The reason is rarely “the AI does not like us”. Usually it is a technical block, scattered company information, or the company not being mentioned anywhere else online. All three can be fixed.
Many business owners try it themselves: they open ChatGPT, ask “Which companies do industrial cleaning in Leeds?” and see their competitors in the list, but not themselves. The first reaction is usually “our website is better”. Often they are right; but the problem is not whether the site is good, it is whether the AI can see the site and whether it can find the company anywhere else.
The six reasons below are the ones we come across most often in the cases we see. For the concepts themselves, see What is GEO?
First, test it properly
Asking once, on your own computer and your own account, can be misleading. The tool may take your past conversations and your location into account. For a more accurate picture:
- Open a temporary chat that does not use your history, and make sure web search is switched on.
- Ask the same question in three different ways: short (“industrial cleaning companies Leeds”), long (“I am looking for a company to do regular industrial cleaning at our factory”) and comparative (“should I choose company X or company Y?”).
- Also ask directly: “What does [company name] do, and where is it based?” If the answer is wrong or empty, the problem lies in the first three reasons below.
- Repeat the same test a few days later. What matters is the rate, not a single result.
Six reasons
1. Bots cannot get into your site
The most common reason, and the easiest to fix. An old rule in the robots.txt file that shuts out AI bots, a security plugin, or bot protection on a content delivery network (CDN) may be quietly turning search bots away. Cloudflare, for example, has blocked AI crawlers by default on newly added domains since mid-2025. Whoever set up the site may not have noticed this setting.
2. Content is loaded only with JavaScript
Everything looks fine in the browser, but there is no text in the page source; the content is filled in with JavaScript after the page opens. Measurements have shown that a significant share of AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript. In that case the bot reads an empty page. The check is simple: right-click the page in your browser and choose “View page source”; if you cannot see the sentences describing your services there, the bot may not be able to see them either.
3. Company information is scattered or contradictory
One address on the site, another on Google Business Profile, a third phone number in an old directory. Or the registered company name, the brand name and the domain name are very different from each other. If AI cannot link these pieces to the same company, it either does not mention it at all or mentions it with the wrong details. If your company name is made of common words (something like “Star Cleaning”), there is also a risk of being confused with other businesses of the same name.
4. You are not mentioned anywhere else
For a “which companies?” question, the tool often answers from lists: industry directories, comparison articles, news stories, trade association member lists, review platforms. Even if the company's own site is good, it is hard to stand out in a list question if it appears in none of these sources. This is similar to the logic of links in SEO, but a link is not required; your name appearing in the text with correct details is valuable enough.
5. The site has no sentence that matches the question
The service page says “we deliver quality, reliable solutions”, but not “we carry out weekly industrial cleaning for factories and warehouses across Leeds and Bradford”. AI builds a match from concrete sentences, not slogans: for whom, what, where, how long.
6. Your site or domain is very new
Search-based AI tools rely on search engine indexes. If your site is not yet in Google and Bing, it cannot get into AI answers either. For sites that have moved to a new domain, this transition can take a few weeks. Registering with Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Search Console is a cheap precaution.
There is nothing quick you can do to get into a model's “training data”; that feeds slowly into later model versions. The place where results can come quickly is answers that use web search. Put your effort there.
Three things to do first
- Check the door. Look in your
robots.txtfile for any rule that blocks bots such asGPTBot,OAI-SearchBot,ClaudeBotorPerplexityBot, and check the bot setting on your CDN. Confirm that the content is visible in the page source. - Make your company information identical everywhere. Your name, address, phone number and one sentence describing what you do should be the same on your site, on Google Business Profile, on LinkedIn and in every directory you can find. Mark this information up on the site with structured data too.
- Get listed in three trustworthy external sources. Your trade association's member list, a directory for your field, a customer review platform. What matters is accuracy and credibility, not numbers.
Then ask the same questions again four weeks later. If you want to do this regularly and compare yourself with competitors, that is what the AI Visibility service is for. To see where to start, the free AI visibility check shows in a single report whether bots can get into your site and whether you are mentioned in the questions you choose.
Frequently asked questions
Is there somewhere I can apply to add my company to ChatGPT?
No. There is no sign-up screen like Google Business Profile. AI tools learn about your company from what they find on the web; the work is making your site readable and making sure your name appears with correct information in trustworthy sources.
It mentions us one day and not the next. Why?
AI answers are generated afresh every time; the same question can get a different answer on different days, from different accounts and in different locations. That is why you should look at the rate across regular repeats of the same questions, not at a single try.
Can I get into AI answers by advertising?
An organic AI answer cannot be bought with advertising. Some tools are trialling ad placements, but these are shown separately from the answer itself. The way to be mentioned in the answer is for sources to describe you correctly.
Is there a job that keeps repeating at your company? Tell us about it and we will build the tool that does it.
Tell us what you needOther articles
Can a spreadsheet with thousands of rows be entered into a system in bulk?
In most cases, yes. The hard part is not the entry itself but getting the data into the shape the system expects and verifying that every row was really saved. If the system offers no bulk route, the work goes through the screen, and that depends on the rules of that system.
21 September 2026Read →Why does preparing a quote take so long?
Writing the quote does not take long; the time goes into hunting for the price, copying and correcting an old quote, and rebuilding the layout every time. Once the price list sits in one place and the rules are written down, a quote comes out in minutes.
21 September 2026Read →Which jobs are suited to automation, and which are not?
The job best suited to automation is one that repeats often, whose rules can be written down and whose data is already digital. Work that needs judgement, is full of exceptions or has its data on paper needs another step first.
18 September 2026Read →What if the AI assistant on your site gives a wrong answer?
The risk is real, but manageable. An assistant's wrong answer usually comes from guessing about something it does not know. The solution is to draw a clear line from the start around what the assistant knows and does not know, and to have it hand over to a person when it does not know.
18 September 2026Read →Is ranking in Google the same as being mentioned by AI?
Partly. Both draw on the same foundation, but they do not reward the same thing: Google ranks a page, while AI reads several sources, writes an answer and decides for itself who to mention in it.
17 September 2026Read →What should your site have so AI describes you correctly?
When AI describes a company, it uses the clearest sentences it finds on the site. The list below goes page by page through where those sentences should sit, how they should be written and the markup machines will read.
17 September 2026Read →What is GEO? Being visible in AI answers
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work of making sure that when ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews answer a question, they find your business, describe it correctly and cite it as a source. It does not replace SEO; it builds on top of it.
17 September 2026Read →Will an AI tool learn my company's data?
Short answer: not in a tool running through a commercial API. But that answer depends on how the setup was done, so it is worth knowing what goes where.
16 September 2026Read →When does a spreadsheet stop being enough?
Excel is not a bad tool; it handles most jobs and more. The problem is carrying on with it for months after the point where it stopped being the right fit.
16 September 2026Read →Off-the-shelf software or custom-built?
The right answer depends on how specific the work is to you. Work that everyone does the same way is cheaper off the shelf; work you do your own way is cheaper built for you.
16 September 2026Read →