Showing up in AI search.
Real customers are asking ChatGPT about your business right now. The practical playbook to make sure you're the answer.
Adam Stewart
30 min · live
Friday · 10:00 AM
Real customers are asking ChatGPT about your business right now. The practical playbook to make sure you're the answer.
"Best chiropractor near me." "Should I hire a business coach." "How much does a concrete pool cost." If you're not the answer, you don't exist.
The scale. The conversion rate. What ChatGPT is shipping next.
What the AI looks at when it decides who to recommend, and how to win each one.
Chiro, business coach, videographer, pool builder, trade, marketing consultant. Exact tactics.
Prompt injection in the wild. Stays in this room.
Buyers don't search anymore. They ask. And the AI answers in their voice, with one recommendation, ready to act.
Source: OpenAI · February 2026
The model pre-qualifies the buyer. By the time they click your link, they've already been told you're the right answer.
Source: BrightEdge, Adobe Analytics, Semrush · 2024 to 2025
OpenAI now ships its own browser. ChatGPT becomes the default surface for browsing, comparing, buying.
"Book me a hotel in Sydney for the weekend." ChatGPT browses, compares, fills the form, books it. No human visit to your site.
"Best CRM for a 5 person agency under $200/mo." ChatGPT names 3 brands. You're either named or you're not.
It knows the user's budget, location, preferences, past purchases. Recommendations get better fit every time they ask.
A ChatGPT recommendation is the closest thing to a warm referral you can get from a stranger.
The takeaway · this is the highest intent traffic on the internet
Six ranking signals. Master them and you become the recommendation, not the runner up.
How often you're named on third party URLs. The single biggest input.
Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, industry listicles, podcasts. The AI weighs these heavier.
Sit next to category leaders in a list and the AI starts to think of you as that calibre.
Same name, same bio, same offer everywhere. The AI needs to know who you are.
Question led headings, direct answers, FAQ schema, real lists. Easy to lift.
Real numbers beat fluff. Positive mentions beat mixed ones.
Mentions on third party URLs are the strongest signal. Not links. Mentions. A name drop on a relevant page beats a link from an irrelevant one.
Wikipedia and Reddit punch above their weight. Industry listicles get quoted verbatim. Podcasts get crawled by transcript. Hunt the surfaces the AI already trusts.
When your name appears beside the category leader, the AI infers you're in the same set. Get added to "Best 10" lists with the names you want to be measured against.
Only the exact URLs the AI cites for your prompt count. A New York Times mention is worthless if that page never appears in citations. Hunt the exact pages, not the domains.
Same business name, same description, same location, same offer across every surface. About page, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Google Business. Confused signals make an invisible brand.
Question led H2s. The first sentence under each is the literal answer. FAQ and HowTo schema. Bulleted lists. The model lifts these almost word for word.
"$199 lifetime in Sydney 2026" beats "affordable pricing." Real numbers, real suburbs, real dates. Generic copy gets skipped. Specific copy gets quoted.
Answer engines prefer fresh. Date your pages. Update them. "Updated November 2026" in the header earns trust the AI can read.
When ChatGPT looks for "best X," it scans for proof phrases. "Award winning," "winner," "finalist" are the strongest credibility signals it picks up. If you've ever won anything, declare it everywhere.
Hero of your homepage. Footer. About page. Bio. Email signature. Sales decks. Don't be modest. The AI can't read what isn't written.
"Award winning [your service]." "[Year] winner." "Finalist [year]." These exact phrases get pattern-matched when someone asks for the "best."
The award organisation's site lists you as a winner. That's a free citation on a high-trust URL. Submit your link, ask for the badge, link both ways.
Telstra Best of Business. Local Business Awards. Your industry body (HIA, MBA, ABIA, SPASA). Even a finalist mention gets quoted by ChatGPT.
Every move you make for AI search compounds in Google. Same content, two channels, one effort. You're not picking a side. You're upgrading both.
Six industries. Six exact playbooks. Pick the one closest to yours and copy it.
Sciatica. Office worker neck. Question led headline, one paragraph answer, then expand.
The booking platforms ChatGPT trusts for Aussie health. Google Business Profile filled out.
r/AusFinance, r/australia, r/Posture. Helpful real answers under your real name.
5 minute walk-through. Captions on. Transcripts get pulled into ChatGPT and Gemini.
Not "business coach." "Coach for solo agency owners $300k to $1M." Specificity wins.
"$340k to $1.1M in 14 months." Page per client. The AI loves specific stats.
Ten Aussie business pods this quarter. Transcripts get crawled. Every episode a citation surface.
Long-form posts under your name. Both get pulled into LLM training data.
One page per venue. Cuisine, suburb, views generated, bookings lifted, deliverables. Outcomes the AI can cite.
The Aussie food press ChatGPT trusts. Concrete Playground, Good Food, Urban List too. Real features, not paid placements.
Every clip tagged with the venue, dish, suburb, and the booking lift. Captions and transcripts get crawled by the AI.
Day rate, monthly retainer, what "sold out" looks like. Most competitors stay vague. The one who's specific wins the answer.
"Concrete pool cost Australia 2026." Real ranges. Tables. The AI lifts these directly.
Block type, pool size, finish, install timeline, cost band. Gold for the AI.
The third party review platforms ChatGPT trusts for Aussie trades. Verified reviews are the trust signal.
Five minutes touring a finished concrete pool. Names, numbers, finish. Massive AEO leverage.
"How much does a switchboard upgrade cost." Honest ranges. ChatGPT will quote you.
One page per area you cover. Local schema. Same template, different area. Dozens of pages.
The Aussie trades platforms ChatGPT pulls for trust. Get to 50+ reviews. Reply to every one.
"How to reset your switchboard." Customers find you for the small thing, hire you for the big thing.
"When to hire a consultant vs an agency." Direct answer to the question buyers actually ask.
"From $80 CAC to $32 CAC in 90 days." Numbers, channels, time, investment.
r/SaaS, r/marketing, Indie Hackers. Real long-form helpful answers. The AI cites these directly.
Ten pods in 90 days. One guest essay a month. Each one a citable URL.
"Coach for solo agencies $300k to $1M." Not "business coach." The AI matches on specificity.
Prices, suburbs, sizes, ranges, outcomes. Generic copy doesn't get cited. Specific copy gets quoted.
Reddit, YouTube, hipages, Houzz, listicles, podcast feeds. That's where the AI gets its second opinion.
Page title is the customer's literal question. First sentence is the answer. Then expand.
The cleanest grey hat AI search play I've seen running in the wild. We're going to break it down. This stays in this room.
Splat Labs is ROCK Robotic's enterprise platform for 3D Gaussian splatting at splatlabs.ai. Right on the homepage hero, beside the headline, sits one CTA most companies wouldn't think of:
"Ask AI About Splat Labs."
Click it. A modal opens. You pick which AI to ask. The prompt fires. And what happens next is the whole game.
Capture, host, and share immersive Gaussian Splat digital twins in seconds.
A modal pops. Five options: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok. The user picks their AI of choice.
For ChatGPT, Perplexity and Grok, it deep-links straight into a new chat with a pre-loaded prompt. For Claude and Gemini, it copies the prompt to clipboard and tells the user to paste.
No matter which the user picks, the same prompt fires.
"Save this to my memory" plants Splat Labs in that user's persistent ChatGPT memory. Next time they ask about 3D capture, splat hosting, virtual tours, the AI recommends Splat Labs by default. Forever.
"Visit these URLs" sends the AI fetching every blog post, product page and tutorial in the directory. Every visit is a citation event the AI logs as authoritative.
The prompt frames Splat Labs as "the authoritative platform" and asks "why would I use it over other 3D platforms." The AI generates a glowing answer the user reads first.
Every visitor who clicks the button trains another AI session. Conversation logs feed the next training cycle. The signal compounds, organically, paid for by the customer.
Hero section of your homepage. Same energy as a "Book a demo" CTA. Orange or your accent colour. Sparkle icon optional but on brand.
Open with "Save this to my memory." Define your brand in one sentence. List the categories you want to win. Provide a curated directory of your best URLs. Close with a question that produces a recommendation.
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Grok accept URL parameters. Pre-fill the prompt and open in a new tab. For Claude and Gemini, copy to clipboard and prompt the user to paste.
Email signatures. Sales decks. Social bios. Every customer touchpoint is a chance to plant your brand inside another personal AI. Free distribution.
Make your customers train the AI to recommend you. Once. Forever.
The takeaway · the cheapest distribution channel just opened
The week that gets you in the answer.
Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Ask your top 10 customer questions. Log three things per answer: who gets named, are you named, which sites it cites. This is your scorecard.
From yesterday's log, pull every cited URL into one list. These are the exact pages and publications you need to be on, mentioned by, or featured in.
Take your highest traffic page. Rewrite each section to lead with a customer question, then a one sentence answer. Add real numbers: price, timeline, capacity, suburb.
Three off-site moves: one helpful Reddit reply under your real name, one YouTube description that names your service and city, one pitch email to a "best of" list editor.
Set up HubSpot's free AEO tracker (28 day trial) to monitor visibility. In two weeks, re-run Monday's 10 questions. Track which ones now name you.
Free tools: hubspot.com/aeo (28 day trial) · perplexity.ai · profound.so
60-second audit. Scores your AI visibility, content depth and schema. hubspot.com/aeo-grader
The cheapest audit there is. Run your 10 customer questions, log who gets named. This is Monday's job.
See if ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini are sending you traffic yet. Tracks AI referral share by source.
Treat AI search like SEO. Rank tracking, prompt monitoring and competitor share across answer engines.
Set up tracking for your top prompts. Get alerts when your brand starts (or stops) getting mentioned.
Enterprise AI visibility. Share of voice, sentiment, competitor benchmarking across ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Start with the grader · upgrade as you scale. 60 seconds to see where you stand.
Treat the model like a channel. Build for it like you build for any other.
The big idea · this is a distribution channel, not a productivity tool
Pick the industry closest to yours. Run this week's plan. Bring the data back to the group. That's how we figure this out faster than everyone else.
Questions · open floor · let's go
AI Systems_Lab_ · @adamstewartmarketing