Your Competitors Are in ChatGPT. Are You?

Right now, someone in your city is asking ChatGPT "who's the best [your service] near me?" or "recommend a [your industry] company in [your city]." An AI is generating an answer. It's listing companies by name. It's explaining why those companies are worth considering. And there's a real chance your competitor is in that answer and you're not.

This isn't hypothetical. Over 100 million people use ChatGPT every week. Perplexity handles millions of searches daily. Google now shows AI-generated answers at the top of most search results pages. The shift from "search and click" to "ask and get an answer" is happening right now, and it's creating a new kind of visibility gap between businesses that show up in AI responses and those that don't.

Why This Is Happening Now

Three things changed in the last 18 months. First, AI search tools went mainstream. ChatGPT's web browsing feature, Perplexity's growth, and Google AI Overviews brought AI-powered search to hundreds of millions of everyday users. Second, these tools got dramatically better at providing specific, local recommendations. Early AI search was vague. Now it names businesses, compares them, and explains trade-offs. Third, consumer behavior shifted. A 2025 survey found that 48% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers have used AI tools to research purchases. That number is growing every quarter.

The businesses showing up in these AI answers aren't paying for placement (at least not yet). They're appearing because their online presence sends the right signals. And most of them didn't do it on purpose. They just happened to have the kind of content and reputation that AI models favor.

What Determines Whether You Show Up

AI models decide which businesses to recommend based on a mix of signals. None of these will shock you, but how they're weighted is different from traditional search.

• Content depth and specificity. AI models prefer businesses that have detailed, informative content about what they do, who they serve, and how they work. Thin websites with minimal copy get skipped.
• Third-party mentions and reviews. AI pulls from review sites, directories, press mentions, and other external sources. If your business is mentioned positively across multiple platforms, you're more likely to be cited.
• Structured, extractable information. Clear service descriptions, pricing transparency, location data, and FAQ content make it easy for AI to include you in an answer.
• Domain authority and trust signals. Similar to traditional SEO, sites with strong backlink profiles and established credibility are weighted more heavily.
• Recency and relevance. AI models favor up-to-date information. A blog post from 2021 carries less weight than one from this year.

Do This Right Now: Audit Your AI Visibility

Stop reading for five minutes and do this. It will tell you exactly where you stand.

1. Open ChatGPT (free or Plus). Ask: "What are the best [your service] companies in [your city]?" See if you're mentioned. Note who is.
2. Open Perplexity.ai. Ask the same question. Perplexity shows its sources, so you can see exactly which websites it pulled from.
3. Google your core service. Look at the AI Overview at the top of the results. Is your business mentioned or is your website one of the cited sources?
4. Try variations. Ask about specific services you offer, problems you solve, or industries you serve. "Best web design agency in Cleveland for e-commerce" gives different results than "web design agency Cleveland."
5. Document everything. Screenshot the results. Note which competitors appear, what sources are cited, and what language the AI uses to describe them.

If you showed up in most of those queries, you're in good shape. Optimize from a position of strength. If you didn't show up at all, you now know exactly how big the gap is.

What Your Competitors Are Doing (Even If They Don't Know It)

Most businesses that show up in AI answers didn't intentionally optimize for it. They did things that happen to align with what AI models value. Things like publishing detailed case studies, maintaining active review profiles, writing blog content that answers real questions, and keeping their website current.

The businesses that don't show up tend to have the opposite profile. Sparse websites. No blog. Few reviews. Minimal third-party mentions. It's not that they're bad businesses. Their online presence just doesn't give AI models enough to work with.

Here's what makes this a competitive issue: AI answers typically recommend 3 to 5 businesses. Not 10. Not a full page of results. Three to five. If your competitor is one of those 3 to 5 and you're not, you're invisible to a growing share of potential customers.

What You Can Do About It

You don't need to hire an agency or rebuild your website. Start with these high-impact actions:

• Beef up your service pages. Each service should have its own page with 500 or more words of genuinely helpful content. Explain what it is, who it's for, how you approach it, and what results you deliver. Include specific numbers when possible.
• Publish answers to the questions your customers actually ask. Blog posts, FAQ pages, resource guides. Every question a customer has asked you in the last year is content that AI models want to find on your site.
• Get more reviews and mentions. AI models heavily weight third-party validation. Actively request reviews on Google, industry directories, and relevant platforms. Pursue press mentions, guest posts, and partnerships that generate external links.
• Add FAQ schema markup to your key pages. This tells AI crawlers exactly where your question-answer content lives, making it easier to extract.
• Keep your site current. Update your content at least quarterly. Publish new blog posts monthly. AI models penalize stale content.

The Window Is Open, But Closing

Right now, most businesses in most industries haven't optimized for AI search. That means the bar to get in is relatively low. You don't need perfect content. You need better content than what's currently out there for your specific niche and location.

That won't last. As more businesses catch on, the competition for those 3 to 5 recommendation slots will intensify. The businesses that establish their position now will have an advantage that compounds over time, similar to the businesses that invested in SEO early in the 2010s.

We see this firsthand working with businesses in Cleveland and across the country. The ones that take AI search seriously today are building visibility that their competitors will spend years trying to catch. The ones that wait are going to find it much harder to break in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Jonah Clement

CEO at MintUp