Something has changed in the last year or so, and most small businesses have not noticed yet. A customer who wants a plasterer no longer always types “plasterer near me” into Google and scrolls. Increasingly they ask ChatGPT, or Google’s own AI, a full question – “who is a good plasterer in Slough and what should re-skimming a room cost?” – and read the answer without clicking anything at all.
That is AI search, and it is quietly rewriting how customers find trades and small businesses. Here is what is actually happening, what it means for you, and the handful of things worth doing about it.
The bit that should worry you
When an AI answer appears at the top of a search, far fewer people click through to any website underneath it. UK publishers have reported traffic falling by anywhere from 40 to 60 per cent on pages where these answers show up. The answer satisfies the question, so the visit never happens.
If your website’s job was to catch people researching – “how much does a new boiler cost”, “how long does a loft conversion take” – some of that traffic is simply gone, and it is not coming back.
The bit that should reassure you
Local search has held up far better than general search. When somebody wants a tradesperson who can actually turn up at their house on Tuesday, the map results and the local listings still do most of the work. AI answers appear on only a small fraction of genuinely local searches, and “near me” queries have been largely left alone.
So if you are a local business serving a local area, you are in a much better position than a national blog. But that is not the same as being safe.
The real shift: being named, not being ranked
Here is the part worth understanding. These AI answers do not list ten results. They name one, two, maybe three businesses, and everyone else is invisible – not on page two, just absent.
The flip side is that being the business it names is worth a great deal. Companies cited in AI answers pick up roughly twice the clicks of those that are not, on the very same searches. It is closer to being recommended by name than to ranking fourth.
So the question is no longer only “where do I rank”. It is “when someone asks an AI who to call in my town, does it say me?”
Six things actually worth doing
1. Check the AI can read your site at all
The most common reason a business never gets mentioned is dull: the AI cannot get in. Some sites block the crawlers that ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI use to read pages – occasionally on purpose, usually by accident through a security plugin or a badly configured file. If they cannot read you, they cannot quote you. This is a five minute check and it is the first thing we look at.
Check at the server level too, not just in that file. We found exactly this on our own site while writing this article. Our robots file welcomed every AI crawler by name – and one of them was still being turned away, one layer above WordPress, by our hosting company’s own bot protection. It never reached the site at all. It could not even read the robots file telling it that it was welcome.
Nothing in WordPress showed it, because nothing in WordPress was doing it. The only way to catch it is to request one of your pages while pretending to be the crawler and see what comes back, or simply ask your host whether they filter AI bots. Plenty do it by default to keep server load down, and never mention it.
2. Answer the actual question, in plain words, on the page
AI answers get built from content that answers a question directly and completely in one spot. Not a brochure paragraph, not “contact us for details” – an actual answer, forty or fifty words, sitting right under the question.
Think about what people genuinely ask: what does it cost, how long does it take, do you cover my town, are you insured, what happens if something goes wrong. Put each of those as a heading on your site, and answer it underneath like you would on the phone.
3. Put real prices on your website
Price questions are among the most common things people ask AI, and a page that gives an honest range gets quoted far more often than one that does not. “Room skim from £350, most jobs £350 to £600 depending on size and condition” is quotable. “Competitive rates” is not.
It also filters your enquiries, which is worth having on its own. We wrote more about that in our piece on what a website should cost, and the same logic applies to your own pricing.
4. Get your Google Business Profile straight
It is still the single strongest signal for local work, and actions on those profiles – calls, directions, website clicks – have grown sharply this year even as ordinary clicks have fallen. Make sure the name, address and phone number are identical everywhere they appear online. AI systems cross-check those details, and a business listed three different ways looks like three shaky businesses rather than one solid one. Our guide on getting on Google Maps walks through it.
5. Reviews do double duty now
Reviews have always persuaded customers. Now they also corroborate you to a machine deciding whether to name you. A business with forty recent reviews across Google and a trade directory is a safer thing for an AI to recommend than one with four from 2021. Ask every happy customer. It has never mattered more.
6. Go and ask it about yourself
This costs nothing and almost nobody does it. Open ChatGPT or Google and ask the questions your customers would ask: “best electrician in Slough”, “who does kitchen fitting near Maidenhead”, “what does a rewire cost in Berkshire”. See who gets named. If it is your competitors, you now know exactly who to study. Do it once a month.
None of that is new, incidentally. It is the same groundwork that gets you picked out of a Google map listing, which we went through in five local marketing tips – AI has simply raised the stakes on getting it right.
What is not worth your time
Ignore anyone selling “AI SEO” as a separate service with a separate invoice. There is no secret dial. The things that get you named by an AI are the same things that have always worked: a site that answers real questions, straight pricing, consistent details, genuine reviews, and a properly set up Google listing. The difference is that doing it badly now makes you invisible rather than merely low down.
Where this leaves a small business
Do not panic and do not rebuild everything. If your website already answers the questions customers ask, states prices honestly, and matches your Google listing, you are most of the way there.
If it does not – if it is three pages of “welcome to our website” written in 2019 – then the gap is widening, because there is now no partial credit. You are either the business the answer names, or you are not in the conversation.
Not sure which side you are on? Our free website check will tell you what an AI can and cannot see about your business, and the three things worth fixing first. If you would rather talk it through, get in touch – and if you are starting from nothing, here is what we build and what it costs.