How AI actually decides who to recommend
There is no ranking to buy. Here's what the engines read before they name a business.
When someone asks an assistant for a plumber, a dentist or a roofer, it isn't pulling a ranked list the way Google does. It assembles an answer, in the moment, from sources it trusts — and then names two or three businesses.
Four things decide whether you're one of them.
1. Whether it can read you at all
Assistants reach your site through crawlers. If your robots.txt blocks them, or your pages are built so the content only appears after JavaScript runs, you're invisible before the question is even asked. This is the single most common reason a good local business never gets named.
2. Whether your details agree with each other
An engine cross-checks your name, address, phone number and hours across your site, your Google Business Profile and the directories it knows. When those disagree — an old suite number, a former phone number, "Ave" in one place and "Avenue" in another — it treats the whole record as unreliable and reaches for a business it's more certain about.
3. Whether anyone else vouches for you
Reviews matter, but not in the way most owners assume. Volume matters less than recency and specificity. A review from last month that says "replaced our water heater the same day" is worth more than twenty that say "great service", because the specific one can be quoted inside an answer.
4. Whether your pages answer the question directly
Engines prefer text they can lift. A page that says "We offer competitive pricing" gives them nothing. A page that says "Emergency call-outs are $149 plus parts, 24 hours a day across Laval and Montreal" can be quoted word for word — and when it is, you're the business named.
None of this is a trick, and none of it can be bought. It's the same work whether you do it yourself or we do it for you.
Curious where you stand? Run the free AI visibility check on your own website — it takes about a minute.