When Customers Ask AI for a Recommendation, Are They Recommending You?

Here’s a quick experiment.

Open ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google (with AI Overviews turned on). Type in a question the way a customer would – “best [your business type] in [your city]” or “who should I hire to [what you do]?”

Look at what comes up.

If your business is in the answer: good news. AI is one of your salespeople right now. If not: you have some work to do — and the sooner you know, the better.

Why this test matters

I’ve been helping local businesses on the North Shore and around Vancouver get found online for about 25 years. The rules have changed a few times over that stretch — Google Places gave way to Google Maps, Maps gave way to the local pack, the local pack gave way to Google Business Profile. Every shift rewarded the businesses that noticed first.

This is the biggest shift I’ve seen.

AI search doesn’t give customers a list to choose from. It gives them an answer. When someone asks Gemini “who’s a good landscaper on the North Shore?”, the AI names two or three companies. Not ten. If you’re on the shortlist, you get the phone call. If not, you don’t just rank lower — you don’t exist for that customer.

Here’s what most business owners don’t realize: you can be doing well in traditional Google search and still be invisible in AI search. They’re separate signals. You could rank #2 in Maps and still not come up when someone asks ChatGPT the same question.

AI Visibility Audit Reports

AI Visibility Audit Reports

What an AI Search Visibility Audit actually tells you

Over the past several months at 99 Digital, we’ve been running these audits for local businesses, and the findings tend to fall into three buckets.

  1. What AI currently says about you. We test 15 to 20 real customer questions across Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — the same questions your prospects are actually asking. We record which platforms mention you, what they say, and which competitors come up instead. Screenshots and all, so you can see it with your own eyes.
  2. Where AI is getting its information. AI systems don’t just read your website. They pull from your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your BBB listing, industry directories, news mentions, and dozens of other sources. When those sources disagree — say, your profile lists one phone number and your BBB listing lists another — the AI loses confidence and defaults to a competitor. We map every source AI is drawing from and flag every inconsistency.
  3. Exactly what to fix, in what order. This is the part most audits skip. It’s easy to hand someone a 40-page report of problems. It’s harder to say: “Do these three things in the next 30 days and you’ll see the biggest lift.” We prioritize by impact, not by comprehensiveness.

The awkward truth about AI visibility right now

Most local businesses haven’t started thinking about this. Which is exactly why now is the moment to move.

The businesses that get their AI presence sorted in the next six to twelve months are going to hold a compounding advantage. AI systems reward consistency — the businesses that were correct and current when the AI first looked at them tend to stay in the recommendation set as the AI keeps updating. The businesses that show up late will spend years catching up to competitors they didn’t know they were behind.

You don’t need to become an AI expert. You just need to know where you stand and what to do first.

What happens if you decide to do this

An audit isn’t a sales pitch. Some of what we find, you can fix yourself — and we’ll tell you exactly what and how. Some of it takes ongoing work, and if you’d like our help with that, we have options for that too. Either way, you’ll finish knowing exactly where you stand in AI search, which is more than most local businesses can honestly say right now.

Our full AI Search Visibility Audit is $1,495 for a single-location business — turnaround is typically five to seven business days, and it includes a 30-minute walk-through call where we go through the findings with you and answer any questions.

If you’d rather start smaller, we also offer a free 15-minute AI visibility check where we run a few live prompts on your business and show you what comes up. It’s quick, and it’s usually eye-opening.

Conclusion

Call 604-359-2239 or book at 99digital.ca to get started.

99 Digital Inc. helps North Shore and Vancouver businesses get found in Google search, Google Maps, and now AI search. Google Business Profile optimization · Google Ads management · AI Search Visibility.