By John Wheeler, Founder of Wheeler Intelligent Systems
Imagine someone needs exactly what your company sells. They do not know your name, so they ask an AI assistant: “Who can help a small manufacturer get better control of its product information?” Or: “Where can I find a bakery supplier that makes a product with these features?”
Would the assistant find your business? If it did, would it describe you correctly? Would it give the buyer enough information to take the next step?
Those questions are becoming part of how businesses are discovered. People still search, ask friends, visit websites, and compare vendors. Now they can also describe a problem to an AI system and ask it to suggest a way forward. A business may do good work and still be absent from that answer.
A new kind of introduction
Traditional search often begins with words a person types into a search box. A buyer might search for “commercial bakery supplier Seattle,” scan a page of results, and visit several websites. With AI, the buyer may start with a longer story: what they need, where they operate, how much they buy, and what matters most to them. The assistant may respond with an explanation, possible options, and links.
That changes the first introduction. Your company may need to be understood before the buyer ever visits your site. The question is no longer only whether someone can find your website by name. It is whether public information gives an AI system a clear, accurate picture of the work you do and the needs you serve.
I call this AI discoverability. It does not mean winning a magic ranking or making every assistant recommend you. It means asking whether AI can identify your business, understand it, and connect it to a relevant buyer question.
Being known by name is the easy test
Try asking an AI assistant, “What does my company do?” Use your exact company name. Check the answer. Is it talking about the right company? Does it understand your products or services? Does it confuse you with a similarly named business? Are the facts current?
This is a useful first test, but it has a built-in advantage: you supplied the name. A buyer who already knows your name has done part of the work for the assistant.
Now remove that advantage. Describe a customer problem your company solves without naming yourself. Ask for businesses that could help. If you make a product, describe what the buyer needs the product to do. If you offer a service, describe the situation that would make someone seek your help.
The difference between those two answers can be revealing. An assistant might describe your company fairly well when prompted by name yet never bring it up for a relevant need. That does not prove there is something wrong with your website. It gives you a question worth investigating.
The website must answer real buyer questions
Many company websites are written as introductions. They say the company is innovative, committed to quality, and focused on customers. Those claims may be sincere, but they rarely tell a buyer enough to make a choice.
Suppose a restaurant buyer needs a pastry product. The buyer may care about dimensions, case pack, handling, shelf life, allergens, availability, and the kind of finished item the product makes possible. A page that says only “premium pastry solutions” leaves most of those questions open. A person can call a salesperson. An AI assistant working from public pages may have little to work with.
The same problem appears in services. “We help companies transform with AI” tells people very little. Which companies? What problems? What does the work involve? What changes can a client reasonably expect? What would make the service a poor fit?
You do not have to publish private prices, trade secrets, or customer information. You can explain the work plainly. State what you offer, who it is for, what needs it addresses, and how a buyer can learn more. Where useful, answer the questions you hear in real sales conversations.
Clear identity matters, too
A buyer should be able to tell who is behind a business. Is it a company, a personal practice, a brand, or a product? Who founded it? Where does it operate? Is its name written the same way across its website and public profiles?
These details are easy to overlook when you know your own company well. To a new visitor, they provide context. They can also help when another person or company has a similar name.
Your website should serve as a clear home for those facts. Other public sources may also describe your business, sometimes with old details or a different focus. You cannot control every outside page, but you can keep the information you own accurate and make important corrections where you have access.
Google says its established search practices remain relevant for its AI search features. OpenAI says public websites can appear in ChatGPT search and explains how site owners can make content available to its search crawler. Those statements support a practical starting point: publish useful, accessible information on your own site. They do not promise that any particular business will appear in a particular answer. [1][2]
A simple test you can run today
Start with three questions. Write down the exact words you use and keep the answers so you can compare them later.
First, ask: “What does [company name] do?” Look for wrong facts, missing services, and confusion with another business.
Second, ask: “Which businesses help with [specific problem you solve]?” Leave out your name. Make the need realistic and specific enough to reflect an actual buyer.
Third, ask: “What would I need to know before choosing a provider for [that problem]?” This question shows you which details matter to a buyer, even if the assistant never mentions your company.
Review any sources the system shows. Did it use your current website, an old page, a directory, or something else? Try the questions in more than one AI service if you can. Answers may vary across services and from one run to the next, so treat this as a small observation, not a final score.
Then compare the answer with your own pages. If the assistant misses an important fact, ask a second question: Can a visitor find that fact clearly on our site? Sometimes the information is there but buried in a PDF, hidden behind vague language, or spread across pages that do not agree.
What to improve first
Begin with the pages a buyer would expect to read: your home page, About page, product or service pages, and contact page. Give each a clear purpose. Use the words customers use when they describe their problems. Be precise about the limits of what you offer. Keep important facts current.
If you sell products, make useful product details available in a form people can read online. If you provide services, explain the work with concrete examples that do not reveal client secrets. Make it easy to move from an answer to a conversation with your company.
You can also check whether search systems can access your pages and whether your important pages appear in search tools. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools provide ways to inspect how your site performs. Bing also offers a report showing how pages from a site are cited in some AI-generated answers. These tools give partial evidence, not a complete view of every AI system. [1][3]
The goal is to be understood
I think many businesses will discover that they have two separate problems. The first is that an AI assistant cannot find enough reliable information about them. The second is that the information it finds does not answer the question the buyer actually asked.
Neither problem calls for a clever trick. Both call for a better understanding of your customers and a clearer account of your business. Start with the questions buyers ask. Check what AI says today. Fix facts you control, fill the most useful gaps, and test again over time.
You cannot make an AI system choose your company. You can make it easier for a person—or a system helping that person—to understand whether your company belongs in the conversation.
Sources
[1] Google Search Central, AI features and your website.
[2] OpenAI Help Center, Publishers and Developers FAQ.
[3] Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance.