The problem small businesses are running into right now
More and more customers are skipping Google and asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overview to recommend a business directly. They type "best accountant for self-employed people in Leeds" or "halal restaurant near me open late" and get one or two names — not ten blue links to scroll through.
If your business is not one of those names, that customer goes to whoever is. And they may never see your website at all.
You can rank on page one of Google and still be completely invisible to AI answers — if your website lacks the structured signals AI systems rely on.
The tools designed to fix this problem — Peec AI, Profound, Brandwatch AI — charge £300 to £500 per month. They are built for agencies managing dozens of enterprise clients. They are not built for a restaurant owner in Liverpool, a solicitor in Manchester, or a freelance designer in Bristol.
GetVisus is. Free audit, plain-English results, fixes you can implement yourself.
What you actually need vs what enterprise tools charge
Enterprise AI visibility tools: £300–£500/month. GetVisus free audit: £0. GetVisus Fix Pack (all exact fixes): £19 one-off. GetVisus Pro (monthly tracking): £29/month. The fixes themselves — schema markup, llms.txt, FAQ content — cost nothing to implement.
What AI SEO actually involves for a small business
AI SEO — also called GEO (generative engine optimisation), LLM SEO, or AEO (answer engine optimisation) — comes down to four questions:
- Can AI identify who you are? Do you have schema.org markup that states your business name, category, location, and contact details in machine-readable format?
- Can AI crawlers access your site? Is your robots.txt accidentally blocking ChatGPT's crawler (GPTBot) or Perplexity's crawler (PerplexityBot)?
- Can AI extract specific facts from your content? Does your website contain quotable, fact-dense passages — specific services, prices, locations, turnaround times — or just vague marketing copy?
- Do external sources confirm you exist? Do you have Google reviews, directory listings, or community mentions that give AI systems confidence you are a real, credible business?
Most small businesses fail on two or three of these. The fixes are not complicated — they just require knowing which ones apply to you and in what order to tackle them.
The fix list — in order of impact
Add schema.org markup to your homepage
A JSON-LD block using your correct business type (Restaurant, LocalBusiness, LegalService, etc.) with your name, address, phone, opening hours, and a sameAs link to your Google Business Profile. This is the single highest-impact fix for most small businesses — it tells AI exactly who you are.
Effort: 1–2 hours · Cost: free · Impact: highCheck and fix your robots.txt
Go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you see a wildcard block (User-agent: * / Disallow: /), add explicit allow rules for GPTBot and PerplexityBot. Many website builders silently block these crawlers — which means ChatGPT and Perplexity physically cannot read your site.
Write a "What is [your business]?" paragraph
Near the top of your homepage, add a short paragraph in plain English: what you do, where you do it, who you serve, and one or two specific facts. "We are a family-run Pakistani restaurant in Liverpool city centre, open seven days a week, serving halal food from £8 per main course." That is exactly the kind of sentence AI systems quote in answers.
Effort: 30 minutes · Cost: free · Impact: medium-highClaim your Google Business Profile and get 5+ reviews
AI systems — especially those with web search access — use Google Business Profile data and reviews as corroboration. A verified Google Business Profile with at least five genuine reviews signals to AI that your business is real, local, and trusted by real people.
Effort: 1–2 hours to set up, ongoing · Cost: free · Impact: high for local queriesAdd FAQ content to your key pages
FAQ-format content maps directly to how people ask AI questions. Add 5–8 questions and specific answers to your homepage or main service page. Use FAQ schema markup so AI can identify the structure reliably. Questions like "Do you offer same-day appointments?" or "What areas do you cover?" work well.
Effort: 1–2 hours · Cost: free · Impact: mediumCreate an llms.txt file
An llms.txt file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt is a simple text file that tells AI crawlers which pages on your site are most important and what each covers. It takes under an hour to create and costs nothing. See our step-by-step guide with a copy-paste template.
Effort: 45 minutes · Cost: free · Impact: mediumHow to know which fixes apply to you
You do not need to guess. GetVisus audits your website against all six areas above and tells you exactly which ones are failing, in order of impact. The free audit takes about 60 seconds and includes a live probe against ChatGPT and Perplexity to check whether either engine currently mentions your brand.
The result is a 0–100 AI visibility score and a prioritised fix list in plain English — not a dashboard full of technical jargon.
Everything you need to know — guides by topic
LLM SEO
What is an LLM SEO tool and do you need one?
The difference between LLM SEO and traditional SEO, and what a checker actually looks at.
Perplexity
How to appear in Perplexity AI answers
How Perplexity decides what to cite, and the six fixes that move the needle fastest.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT visibility audit — free check
Whether ChatGPT knows your brand and what to do if it doesn't.
Tracking
AI citation tracking — monitor your visibility monthly
How to know when your AI visibility changes — and whether your fixes are working.
GEO
Generative engine optimisation audit
The full GEO checklist for small businesses who want to appear in AI-generated answers.
How it works
How GetVisus calculates your AI visibility score
The four-dimension scoring model and what each dimension measures.
llms.txt
What is llms.txt and does your site need one?
Copy-paste template included. Takes under an hour to set up.
Case study
Why ChatGPT recommends your competitor instead of you
The exact signals that make a competitor appear in AI answers while you don't.
Frequently asked questions
What is AI SEO for small businesses?
AI SEO means optimising your website so it appears in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It focuses on entity clarity, structured data, quotable content, and external corroboration — not keyword rankings. Small businesses can do this without expensive tools or agencies.
Do I need to pay for AI SEO tools as a small business?
No. The core AI SEO fixes are free to implement — schema markup, llms.txt, FAQ content, and claiming directory listings cost nothing. Enterprise AI visibility tools charge £300–£500/month and are designed for large agencies. GetVisus offers a free audit that tells you exactly which fixes to prioritise, so you don't waste time on the wrong things.
How long does AI SEO take to show results?
Technical fixes like schema markup and robots.txt changes can show up in AI answers within days to weeks of being crawled. Building external corroboration — reviews, directory listings — takes 4–12 weeks. The Fozias restaurant case study shows a score improvement from 23 to 80 and a top Perplexity citation within 90 days.
Is AI SEO different from regular SEO?
Yes, though they overlap. Traditional SEO focuses on ranking in Google — keyword research, backlinks, page speed. AI SEO focuses on whether language models can understand, extract facts from, and recommend your business. You can rank on page one of Google and still be invisible in AI answers if your content lacks structured data and entity clarity.
What is the most important AI SEO fix for a local business?
Adding correct schema.org markup to your homepage. A LocalBusiness or specific type (Restaurant, AccountingService, etc.) JSON-LD block with your name, address, phone, and opening hours is the single highest-impact fix for most local businesses. It tells AI exactly who you are and where to find you.
Find out where you stand — free, in 60 seconds
No account. No credit card. A 0–100 score, a plain-English verdict, and three headline fixes.
Run free AI visibility audit