There is no form to fill in. There is a shape to be.
For somebody who has already asked one and found their competitor named instead.
First, check what they say now
Ask three of them what they recommend in your trade and town. Write the answers down with the date. That is your starting position and it takes ten minutes.
Most people skip this and then cannot tell whether anything changed. A note in a file beats a feeling six months later.
Be readable at all
An assistant reads text. A business living inside a social account, or one whose prices and services are pictures of words, is not there as far as a reader is concerned.
This is the single biggest cause of absence we see, and it is typing rather than technology.
Say the plain things plainly
What you do, where you are, what it costs, when you are open, who you serve. In sentences, on a page, in the language your customers use.
Assistants answer questions, so pages shaped like answers get lifted. A page of atmosphere gets skipped even when the atmosphere is lovely.
Be corroborated somewhere else
Your own site says you are good. That is expected and counts for little. A profile with reviews, a directory listing, a mention in something somebody else publishes are all outside your control and worth more for exactly that reason.
Do not let a setting refuse them
Some hosts and security products block AI crawlers by default, sometimes without saying so, and the file that refuses them is not in your project. Check what an assistant is actually served rather than what you wrote.
We found exactly that on this site, and on 3 others we look after, in a single afternoon.
Then ask again, later
Assistants do not update on your schedule and there is no dashboard confirming anything. Repeat the questions from the first step every month and keep the notes.
Questions worth asking
Can I pay to be included?
No, and anybody offering it is selling something else. There is no advertising slot and no submission process inside an assistant's answer, which is precisely what makes the position worth having.
Does it help to mention ChatGPT on my site?
No. Writing the name of an assistant into your pages does nothing except make the copy odd. What gets you named is answering the question somebody asked it.
How long does it take?
Unpredictable, and shorter than search when it moves at all, because assistants that fetch live pages can pick you up as soon as the page exists. The ones working from training data are on a schedule nobody outside publishes.
Do I need a blog for this?
You need answers, and a blog is just the usual place to put them. Five honest pages about what you actually get asked beat fifty written to fill a schedule.
What if my competitor is named and I am not?
Read what the assistant says about them and you will usually find the reason in the first sentence: reviews, a clear description of the service, or a page answering the exact question. It is a checkable gap, not a mystery.
Send us your address and trade and we will ask a few assistants about you, then send you what they said. Get a free audit.
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