Why do ChatGPT and Perplexity name my competitors and not me?

ChatGPT and Perplexity name your competitors because, for that exact prompt, their pages and the mentions around them were easier to find, verify and cite than yours. Nobody pays for the slot. Change the wording, the town or the day and different names can appear, so a single test tells you little.

When a small business is missing from AI answers, the cause is usually a mix of these:

  • Blocked access: crawlers are shut out, or key text sits inside images and scripts.
  • Vague pages: the site never says plainly what you do, who for, where and how you charge.
  • Thin outside evidence: few reviews, patchy directory listings and no press or trade body mentions.

The cost of being left out is growing. According to Scala Technologies' 2026 guide, ChatGPT drives about 87% of AI referral traffic, and roughly 60% of Google searches now end without a click. Citing Ahrefs’ December 2025 update of its AI Overviews study, the same guide says an AI Overview above a top ranking cut its clickthrough rate by 58%. Citing the Pew Research Center’s analysis of 22 July 2025, it adds that users click a traditional result only 8% of the time when Google shows an AI Overview (source: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT in 2026: Scala Technologies).

Provley is an AI visibility monitoring service. It checks every week what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude say about a business, then gives the exact edit for the pages that let it down. The method in this guide is the one Provley uses, written for a UK owner or marketing lead rather than a developer.

How do AI assistants decide which websites to cite?

AI assistants choose what to cite in stages: they interpret the question, fetch candidate pages, rank them, then write an answer from the few sources they trust most. Your business can drop out at any stage.

  • Interpret: the assistant works out the service, the place and the need, such as an electrician in Sheffield who installs EV chargers.
  • Fetch: it searches the web or an index for pages that seem to match.
  • Rank: it weighs which pages answer clearly and which sources look trustworthy.
  • Synthesise: it writes the answer, quoting the best passages and naming the businesses they support.

A citation and a recommendation are different results. Your page can be cited as the source for a fact, such as how a party wall agreement works, while the answer recommends a competitor by name. The reverse also happens: a review site lists you, so you are named without your own site being cited. Record both, because a page that is cited but not named needs a different fix from a business that is named only through a directory.

How can I check what ChatGPT and Perplexity say about my industry and my competitors?

Check by writing a fixed set of buyer questions, running them on ChatGPT and Perplexity, ideally Gemini and Claude too, and recording every business named and every URL cited. Keep the set unchanged between checks so results stay comparable.

Write the questions the way UK buyers phrase them, not the way your website describes you. People ask for "a solicitor for a lasting power of attorney in Leicester", "a Gas Safe engineer near me who services combi boilers" or "an accountant who understands Making Tax Digital for landlords". Mix broad questions, comparisons and problem questions. For every AI answer check, record these details:

  • The question, assistant, date and location you ran it from
  • Every business named, in order
  • Every URL cited, and whose site it is
  • Whether you were named, cited, both or neither
  • Any wrong facts about you, such as an old address

Run tests logged out or in a private window where you can, because history and saved memories shape answers. Our free Provley checklist sets out a ready question test and the checks we use to judge whether AI will name a business, so you start from a template rather than a blank sheet.

Can AI crawlers actually read my website?

Many small business websites are harder for AI crawlers to read than their owners assume, and an assistant cannot recommend what it cannot read. Google's technical requirements give a sound baseline: the page must be crawlable, return a successful status and hold its content as indexable text.

  • Your robots.txt file does not block Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot or PerplexityBot.
  • Key facts sit in page text, not only in images, PDFs or booking widgets.
  • Main content loads without waiting for scripts.
  • Cookie banners and pop-ups do not hide the content.
  • Each service has its own page rather than sharing a long homepage.

Search engine health still counts. Scala Technologies notes in its 2026 guide that Google still handles over 90% of the world's searches, and assistants often fetch pages through search indexes, so the work that keeps you visible in Google keeps you within reach of AI (source: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT in 2026: Scala Technologies).

What should my pages say so an assistant can quote them?

Your pages should state plainly what you do, who you do it for, where you work and how you charge, in short passages that answer a buyer's question on their own. Assistants lift sentences, so every sentence that matters should make sense out of context.

Yotpo reports in its guide of 15 December 2025 that AI models favour clear answer blocks of 40 to 60 words over long narratives that bury the lead (source: ChatGPT SEO & GEO 2026: 12 Tips to Get Cited in AI Answers). Put an answer block of that length at the top of each service page, under a heading phrased as the buyer's question.

Compare these openings for a bathroom fitter. The vague version: "We are passionate about transforming spaces with quality craftsmanship." The quotable version: "We design and fit bathrooms across south Manchester and Stockport for homeowners and landlords, and give a fixed written quote after a home visit." The plain version names the service, area, customer and pricing method, which is what an assistant needs to recommend you for "bathroom fitter in Stockport".

Evidence on the page helps as well. Digital Applied, in its guide of 2 January 2026, cites the Princeton-led study GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (Aggarwal and others, arXiv, November 2023, accepted at KDD 2024), which found that citing sources, adding statistics and including quotations can lift visibility in AI answers by up to 40%. For a small firm, that means naming the standards you work to and your trade body, and quoting real customers with permission.

Use the words your buyers use. If customers say "boiler service" and your site says "heating maintenance solutions", the assistant has to guess. UK terms such as "fixed fee", "VAT registered" and "Gas Safe registered" belong on the page, with a short FAQ answering the questions from your test set.

Why does outside evidence about my business matter so much?

Outside evidence matters because assistants prefer businesses that other trusted sources confirm, not only those that describe themselves well. Competitors often win on reviews, directory listings and press rather than on their own websites.

Authority shows up in the data. Yotpo cites figures in its 2026 guide showing that sites with over 32,000 referring domains are roughly 3.5x more likely to be cited by ChatGPT (source: ChatGPT SEO & GEO 2026: 12 Tips to Get Cited in AI Answers). A local firm will not reach that scale, but the principle holds: independent mentions are how an assistant checks you.

For a UK small business, the outside sources worth getting right are these:

  • Google Business Profile, complete and with recent reviews
  • Trustpilot, Feefo or Reviews.io, whichever your sector uses
  • Checkatrade, TrustATrader, Which? Trusted Traders, MyBuilder or Bark
  • Professional registers such as the Law Society, ICAEW, the FCA register, Gas Safe and NICEIC
  • Local press, chamber of commerce pages and supplier case studies
  • Reddit and Mumsnet threads where UK buyers ask for recommendations

Keep your business name, address, phone number and services identical everywhere. When Yell shows an old address and your site a new one, the assistant has reason to doubt both.

How do I read my audit results and decide what to fix first?

Read your audit question by question, sort each result into a pattern, and fix first the pages behind your most valuable questions that sit closest to being named. The aim is a short ranked list, not a wish list.

  • Cited but not named. Result: the assistant uses your page as a source but recommends someone else. Fix: put your name, service and area into the passage it quotes.
  • Named but not cited. Result: a directory carries you. Fix: strengthen your own page so the assistant can confirm details directly.
  • Competitor page cited. Result: a rival's page holds the answer. Fix: compare their page with yours on crawlable text, a plain opening answer and outside evidence; if theirs answers in a plain block and yours does not, that edit can happen this week.
  • Third party list cited. Result: a comparison article or directory holds the answer. Fix: ask to be listed or reviewed there.
  • National sources cited. Result: government pages, broadsheets or national chains hold the answer. Fix: you will rarely displace these, so rank the question lower.
  • Wrong facts. Result: the assistant repeats incorrect details about you. Fix: correct them at the cited source, then on your site.

To rank the fixes, rate each question on how much a recommendation would be worth and how realistic the fix is. A valuable, easy fix, such as rewriting a service page a competitor beats on clarity alone, goes to the top. A hard, low value fix, such as winning national press, goes to the bottom.

Fix your own pages in that order: usually the service pages behind your best paid work, then the homepage, then an about page stating who you are, where you are and what qualifies you. The Provley audit scores your key pages against these checks and gives the exact edit for each, with no account needed.

How do I tell whether the fixes are working?

You tell whether fixes work by running the same question set every week and tracking your Citation Share: the share of answers that name your business. A single check misleads, because answers vary between runs, assistants and locations.

Keep conditions steady: the same questions, assistants, day of the week and location settings, with each question run more than once where you can. Record named and cited separately, since they move at different speeds.

Expect movement over weeks rather than days. Assistants need to recrawl your pages, and directories and review sites take time to update. Watch the trend and which competitors you are displacing, not a single good or bad Monday. Provley runs this check weekly and sends a Monday report with your share of AI answers, the competitor named ahead of you and the next page worth fixing.

Frequently asked questions

Are other businesses already doing this?

Many businesses are not yet working on their AI visibility. Digital Applied says in its guide of 2 January 2026 that 47% of brands have no plan yet for being named by AI assistants (source: GEO Guide 2026: Generative Engine Optimization Explained), so a small firm starting now can still move ahead of slower rivals.