How AI assistants decide what to mention
When an assistant is asked “who is a good web designer in Manchester”, it does not consult a memory of opinions. Most now run a web search, read the top results, and summarise them, citing the pages they drew on. Google’s AI Overviews do the same with Google’s own index. The businesses mentioned are the ones the retrieved pages mention, described the way those pages describe them.
That has two consequences. First, being recommended by AI is mostly being well represented in ordinary search, on your own site and on the sites the assistant reads: directories, reviews, local press. Second, clarity matters more than volume: a page that states a fact plainly in one sentence is quoted; a page that gestures at it in three paragraphs is not.
| Kind of query | AI Overview present? | What it cited |
|---|---|---|
| AI SEO agency searches | Yes | Nine UK agency and studio sites, not the big SEO tools |
| Website cost questions | Yes | Twelve small UK studios’ cost guides with real prices and a year in the title |
| Website maintenance questions | Yes | Maintenance and cost guides from small UK firms |
| What generative engine optimisation is | Yes | Google’s own documentation, Semrush, Coursera, YouTube |
| E-commerce SEO agency searches | Yes | Eight UK agencies with outcome-first pages |
| Local web design searches | No (local pack instead) | — |
| Local SEO agency searches | No (local pack instead) | — |
Source: Cybrial reading of live UK Google results in its own market, desktop, 4 September 2026: AI Overviews on 8 of 14 results checked.
Two things stand out. Small UK sites with clear, dated, priced answers are cited on the informational queries. And on the local commercial queries there was no AI Overview at all; the map pack did the job, which means the Google Business Profile is the AI answer for “near me” questions too.
The seven things that make a business citable
- Entity consistency. The same business name, one-sentence description, area, founder and services on your site, your Google Business Profile, Clutch, LinkedIn and every directory. Assistants resolve “who is this” by cross-checking; inconsistency reads as two businesses or none.
- Quotable statements near the top of each page. “A five-page business website in Manchester costs £500 to £3,000; ours start at £500.” One sentence, one fact, checkable.
- Structured data: Organization with founder, Person, LocalBusiness, Article with author and dates, FAQPage. It is how a machine reads the facts without guessing. This site carries all of them.
- Dates and sources. Assistants and their users prefer recent, attributed information; a page that says when its figures were read and where from is safer to cite.
- Answers to the specific questions people ask assistants. “How much does SEO cost in the UK”, “is an SEO agency worth it”, “how long does a website take”. Each is a page here for that reason.
- Mentions elsewhere. Reviews on Google, a Clutch profile, local press, client credits: the assistant reads those pages too, and a business described consistently in several places is a business it can recommend.
- A machine-readable summary. An llms.txt file at the root listing your pages with one-line summaries is cheap to add; whether the major engines read it is not yet confirmed, and our guide on it says so.
How to check whether you are recommended
- Write down ten questions your customers would ask an assistant: “who does web design in Bury”, “how much should a website cost”, “best pick and mix delivery uk”.
- Ask them, monthly, in ChatGPT (with web search on), Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Copilot. Record whether you are named, whether you are cited, and what is said.
- Read what is cited instead. Those pages are the standard; match their clarity and beat their evidence.
- Publish the method, not a score. There is no reliable “AI visibility” metric yet, and any agency selling one is selling its own dashboard.
The overlap with ordinary search
Almost total. The pages assistants cite are the pages Google ranks, and the facts they quote are the ones stated plainly at the top. A business doing the search work on this site — profile, pages in the customer’s words, answers to buyer questions, structured data, real mentions — is doing the AI work. The additions are entity consistency across every profile, the quotable-sentence discipline, and the monthly check. Anyone selling AI optimisation as a separate mystery is selling the same work twice.
