A landscaper in Naperville spent two years building a solid website. Good photos, a services page, a contact form. It looked professional. But when a homeowner asked ChatGPT for landscaping recommendations in the area, that business did not come up. A competitor did. One whose site was not even as polished.
The difference was not design. It was how AI reads a website.
According to Search Engine Land, 37% of consumers were starting their searches with AI as of January 2026. That number is only going up. And the businesses showing up in those AI answers are not necessarily the biggest or the flashiest. They are the ones whose websites are easy for AI to read, trust, and repeat back to someone asking a question.
Here is the good news: making your site AI-friendly does not require a developer, a big budget, or any technical knowledge. It requires a few specific changes that any business owner can either make or hand off to someone in an afternoon.
What AI is actually looking for
When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini to recommend a local business, the AI is not browsing your site the way a person does. It is scanning for clear, structured information it can pull out and repeat with confidence.
It wants to know who you are, what you do, where you do it, and why someone should trust you. If your website buries that information in dense paragraphs or vague language, AI moves on to someone who made it easier.
Four things any business owner can fix
You do not need to overhaul your entire site. These four changes are where most local businesses have the biggest gaps, and none of them require a developer.
Fix 1: Say exactly what you do and where, near the top of every page. Your homepage and services pages should state your services and your location in plain language, toward the top of the page. Not buried in a footer. Not hidden in an "about" paragraph. Right up front, where AI and real customers can find it immediately.
Fix 2: Make your business information identical everywhere online. Your business name, address, and phone number should match exactly on your website, your Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, and anywhere else you are listed. AI tools cross-reference these sources to build confidence about your business. One study found that businesses with consistent information across major directories see a 186% increase in clicks from Google. Inconsistencies create doubt, and doubt means you do not get recommended.
Fix 3: Get more recent reviews. AI tools pull from review platforms when deciding which businesses to surface. A steady stream of recent, specific reviews signals that your business is active and trusted. If you have not asked a happy customer for a review in months, that is worth fixing today.
Fix 4: Use specific location language, not vague geographic phrases. The more precise your language, the more AI has to work with. For example, instead of something broad like "serving the greater Chicago area," a landscaper in the western suburbs might write "we serve Naperville, Aurora, and Wheaton" — naming the specific towns in and around their service area. That kind of specificity is what AI needs to match your business to a local search.
What you do not need to worry about
You do not need to rebuild your site. You do not need to learn anything about coding, technical site tags, or any of the more advanced optimization tactics you may have read about. Those things matter at a certain point, but they are not where most small business owners need to start.
The four fixes above move the needle faster than any advanced technical change, because most local business websites are missing them entirely.
Before you start making changes, know where you stand
There is a frustrating pattern that plays out with a lot of small business owners. They hear that they need to fix their AI visibility, so they start making random changes without knowing what actually needs fixing. They rewrite their homepage. They update their photos. They spend a weekend on it and nothing measurably improves.
The smarter move is to find out what is actually costing you AI visibility before you start changing things. That way your time goes toward fixes that matter.
AIMention was built for exactly that. You enter your website URL and get a scored breakdown across the factors that influence whether AI tools recommend your business. No jargon. No tech knowledge required. You see where you stand, and you get a prioritized list of what to fix first.
Run your free scan at aimention.co before you start making any changes. It takes a few minutes and it tells you exactly where to focus.
Sources
37% of consumers start searches with AI instead of Google: Study — Search Engine Land, January 2026
18 Local SEO Mistakes Killing Your Rankings in 2026 — Connectica LLC, February 2026