Why AI assistants don’t recommend your trade business — and how to fix it

54% of UK adults now use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini, up from 31% in 2024.¹ Around 30% of Google searches now show an AI Overview above the ordinary results.² In the US, 45% of consumers say they have used generative AI to find a local business, up from 6% a year earlier.³ Traffic sent to websites by ChatGPT grew 206% in a year.⁴ The question “who is a good roofer near me” is increasingly typed into an assistant, not a search box.

In September 2026 Knight Li Group asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to recommend web providers for UK trades. Of the twelve businesses they named between them, four could not be found to exist under that name.⁵ Assistants fill gaps with plausible guesses. If your business is a gap, a competitor, or a fiction, gets the recommendation.

AI assistants build their answer from sources they can read and cross-check:

• A website that states what you do and where. Two-thirds of UK trade businesses have none.⁶ No page, no entity.
• A Google Business Profile with reviews. Reviews and directories are cited more often than a business’s own site, so an empty or unclaimed profile removes your strongest signal.
• Consistent details everywhere. A different phone number on Checkatrade, Facebook and your van sign reads as three weak businesses, not one strong one.
• Somewhere to confirm it. Even when an assistant names you, 95% of people verify AI-generated information elsewhere before acting on it.⁷ The check lands on your website, your Google profile and your reviews. If they do not confirm what the assistant said, the recommendation dies there.
• Plain, answer-shaped text. Assistants quote sentences that answer a question directly. “We are a Gas Safe registered heating engineer covering Chester and Wrexham” is quotable. A hero image with “Quality you can trust” is not.

1. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile: services, areas, hours, photos, and a steady flow of reviews you reply to.
2. Get a website, even a single well-written page, that says who you are, what you do, where, and how to contact you, in plain sentences.
3. Make your name, address and phone number identical on every listing you have.
4. Add structured data (schema) so machines read your details without guessing. There is no proof yet that schema alone wins AI citations, so treat it as hygiene, not magic.
5. Answer the questions customers ask, on the page, in the words they use.

Knight Li Group, a UK consultancy for trades and small businesses, checks all five in its free audit and shows exactly which one is keeping a business out of AI answers.