Why does ChatGPT not know my business exists?
AI assistants know a business when they can read clear facts about it on its own website and find the same facts repeated elsewhere: directories, press, reviews, LinkedIn. When a site is thin, hard for machines to read, or contradicted by old listings, the assistant has nothing reliable to repeat, so it says nothing or guesses. Age is no protection.
Why the machines draw a blank.
Your site never states the basics
Plenty of B2B sites never say, in one sentence, what the firm does, for whom and where. A person infers it from the client logos. A machine reads text, and from slogans it learns nothing.
The facts about you disagree
An old address on one directory, a former trading name on another, something else at Companies House. AI assistants cross-check sources. When the sources conflict, the safe course is to leave you out.
The good material is locked away
Case studies in PDFs, services described inside images, pages that appear only after scripts run. Some of the programs that read websites for AI assistants cope badly with all three.
What it is costing you.
A buyer who has been referred to you may ask an AI assistant about you before replying, the way they once searched your name. A blank or wrong answer loses some of those replies. For example: 30 referrals a year, one in ten lost, average client worth £15,000, comes to £45,000. Put in your own figures. Then add the buyers who were never given your name.
Check it yourself in ten minutes.
Use a fresh chat with no history, in more than one assistant.
- 1
Ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini what your company does and where it is based. Note what is wrong, not only what is missing.
- 2
Ask each the question a buyer would ask, such as who supplies your service in your region. Write down the names.
- 3
Search your company name on Google. Check address, phone number and trading name on every first-page listing.
- 4
Paste your homepage text into a blank document. That is roughly what a machine reads. See whether it says what you do, for whom and where.
What we would do in the first 90 days.
Being known comes before being recommended. Expect AI answers to move over months, not weeks.
- Week 1
We agree the 40 to 150 questions your buyers ask and start putting them to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google every week, recording who is named. That is your baseline.
- Weeks 2 to 8
We build pages that answer those questions, answer first, with prices, timelines, locations and credentials marked up so machines can read them. You also get a list of the conflicting facts we found elsewhere.
- Weeks 9 to 13
Weekly dated improvements, steered by the questions that still return nothing about you.
This is Website That Sells: build £5,000 to £10,000, run from £999 a month, live in 4 to 8 weeks, all excluding VAT.
How Website That Sells works ↗
AI could describe ID-Pal.
It never recommended it.
Three brands, one group.
AI could only see the pieces.
The short answers.
Months, not weeks, and nobody controls the timing. Assistants that search the web as they answer can pick up a clear new page sooner. What the underlying models know changes slowly, when they are retrained. Hence the weekly record: you watch movement question by question instead of hoping.
A good part of it. Correcting directory listings and writing one plain page that says what you do, for whom, where and for how much needs no specialist. The markup and the weekly tracking across four systems are tedious by hand.
Nothing. The Growth Review is free: 30 minutes with a founder. Beforehand we check your site, two competitors, and what Google and ChatGPT say about all three. Afterwards you get three fixes in writing, which you can hand to whoever you like.
Founders who said this also said these.
Nobody has ever said 'I found you on your website'.
Strangers find a website only when its pages match what they search for or ask an AI assistant. Most B2B sites are organised around the firm: about us, our services, our team. Buyers search for their problem, a price, a comparison or a place. If no page answers those, the only visitors are people who already know the company name.
Website That SellsI asked ChatGPT who to use. We weren't on the list.
AI assistants name firms they can find described consistently in several independent places: trade press, directories, reviews, comparison articles and the firm's own site. They return two or three names, so there is no page two. An excellent firm written about nowhere except its own website gives the assistant nothing to check against, so it goes with names it can verify.
Reputation That WinsThree things worth reading first.
Why does ChatGPT describe my firm wrongly, and how do I fix it?
31 March 2026
Do we need schema markup for AI assistants to understand our site?
22 April 2026
How do we find out whether ChatGPT is recommending our firm?
31 March 2026
Bring this one to the call.
Thirty minutes with a founder. We look at your site, two competitors and what Google and ChatGPT say about all three beforehand. You leave with three fixes in writing.