Short answer: your business gets found on ChatGPT and Perplexity when they can read your site easily, find the same information about you in several places, and trust that you're real and active. None of this needs an ad budget — these are things you can fix yourself.
I wrote earlier about why AI visibility matters for a business. This is the practical follow-up: what to actually do so you start showing up.
Where do ChatGPT and Perplexity get their information?
They don't invent their recommendations out of thin air. Perplexity pulls live sources from the web and shows them as links. ChatGPT uses both its training data and — when browsing is on — fresh web sources. What they share is that they rely on public, machine-readable information about you: your website, your Google profile, directories, and what other sites say about you.
In other words, you can't control what the model "thinks" — but you can control what it finds about you. And that's what decides the outcome.
How do you make your site machine-readable?
AI reads your page quickly and literally. If the important information is text — not hidden in images, icons or heavy scripts — the machine understands what you do. The essentials:
- Spell your services out in words. "Bathroom renovations and water-damage repair in Seinäjoki" is clear to a machine. A mood photo and a slogan are not.
- Keep contact details as text. Name, address, phone number and service area visible — not only behind a contact form.
- Use clear headings. Question-style subheadings ("How much does a renovation cost?") help both the reader and the AI pick out the answer.
- Make sure the page loads fast. A light, text-based page is easy for a machine. A heavy, slow page is more likely to be skipped.
This is the same foundation I build my clients' sites on: light, clear and machine-readable from the start.
Why do mentions elsewhere matter?
A good website alone isn't enough. AI trusts a business more when it finds the same information in many places. When your name, services and location appear consistently on your site, your Google profile, directories and reviews, the machine reads that as a sign that you're credible and real.
Contradictions do the opposite. If your address is old in one place and new in another, or your business name is written three different ways, AI hesitates — and would rather leave you out than give wrong information.
AI won't recommend a business it isn't sure about. Consistency is credibility.
How do you test and track your visibility?
Open ChatGPT and Perplexity and ask exactly what your customer would ask: "Recommend a [your trade] in [your town]." See whether you get mentioned, and try a few phrasings. In Perplexity you can also see which sources the answer was built from — that tells you which pages the AI takes seriously.
The key is to do this regularly, not just once. Visibility shifts as your content, your competitors and the models themselves update. One check tells you today's situation; repeated tracking tells you whether you're heading the right way.
In short
Getting found on ChatGPT and Perplexity isn't a trick — it's a result: a clear, machine-readable site, consistent details everywhere, and a fresh presence. Get these right and you give AI everything it needs to recommend you specifically.
If you'd like me to handle this for you — the site, the consistency and the ongoing tracking — I'm happy to explain how the Growth Partner works.