AI search for service businesses
More than half of UK adults now use tools like ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini. They do not get ten blue links back. They get one answer with two or three businesses named in it. We do the work that puts you in the running to be one of them.
Chasing the three spots on the map, or page one of Google? Those are different jobs. Google Maps and Local SEO and SEO.
Sources: their website · their Google listing · a review site · a directory
One answer. Two or three names. There is no page two.
What has actually changed
Ten organic results, three on the map, ads above and below. You scan it, open a few, make your own mind up. Being fourth or fifth still gets you seen, and still gets you clicked.
A page of options.
That is what our SEO page is aboutOne paragraph, two or three businesses named, and a handful of links underneath showing where it got them. Nobody scrolls for alternatives, because the tool has already done the shortlisting.
A shortlist, handed over.
That is what this page is aboutWhy you are not in it
None of these are about how good you are at the job. They are about how easy you are to find out about.
One
A different phone number on the website than the Google listing, an old address on a directory, a trading name on one and a limited company name on another. Where the sources contradict each other, the safe move is to name somebody else.
Two
"We offer roof cleaning in Manchester" answers nothing. People ask AI what it costs, how often it needs doing, whether it will damage the tiles, soft wash or jet wash. If your site never answers those, there is nothing to quote.
Three
Reviews are one of the few things about you that somebody else wrote. A handful from two years ago, with nothing saying which job you did or where, gives an answer very little to go on.
Four
Your own site will say you are the best in the county. Every site says that. What carries weight is being named somewhere you do not control: directories, trade bodies, suppliers, local press, review sites.
What we actually do
One version of your business, identical everywhere a machine can read it.
The questions people put to AI are the ones they would be embarrassed to ring up and ask.
The part most firms skip, and the part that is hardest for a competitor to copy quickly.
Unglamorous, and it is the one that quietly stops everything else from counting.
How you know it is working
There is no dashboard for this. No tool tells you your AI ranking, because there is no such thing. So we do the only honest test there is: we ask the tools your customers are asking, and we write down what they say.
What we ask
The ones that actually buy: best roof cleaner in your town, what it costs, who to call for a job like this. We agree the list with you, and we keep asking the same ones so the answers can be compared.
What we record
Whether you were mentioned, who was mentioned instead, and which sources the answer linked to. That last part is the useful bit, because it tells us exactly where the next piece of work goes.
What you get
Where you stand now, what changed since last month, and what we are doing about it. No jargon, no AI ranking score we invented, just the questions and the answers.
Nobody can guarantee you a mention in an AI answer, and anybody who says they can is guessing with your money. The companies running these tools do not publish how the answers get built, the answers change from one day to the next, and two people asking the same question in the same town can get different names back.
Google is unusually blunt about it in its own documentation:
"There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary."Google Search Central, AI features and your website
Which is the whole point. There is no trick, and nothing to buy your way into. What gets you mentioned is being a business that is easy to find out about and hard to get wrong: consistent details, real reviews, pages that answer the question, and other people mentioning you. That is ordinary good marketing, done properly, and it pays you back in normal search at the same time.
So we will not sell you an AI ranking. We will do the work, show you the answers month by month, and you can see for yourself whether your name starts turning up. No contract. If it is not working you stop.
Get a free check of your site and listingWhat it costs
Ad spend is paid straight to Meta or Google, not to us. It is usually £500 to £1,000 a month. The £995 first-page guarantee belongs to the Local SEO and Google Maps package and covers the map pack. Nothing on this page is guaranteed, for the reasons above.
Questions
No, and nobody can. OpenAI does not publish how it picks, Google says outright that there is no special optimisation for AI Overviews, and the answers move about day to day. We guarantee the work and we show you the answers every month. The only first-page guarantee we offer is on the map pack, and that is the Google Maps package.
There is real overlap, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Clean listings, good content and other sites mentioning you help in both places. The differences are that AI answers lean much harder on sources you do not control, they name two or three businesses instead of ten, and there is no ranking report, so measuring it means asking the tools directly. If you are buying one thing, buy the groundwork. It works in both.
Google Maps is about the three businesses pinned on the map, won with your Google Business Profile, and it carries a first-page-in-90-days guarantee. SEO is about the ten results underneath, won with pages and authority. This is about the answer written above both of them, won by being easy to find out about. Most clients want the first two first, and get a lot of this for free along the way.
You need something for the answers to point at, and in practice that means a website. It does not have to be a big one. A handful of pages that say clearly what you do, where you do it and what it costs will do more than a twenty page site that answers nothing. A website is already included in the £350 package if you have not got one.
Listings and reviews can shift within weeks. Content and mentions take longer, usually three to six months before you see your name turning up with any consistency. It is slower than ads and about the same pace as SEO. If you need the phone going sooner, run ads alongside it, which is what most of our clients do.
No. It is month to month, same as everything else we do. The only thing worth saying is that stopping at month two means paying for the groundwork and leaving before the part that pays you back.
Next step
Twenty minutes. Before the call we put your buying questions to ChatGPT and the rest, and we tell you who they name today. If it is already you, we will say so and you can save your money.