How to get your consultancy recommended by ChatGPT and AI search

How AI search engines choose who to recommend

AI assistants do not rank pages the way Google's classic results do. They build an answer from what they have learned and, increasingly, from live web searches. A firm makes the shortlist when the assistant can say three things with confidence: what the firm does, who it does it for, and that other sources agree.

• Clarity: a plain description of your niche that appears consistently across your site.
• Answers: pages that respond directly to the questions buyers type.
• Confirmation: mentions on partner directories, review sites, industry press and lists.
• Evidence: case studies with a named sector, problem and outcome.
• Structure: clean, readable pages and structured data that machines can parse.

Step 1. Find out where you stand

Write down the 20 to 30 questions your buyers actually ask, such as "best ServiceNow partner for ITOM in the UK" or "who can help migrate us to S/4HANA". Ask each one in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI. Record who appears, how they are described and which sources are cited. This is your baseline, and it usually shows the gap quickly.

Step 2. Make your positioning impossible to misread

Vague positioning such as "digital transformation partner" gives an AI nothing to match against a specific question. Use one sentence that names your platform, your service and your buyer, and repeat it on your homepage, about page, LinkedIn and directory profiles. Consistency is what lets an assistant connect the dots.

Step 3. Write service pages that answer questions

Give every core service its own page. Open with a direct two-sentence answer to what the service is and who it suits, then cover scope, timelines, typical engagements and common questions. AI tools lift short, self-contained statements, so write paragraphs that make sense on their own.

Case studies matter more than most firms expect. A page saying "we moved a 400-person manufacturer to RISE with SAP in seven months" gives an assistant a concrete fact to repeat. Generic praise does not.

Step 4. Get mentioned where AI looks

Your own site is only part of the picture. Assistants weight what others say about you. For tech consultancies the most useful sources are usually:

• Vendor partner directories such as SAP PartnerFinder, Microsoft AppSource, AWS Partner Solutions Finder and the Salesforce AppExchange.
• Review platforms such as Clutch and G2, with recent, detailed reviews.
• Industry articles, podcasts and "best partners for" lists in your niche.
• Community answers on LinkedIn, Reddit and vendor forums where your team helps people.

Step 5. Make your site easy for machines to read

Make sure AI crawlers are allowed in your robots.txt, your pages render without heavy scripts, and you use structured data for your organisation, services, articles and FAQs. A short llms.txt file summarising who you are and your key pages is a low-effort extra. Our guide to generative engine optimisation covers the technical side in more depth.

How to measure AI visibility

Re-run the same question set every month and track your share of answers: how often you appear, in what position and how accurately you are described, against three to five named competitors. Watch referral traffic from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai in your analytics too. It is small for most firms today, but those visitors tend to arrive with a shortlist already in mind.

Common mistakes

• Chasing volume with thin, generic blog posts that say nothing an assistant could quote.
• Describing the firm differently on every profile, so no clear picture forms.
• Ignoring directory listings and reviews because they feel like admin.
• Blocking AI crawlers by accident in robots.txt or a security setting.
• Expecting results in a fortnight. Most changes take two to three months to show.