Is AI Recommending Your Small Business in 2026?

For years, small businesses have struggled to compete with big-budget SEO campaigns. But the way people search is shifting, and it’s creating new opportunities for local businesses to be found.

Recently, I spoke to a small local business owner who landed a large contract after a potential client asked ChatGPT to recommend suppliers in their area. His business name came up, not because he’d ‘hacked’ AI, but because his online presence was clear, consistent, and trustworthy enough for AI to confidently include him.

That’s exactly why this matters, and last week I delivered a short educational slot at my local networking meeting to cover this exact topic.

As a growing number of people start using AI tools to search for local services in addition to Google, it’s changing the landscape in a practical way. Think ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, Google’s AI features, Gemini, and plenty of others that are popping up. And no, it’s not a dramatic “SEO is dead” moment. It’s more that the rules of visibility are widening.

How your website and online presence is structured matters more than ever, because AI doesn’t behave like a traditional search results page.

Google ranks. AI summarises and suggests.

Google’s job is to show a list of relevant pages. AI’s job is to help its audience answer questions quickly, often by pulling together information from multiple sources and suggesting options.

That’s different behaviour.

When someone asks:

“Who’s a good accountant in Warwick?”
“Can you recommend a builder in Coventry?”
“Who’s a videographer near Leamington Spa?”

AI isn’t scrolling like a human. It’s scanning across the information it can access online, looking for clarity, consistency, and trust signals so it can confidently suggest names.

And what I’m seeing is this… clarity and strategy are key. If a stranger can’t understand your website in 10 seconds, you’re making it hard for both people and AI to work out what you actually do.

Many websites are beautiful in design.
Many are full of personality.
Many are creative.

But they’re not always clear, and they often miss the most important basics:

What you do
Who you do it for
Where you do it
How it works

These are the questions humans ask… and they’re also the kind of things AI tools look for when they’re trying to understand and describe your business.

Websites that make hard work of clarity are the same websites that struggle to get ‘understood’ online, and they often lack:

Simple navigation
Straightforward service descriptions
Clear headings
Helpful explanations

Getting this right matters more than ever.

AI looks for structure, not just words

This is the part most people don’t realise.

AI tools don’t ‘read’ a website like we do. They rely heavily on structure and signals that make information easy to extract and summarise. Things like:

Headings
Bullet points
Short paragraphs
FAQs
‘How it works’ sections
Definitions
Comparisons

If content is easy for a human to skim, it’s usually easier for AI to interpret too.

If it’s buried in long blocks of text, hidden behind clever wording, or relies on people ‘reading between the lines’, it’s much harder for AI (and human visitors) to quickly understand who you are and what you offer.

Formatting and structure now play a bigger role than most business owners realise.

Real expertise stands out (and generic content doesn’t)

Another thing we’re seeing is the rise of generic content. Scroll through social media and you’ll see the same phrases over and over again, and the same long ’em dash’ hyphens that seem to have replaced commas.

The issue isn’t that AI is ‘detecting’ generic wording like a human would. It’s because generic content is usually vague. It doesn’t include real specifics, examples, proof, or anything that helps an AI system (or a person) trust it.

Websites that talk in broad, polished marketing phrases don’t give much to work with. But websites that show real-world examples send a much stronger signal of genuine expertise, such as:

Case studies
Before/after examples
Process explanations
Industry insights
Real projects

This is what builds something known as topical authority. Being clearly associated with what you do, and backing it up with consistent, useful evidence. It’s always been important for SEO, and it matters even more as AI becomes part of how people search.

AI learns about your business from more than just your website

This surprised a few people in the room when I mentioned it during my presentation.

AI tools don’t rely on your website alone. They often pull information from multiple places online, especially trusted, well-known sources, and they look for consistency. For example:

Your Google Business Profile
Your reviews (Google and other trusted platforms)
Business directories and industry sites
Mentions of your business on reputable websites
Sometimes your social profiles (mainly as a consistency check, not always as a primary source)

If all of those places clearly say what you do, who you help, and where you work, it becomes much easier for AI tools and customers to trust and recommend you.

This is why clarity and consistency are key.

Freshness signals trust

Websites that haven’t been updated for years can quietly send the wrong message. Not because you need to blog every week, but because a lack of recent activity can make it harder for people (and platforms) to know whether your business is still active and current.

At the very least, key business pages should be reviewed and refreshed annually.

And if you’re serious about increasing your exposure, adding occasional proof and updates can really help:

Case studies
Blogs or articles
Recent projects
Updates to services / areas covered

These things matter to AI in the same way they matter to potential customers: they help build confidence.

How many times have you searched for a business, then quickly checked reviews or social activity before reaching out? We all do it!

A simple test you can do today

When I finished my presentation, I gave everyone one small action to try.

Open the AI platform of your choice and type:

“Who is the best (your profession) in (your town)?”

See what comes back.

If your business isn’t mentioned, it’s not because you’re not good at what you do. It’s usually because there isn’t enough clear, consistent, trustworthy information online for AI tools to confidently include you yet.

And that’s something you can fix.

This isn’t about chasing the latest trend. It’s about understanding how people are starting to search, and making sure your business is easy to understand, for humans first, and for AI too.

And interestingly, the changes that help AI understand your business better are the exact same changes that help your website visitors understand it faster as well.

Unknowingly, the small business owner I mentioned at the start of this article had already been doing most of these things. He ‘accidentally’ showed up in AI suggestions and landed a large contract because of it!

With a bit of structure, consistency, and evidence, it’s an achievable win for small businesses everywhere.

I’m Sarah Jane, founder of Mouse Blue Creative. I help small businesses create marketing-led websites and organic SEO strategies that bring clarity, visibility, and growth.

🎯 At Mouse Blue Creative, we create strategy-led websites that work hard for your business, so you stay aligned as your goals evolve.

It’s not just about pages and pixels. It’s about setting your website up with the right strategy from day one, so it works hard for your business and doesn’t just sit there looking nice

📩 If you’re ready to make your website work harder for your business, book a free 30-minute discovery call or drop me a message. I’d love to hear your story.