
Richard: Thank you, everyone. It’s been great.
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