AI recommendations are free advertising.
We show you how to earn them.
Getting recommended takes two things. The AI has to find you, and it has to understand what you offer. Miss either half and it names a competitor it can verify.
A customer asks
“Recommend me a cafe with free wifi”
How an AI answers
An AI builds its answer on the spot, from pages it just opened. Some of them are yours.
The question
A customer asks for a recommendation, not for you by name.
The search
The assistant runs a live web search, not a search of its memory.
Pages about you
Roundups, directories and lists for your trade and your suburb.
Your own website
Sometimes it goes and opens business sites, including yours.
The reading
It reads what those pages actually say, in plain words.
The answer
It names businesses those pages named, in the words it found.
Sometimes it stays on third-party pages. Sometimes it opens your own site as well. Which way it goes shifts with the question, the trade and the suburb, so the safe assumption is that both happen to you.
Two of these are yours to change
Be on the pages it opens
The roundups, directories and lists an AI already reads for your trade and your suburb. Most of them are free to appear on.
Be readable once it does
On those pages and on your own website, in plain words. A page it opened that says nothing about what you offer counts for nothing.
Why that is good news
Both fixes are yours to make and neither costs anything. That is the part we find for you: the specific pages an AI already reads for your trade and your suburb, which of them are missing you, and which of the things you offer your own site never says out loud. Being on one is necessary to get named. It is never a guarantee of it.
Why this matters now
Asking an AI for a local business went from rare to normal in one year.
Consumers using an AI to find a local business
45%
Two points, because the survey runs once a year. Nobody publishes a monthly figure for this, so we do not draw one.
Who is asking, by age
64%
Working-age adults lead, not the youngest. BrightLocal published these three figures and did not publish the 18 to 29 or 45 to 59 bands, so they are not shown.
of the people who use it trust the local-business recommendations an AI gives them.
AI is the third most-used way to discover a local business, behind Google and Facebook.
Source: BrightLocal 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, a representative panel of 1,002 US adults. That is the size of the shift, not a figure for your business.
How to size it for yourself
Take your own count of new customers and the share who arrive through a search or a recommendation, and apply the shift above. That gives you a number built from your business rather than an industry average we would have had to invent.
What we've measured
Two things have to be true before an AI will name you.
Our own measurements, each naming the surface and the kind of question it came from. Being on the right page is necessary to get named. It is never a guarantee of it.
Visibility
Are you on a page the AI even reads?
of the businesses we probed with no page naming them was named zero times.
Our measurement · generic recommendation query · live-search AI
In the markets we have measured, most of those pages are free to join: directories and listings that ask for a form, not a fee.
What this means
When someone asks for the category without naming you, like “best cafes in Claremont”, the AI reads only a handful of pages and can name a business only if one of them mentions it. If your name is on none of those pages, no amount of quality puts you in the running.
Legibility
Does that page say what the customer asked for?
businesses were named exactly when a page the AI read carried both the name and the detail asked for.
Verified on ChatGPT · specific query
What this means
When the ask gets specific, like “gluten free breakfast” or “a good fade”, the AI reads pages that carry the detail, including your own website. A page with your name but not the detail gets skipped. This is usually the fixable half: the detail lives in free directory forms and on your own site.
The surface and the fix shift with the question, so the scan reports each question on its own. How we stay honest about that
Free, in seconds
Scan your business today.
We read your website the way a machine does, then check it against the filters customers actually add when they ask an AI for a business like yours.
- Which filters your site answersAnd which ones it says nothing about, filter by filter.
- The free listings you are missingThe directories an AI reads for your category, each with the link that adds you.
- What a machine actually getsThe plain text an AI receives when it opens your site, scripts and images stripped.
No AI probe runs on the Free Scan, so it reports what is readable about you today rather than guessing what an AI would say.
search filters your website answers when a customer asks an AI for a cafe.
Free advertising you are missing
Questions
Common questions
Which search engines and AI models does Digital Cartography analyse?
Your Free Scan evaluates your domain deterministically against active market filters. It runs no AI probes, and it reports what a search engine can see rather than what any one assistant says. Our Paid Scan is still in testing and is not open to customers yet; its findings are verified hands-on across leading platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. Because each engine indexes and synthesises different sources, we attribute every finding to the specific platform it came from, and we never let one stand in for another.
Will this get me named by an AI?
Nobody can guarantee that, and anyone who does is guessing. What we deliver is sharper: the precise reason an AI names you or skips you, the exact pages that decide it, and a prioritised set of fixes that are free and entirely yours to make.
Can you make the fixes for me?
That is where we are heading. We are building a done-for-you service that implements the fixes and then connects your own metrics, bookings and branded searches, so you can watch what actually moves. Your Free Scan is the first step, and it is available right now.
How do I know what AI discovery is worth to me?
The channel itself is moving fast: consumer use of AI for local discovery went from 6% a year ago to 45% today (BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, linked in the sources above). Apply that shift to your own new-customer count and the share who arrive through a search or a recommendation, and the size of the opportunity is yours, calculated from your numbers rather than ours.