How to Catch Your Competition in AI Search
You may have heard that Reddit had a tough go this week. Even though they beat on revenue estimates, the stock tanked when the company revealed traffic from search was way down. Reddit’s CEO said Google’s AI Mode “does not drive traffic. Not for us, and not for anybody.”
The bottom line is that fewer people are clicking through to websites. More and more often now, everything’s being done within platforms like Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. For small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), your potential customers are asking AI who they should hire, and taking the answer seriously.
So how do you prepare? I've got some thoughts. Below is a 10-minute strategy for business owners and marketing leads to suss out the competition and figure out how to get recommended in AI search.
The caveat here is that I’m using my own business as the example below, so if any of our competitors in Port Coquitlam are reading this….you are hereby ordered to stop reading.
Here's what I did this afternoon. Do the same thing for your business.
See the image below. I opened ChatGPT and Perplexity (below is ChatGPT, done with my VPN on and in an incognito window with private search turned on) and entered a simple query: “what marketing agency should i hire in port coquitlam”.
(“marketing agency” is my business type, “port coquitlam” is our business location)
Something Great came up first in ChatGPT and Perplexity, which is awesome (🙌), but don’t worry if when you do this your business is nowhere to be found. This is day one of your AI search journey.
What you need to do from here is investigate: why are the top recommended businesses being recommended. What sources are ChatGPT and Perplexity pulling from, and what can you copy for your business.
In the case of ChatGPT, I asked a follow up: “What sources did you use to make this conclusion?”
There’s good information in this answer. For us, it turns out that being listed in our local chamber of commerce appears to have played a role. So did having a portfolio of case studies on our website, which includes LOCAL case studies. The other agencies ChatGPT mentioned were both listed on Clutch, where we also have positive reviews, so that’s clearly another factor.
If you were a Port Coquitlam marketing agency not listed here, I’d recommend you (1) join the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations, (2) create local case studies, and (3) get yourself set up on Clutch where you can solicit some authentic client reviews.
What we did above can be done for any SMB. If you’re an HVAC company, try it out. Search in ChatGPT “what HVAC company should i hire in [your location]”, and ask ChatGPT “What sources did you use to make this conclusion?” From there, you can start to make a content plan that will support you and start getting you recommendations.
Do this with other AI search platforms
We did the same thing with Perplexity, and while I was happy to see us ranked highly again, it was for different reasons. In this case, it was Clutch and another agency directory platform called The Manifest that were contributing to our recommendation.
As you can see, we also get information on what specifically we're being recommended for. If you're a dentist who wants to book more teeth whitenings, but are only being recommended for cleanings, you know you've got some work to do.
Dive deep for any differentiator
There are often clues pointing to why the business taking the top recommendation is doing so, if you just look for the differentiators. On ChatGPT, when we hovered over our business name, we were the only marketing agency in Port Coquitlam that allowed searchers to get a quote directly on ChatGPT. That felt odd, so I clicked the button to see why that was. See the "Get Quote" button below.
Once clicked, it opened a form that was connected to, of all things, a Yelp page. Wow. This, I would not have anticipated.
It's a good example as to why you should do your homework and really look into what the businesses getting recommended are doing to take that top spot. An active Yelp profile wouldn't have been what I'd have guessed would be a differentiator, but for ChatGPT, in this search instance, it very well could have been.
AI isn't exactly guessing
The lesson here is simple. AI isn’t guessing, and it’s important for SMBs to know where it’s pulling its information from to make recommendations. Whoever has the most complete, consistent and well-reviewed presence across the web will likely get named in results. This is good news for SMBs; a lot of this is within your control.
Social profiles, directories, reviews, business listings and local organizations all help customers find you in AI search. And unlike Google’s old rankings, AI will actually tell you to a certain extent what it’s looking at.
That’s useful.
Take 10 minutes today and give this a try for yourself. The results might surprise you.
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