The short answer
AI assistants do not have opinions about your business. They summarise what the web already says. So the way to get named is to make sure the web says something clear, consistent and verifiable about who you are, what you do and where you do it.
How these tools actually decide
When someone asks an AI assistant who the best plumber in Brisbane is, it is not judging plumbing. It is pattern-matching across sources it can read: your website, your Google profile, directories, review sites, and articles that mention you. The businesses that get named tend to be the ones that appear consistently across several of those, saying the same thing each time.
1. Give the machines something to read
Structured data, sometimes called schema, is a bit of code that states plainly what your business is, where it operates, what it offers and what people have rated it. Humans never see it. Machines rely on it. Most small business sites have none at all, which means an AI has to guess from your prose.
2. Make your details identical everywhere
Your business name, address and phone number should be written exactly the same on your site, your Google profile, and every directory you are listed in. Every mismatch chips away at confidence that these listings are the same business. Confidence is the whole game.
3. Get mentioned somewhere other than your own site
Your own website saying you are the best carries almost no weight. Third-party sources do. Directory profiles, local press, industry bodies, supplier pages, genuine review platforms. These are the sources AI tools lean on, because they are not you talking about you.
4. Answer real questions in plain language
AI tools quote content that answers a question clearly and early. A page that spends four paragraphs warming up before it gets to the point rarely gets cited. Say the answer in the first two sentences, then explain.
This is why guides like this one exist. Not to sell you anything, but because a clear answer is the thing that gets quoted.
5. Reviews still matter here
Review volume, rating and recency all feed the picture. A business with a strong, current review profile across more than one platform is far more likely to be named than one with a handful from three years ago.
What nobody can promise you
There is no paid placement in an AI answer. Nobody can promise a specific wording, and anyone selling you a guaranteed number one answer is having you on. What can be promised is the work: the setup that makes being named far more likely, and the measurement that shows whether it moved. That is what our own 90 day guarantee commits to, with the terms written down before we start.
How to test it right now
Open ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity and ask who the best is at what you do in your suburb. Do not use your business name. See who comes up and whether you are in the list. Most business owners have never done this and it is usually a sobering thirty seconds.
Joe LawrenceFounder, Smarta Sprint. Builds and runs businesses in Brisbane.