The Hidden Reason AI Search Doesn’t Recommend Your Business

AI Search is the new game in town for businesses, and with new rules. For many years now, it’s been all about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keyword implementation, word count, and all of the other factors that go into SEO. It actually blows my mind that so many parts and pieces go into technical nuances, because most business owners are focused on running their business. They’re not trying to figure out how to implement technical details.

Some businesses have succeeded with getting their SEO properly implemented, while others have fallen by the wayside, and have no idea why, and that’s completely understandable.

Their website is still not getting traffic, so they start to think that maybe it’s not that important. However, it is crucially important for business growth, but that doesn’t mean that you have to understand all the technical aspects that go into getting your business seen.

The Missed Revenue Of Online Search

When a business has an average customer that spends $50, they are missing out on significant revenue they could have otherwise made. For example, if they were average, and getting 1,000 visitors per month to their website with a 3%-5% conversion rate every month, they have missed revenue of about $2,000 every single month that they could have made. That equates to $24,000 a year. When it doesn’t look like much on the surface, it can definitely add up, especially as a business grows.

Over time, traffic can grow as a business does, and that means even more revenue is potentially being missed out on.

If those numbers are even close to your business, you’re losing that potential revenue every single month, indefinitely until someone tells you why and you fix the problem.

AI Search: The New Game And Its Rules

Now, people are starting to move away from traditional search with clickable links, and starting to gravitate more towards using AI just by speaking, and asking a question, or for a recommendation.

Even when they do type into a search bar, they usually get an AI overview first and foremost, which is also crucial to know and understand.

Businesses aren’t ready for this, nor do they know where to even begin. It’s a completely different set up and structure. Although SEO and AI can work together simultaneously, they demand different elements to be implemented.

Firstly, even though Google did away with the importance of having an FAQ structure, it is still vitally important for AI search. Not only that, but your schema has to be set up properly for the AI to understand the specifics about your business.

Although it is not completely proven or disproven, having an llms.txt file definitely can’t hurt either, but now I’m starting to get into the technical details we spoke of earlier, that most business owners want to avoid.

There are so many components that make up AI visibility all together such as: the structure, the file structure, Basic GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), Advanced GEO, Basic AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), advanced AEO, and AIO (All of it put together).

Then I had a newfound discovery. Not only are those things important for AEO search visibility, but the most important of them all are trust signals and confidence signals as a whole.

It depends on your specific industry, but a good example would be to look at your entire online presence as a whole. These things could include your credentials, licenses, certificates, reviews, citations, etc. Your website is actually just an added benefit, and is not required to be cited by AI, but it does help.

The Biggest Misconception In AI Search

A massive misconception among most businesses is that they think that if they are good with their SEO, and they already rank on Google, then their AI visibility is also top notch, and they have nothing to worry about. That is very far from the actual truth.

You can have excellent SEO, and still be completely invisible to AI because AI chatbots read your site differently. Where Google can read virtually any site with SEO techniques implemented, chatbots work very differently.

How AI And SEO Must Work Together

Although they are different and require different things, the one thing AI and SEO have in common is the domain itself. The domain the website sits on is a crucial aspect for either or both to be successful.

Every domain has a DR (Domain Rating), DA (Domain Authority), and Spam score (It is what it sounds like). Although Google doesn’t read the authority, or the spam score, it can read what makes up these numbers as a whole.

If you have a domain with a low DR and a high spam score, you are less likely to get much traffic, if any. Not only that, but it can be damn near impossible, not to mention extremely time consuming to clean up a toxic domain with a high spam score.

For more clarification, you want your DR, and DA to be as high as possible, and you want your spam as low as possible. However, you don’t want the DR or DA to be inflated by “not so ethical” techniques. The back link (links pointing back to your site) profile of a domain also makes up these metrics.

The Hidden Reason Is Not Really Hidden Now

All of the elements I’ve mentioned previously in this article make up all of the different hidden reason(s) that your business may or may not be recommended by AI chatbots (LLMs). The main reason being the confidence and trust signals. Then moving onto the foundation, and the domain itself.

For a business owner, it’s a lot to take in, a lot to understand, and it can most definitely be overwhelming. Not to mention, an entire rabbit hole, and sequence of learning and understanding how everything in tech works together.

The Gap Between Brick And Mortar Businesses And Tech

The internet came out roughly 25-30 years ago, and the gap of a business owner simply trying to run their business, and online tech has not changed much at all.

A business owner is busy enough trying to run their business, to not have to worry about what a DR is, a spam score, indexing, citations, reviews, and why it even matters. Not to mention, now wondering if they are even being seen by AI chatbots to have their business recommended.

First it was SEO, and now AI coming into play and basically taking over. It’s simply not fair for a business owner to have to navigate all of it.

This is why it blows my mind. Why are businesses having to keep up with tech on top of everything else they’re trying to do? My hat goes off to each and every one of the businesses that do for at least trying.

That is why this agency was started to begin with. We want to help small and medium sized businesses, and we understand that you have other things to worry about.

What Do You Know About Your Business?

You may or may not know all of the aspects that make up your business’s online presence. Right now you don’t know your domain’s DR, or spam score, and you don’t know if AI chatbots can even see you.

Furthermore, neither did the businesses that just lost a customer to a competitor because of it. However, that’s not your fault.

You made it to this page which implies that you actually care about your business, and want to do something about it.

Let Us Do The Work For You

Be secure in knowing whether or not your business is ready for AI search.

Rest assured in the fact we are here to help small to mid sized businesses in every way we can. Whether giving you cost effective solutions to be competitive with large corporate giants, or simply consulting on our vast array of knowledge.

If you don’t already have a website, let’s get you started in the right direction. We offer cost effective solutions that are already SEO and AI search ready for your business through our WAAS (Website As A Service) business model.