The Process
How Get Found By Bots Works
Most businesses aren't invisible to AI search because something is deeply wrong. They're invisible because a handful of specific, fixable things were never done — and the business owner has no way of knowing that, because nothing about it looks broken from the inside.
What "Getting Found" Actually Means
Tested against ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity — by name, not "AI in general"
If someone in your market types a real question into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity — "who's a good [your category] near me" — does your business get named? Every audit runs that exact test against all four, live, and shows you the actual answer each one gave. Not a hypothetical score. The real recommendation, or the real competitor that got named instead of you.
The First Thing We Check
A locked door looks exactly like an open one — until a bot tries the handle
A site can have a complete, well-written page for every service it offers and still be entirely unreadable to AI systems, because of a single setting most owners never touch: whether AI crawlers are explicitly allowed in. This produces no error message and no warning. The site simply never comes up — the digital equivalent of a shop with the "Open" sign lit, the lights on, and the door quietly locked. This is always the first thing we check, because every other fix is worthless until it's confirmed.
Two Kinds of Work
Fixing what's broken is not the same project as building an advantage
Self-sabotage fixes
Near-zero cost, often a single setting, and binary — either the business is blocked or it isn't; either its listed address matches everywhere or it doesn't. These don't earn an edge. They remove a self-inflicted wound. Think of it like underinflated tires: fixing them doesn't make the car faster than anyone else's, it just stops it from quietly wasting fuel it never needed to lose.
Optimization improvements
Sustained, gradual work — deeper schema, broader directory presence, a genuine base of reviews across multiple platforms. These build an advantage over time rather than removing a flaw. This is the ongoing part of the engagement, because an entity's footprint keeps moving even after the fixes are made.
The Six Phases
The full sequence, in order
- 01
Audit & Baseline
A full diagnostic of how AI engines currently see the business — named or not, and by which engines — plus a structural check of the site itself. This produces the starting Surfaceability Score and a specific, prioritized list of what's actually broken.
- 02
Site & Entity Architecture
Schema markup, heading structure, crawl access, and NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency corrections — the facts an engine needs to identify the business with confidence, entirely inside the business's own control.
- 03
Off-Site Listings & Review Presence
Claiming, correcting, and cross-linking directory and review profiles — Google Business Profile, Yelp, BBB, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn as the baseline, plus category-specific directories (G2 and Clutch for a technology business, Justia and Avvo for a law firm, and so on) — so a listing an engine finds can actually be confirmed as the same business as the one on the website.
- 04
The llms.txt Roadmap & Entity Mapping
A single, structured, continuously maintained file mapping the entire business — services, locations, people, every off-site profile — so an engine never has to guess what's real.
- 05
Sentiment Monitoring & Authentic Participation
Surfacing where the business's category is actually discussed — Reddit and Quora threads, forums, comparison articles — which is a different signal than a directory listing: it's what real people are saying, unprompted, not a profile the business controls. We educate clients on genuine, disclosed participation. No synthetic mentions, ever.
- 06
Ongoing Proof, Monitoring & Optimization
Listings change, staff change, new mentions appear. An entity's footprint drifts without upkeep — this phase is what keeps the Surfaceability Score from sliding backward.
See where your own business stands first
Every engagement starts with Phase 1 — a real audit against your actual site and your actual off-site presence, not a generic checklist.
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