--- title: "Ask the AI about your business before your customers do" description: "AI answers are stitched together from your site, your listings and pages you don't control. Here is a monthly check any gym, studio or med spa can run, and how to fix what comes back wrong. Part 2 of After the Click." section: Playbooks author: David Steel published: 2026-11-03T15:05:04.554Z url: https://www.sneeze.it/blog/ask-the-ai-about-your-business-first tags: ["after-the-click", "ai-search", "chatgpt", "google-ai-overviews", "local-business", "membership"] --- # Ask the AI about your business before your customers do _AI answers are stitched together from your site, your listings and pages you don't control. Here is a monthly check any gym, studio or med spa can run, and how to fix what comes back wrong. Part 2 of After the Click._ In [Part 1](/blog/the-click-is-dying-not-google) we looked at the numbers behind zero-click search: most Google searches now end without anyone visiting a website, and AI summaries cut clicks to regular results roughly in half. For a membership business, that means the answer itself is where many buyers decide. So the first job is simple. Find out what the answer says about you. Many owners never check. They see their own website and their own Google listing, and they assume the AI repeats them. It often doesn't. An AI answer draws on many sources at once, and some of them are years out of date. ## Where an AI answer comes from Pew Research Center studied Google's AI summaries in March 2025. In 88% of them, the summary cited three or more sources. Only 1% relied on a single source. Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the most common sources, together making up 15% of the links the summaries listed. :::stats 88% | of Google AI summaries cited three or more sources (Pew, 2025) 1% | of visits with an AI summary led to a click on a link inside it (Pew, 2025) 18 of 98 | websites in our Agent Ready research sat behind a bot wall ::: Your website is one voice in that mix. A two-year-old directory listing with your old intro price is another. So is a Reddit thread complaining about a cancellation policy you changed last spring. The assistant blends them, and the buyer reads the blend. :::flow Your website | Hours, prices, offer, schedule Your listings | Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Yelp, directories Other people's pages | Reviews, Reddit, YouTube, local articles The answer | One paragraph the buyer reads before deciding ::: Almost 1 in 5 sites in our Agent Ready sample sat behind a bot wall. When an assistant can't read your site, the other sources fill the gap. ## The monthly check All this takes is 30 minutes and a spreadsheet. :::steps 1. Write ten questions your buyers ask Use their words, not yours. "Best Pilates studio near [your neighborhood]." "How much is a membership at [your brand]?" "Does [your brand] have a free first class?" "Is [your brand] open at 6 a.m. on Saturday?" Include two questions that don't name you at all. 2. Ask three assistants Google (with the AI Overview or AI Mode), ChatGPT with search turned on, and one more your customers use, such as Claude, Gemini or Perplexity. Use a private window, so your own history doesn't color the answer. 3. Grade every fact For each answer, mark each fact right, wrong or missing: locations, hours, price, intro offer, cancellation terms. For the questions that don't name you, note whether you appear at all and who appears instead. 4. Note the source of each wrong fact Most answers show their links. Click them. The wrong price usually lives on a specific page you can name. 5. Save the sheet and repeat next month The value is in the trend. A fact that was wrong in March and right in May tells you a fix worked. ::: For a multi-location brand, run the check on three locations each month: your best, your newest and one that is struggling. Rotate the rest through the year. ## How to fix what comes back wrong :::compare "What owners usually do" "What changes the answer" Rewrite the homepage headline. Add more keywords. Buy a tool that promises to "rank in ChatGPT." Wait and hope the AI catches up. --- Find the page the wrong fact came from and fix or remove it. Put the right fact on your own site in plain text. Update every listing on the same day. Make sure the search bots can actually read your pages. Check again next month. ::: Start with your own site. Hours, prices, the intro offer and the class schedule should appear as plain text on a page a crawler can reach. A price that only appears inside an image, a PDF or a pop-up is one an assistant has to guess. Then your listings. In its guidance on AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google tells site owners to keep their Business Profile information up to date. It also says there are no extra requirements for appearing in those features: no new machine-readable files and no special structured data. For Google, the ordinary basics carry most of the weight. :::pullquote Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links. -- OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers" ::: Next, check your robots.txt and any security settings that block bots. OpenAI says plainly that a site which blocks its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, won't appear in ChatGPT search answers. Anthropic says the same about Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User: blocking them may reduce your visibility in Claude's search. Many sites block these bots by accident, through a security plugin or a hosting default. We wrote about who controls that setting in [You don't own your own front door](/blog/you-dont-own-your-own-front-door). Last, the pages you don't control. You can't edit a Reddit thread, but you can reply to it with the current policy. You can ask a directory to update an old listing, answer reviews that quote old prices, and post a short video that states the offer clearly. Each one gives the assistant a more recent source to draw on. :::figure wide ![A corkboard of blank notes joined by threads into a speech bubble shape, with a small magenta figure on a stool lifting one glowing magenta note off the board to replace it](/blog/media/119b5eb7d41e7ba960b13673.jpg) The answer is assembled from many places. Fix the one that's wrong, then check again next month. ::: ## What to expect These fixes don't show up overnight. OpenAI says a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to register for its search. Listings and third-party pages take longer, because each assistant has to revisit them. That's why the check is monthly: you are looking for the wrong facts to drop off one by one. Some answers you won't control. An assistant may recommend a competitor for a question that never names you, and no single fix changes that. What you can control is that when you do appear, the price, the hours and the offer are right. A buyer who reads a wrong price and then sees a different one at the front desk trusts you less, whoever made the mistake. :::takeaways "What to take into next month" - Google's AI summaries usually blend three or more sources (88% in Pew's study). Your website is only one of them. - Ask ten real buyer questions in three assistants each month, and grade every fact right, wrong or missing. - Trace each wrong fact to the page it came from, and fix it there. - Google says AI Overviews need no special files or markup. Keep your site and Business Profile accurate. - If your site blocks OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI says you won't appear in ChatGPT search answers. Check that setting. ::: Next in After the Click: how to measure marketing when website traffic falls while bookings hold, and which numbers to put in front of your team instead. :::cta button="Scan your website free" href="https://agentready.sneeze.it" Is your site turning AI assistants away? Agent Ready checks whether assistants can reach and read your pages, and lists every fix in order. ::: --- #### Sources - Pew Research Center, "Do people click on links in Google AI summaries?," July 22, 2025. [pewresearch.org](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/) - Google Search Central, "AI Features and Your Website." [developers.google.com](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features) - OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers." [developers.openai.com](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots) - Anthropic, "Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?" [support.anthropic.com](https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler) - Sneeze It, Agent Ready research across 98 websites. [agentready.sneeze.it](https://agentready.sneeze.it)