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Suppose a potential client asks an AI assistant who can help edit their newsletter. If your service comes up, you want the answer to explain your work accurately and give them a working way to contact you.
Pew’s February 2026 survey found that 44% of U.S. adults say they ever use ChatGPT. That is a reason to understand these answers. It does not tell us how many people use AI to hire a solo service, or whether your future clients do.
Set aside half an hour for a first check. Start with one assistant and a couple of questions, then get back to the conversations and projects that help you build the business.
Make your offer understandable
Read your service page as someone who has never met you. Can they tell who you help, what they receive, what you need from them, and how to ask about availability? Include your price or estimate process, delivery arrangements, and limits that matter.
For a hypothetical newsletter editor, “I help creators communicate better” leaves a lot unanswered. A clearer offer explains that the editor reviews one draft, returns suggested edits within an agreed turnaround, and includes one revision. Adapt those details to work you can actually deliver.
If you work across time zones, explain how appointments and deadlines are arranged. Keep your business name and contact details current across the pages and professional profiles customers use.
Give people something they can inspect
A prospective client may want to see your work before getting in touch. Show a sample you have permission to publish, with a short explanation of what you did. For the newsletter editor, that could be a draft and an edited version showing how the introduction became easier to follow.
If you have no client projects to show, use your own invented material and label it as a practice project. Keep private client information out of public examples. A useful demonstration can speak for itself; it does not need a made-up customer review or an unsupported claim about sales.
Google’s advice for appearing in AI search points owners toward useful original content and ordinary search basics. It says the special file called llms.txt does not improve Google Search visibility or rankings. A clear explanation and an honest sample are more useful starting work for a new service page.
Try two questions a buyer might ask
Use a question from a real inquiry when you have one. Otherwise, write down an idea to test. For our hypothetical editor, try “Who edits a weekly newsletter for an independent consultant?” Then ask what your named business includes in its editing service.
Use the assistant’s web-search feature if available, and record whether it searched. OpenAI’s explanation of web search describes how search results and citations appear when ChatGPT uses it. A reply without web search is a different check.
Save the answer and open its links. Do they support what the answer says? Compare the service description, contact details, price, and turnaround with your current page. Write down wrong details, even if the recommendation sounds flattering. If an old page you control is the source, correct that page too.
Repeat an important question in a new conversation on another day, using the same product and search setting. Describe what you actually saw: “mentioned in two of three replies” is a small observation, not a permanent ranking. Keep the dates so you can compare checks after making a change.
Check whether search can read your page
If your business does not appear, one reply will not tell you why. Ask whoever maintains your website: “Can Google and ChatGPT search read my public service page? Have any settings blocked them?”
If you maintain the site yourself, take those questions to your website platform or host’s support team. They can help you find the settings relevant to your setup.
OpenAI’s website access guidance separates its search reader, OAI-SearchBot, from its training reader, GPTBot. Your helper can manage those permissions separately, allowing search while declining that training access. Permission to read a page does not promise a recommendation.
For Google, check Search generative AI under Search Console settings. Inclusion is the default, but the choice can be inherited from a broader site setting. Check the setting currently applied to your site. It concerns inclusion in Google’s AI search features, separately from training.
Use professional profiles that suit the way you work. Google Business Profile’s eligibility rules generally require in-person customer contact and exclude online-only businesses. If you deliver your service entirely online, a Google Maps listing is not a necessary step. Do not invent a local office to get one.
Count useful inquiries and paid work
Google’s AI search performance report counts impressions: times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It is not a count of clicks or customers, and it does not cover other companies’ assistants. A site with little activity may not see the report.
Alongside those checks, keep a simple record of visits where your website provides that information, inquiries that fit your service, and paid projects. Ask new contacts how they found you. If they cannot say, record “unknown.” Missing information does not mean there were zero customers from that source.
Four different things to record
Keep a record of each.
- An AI answer
- What did it say? Were the details and linked pages accurate?
- A site visit
- Was a visit recorded? Can you establish where it came from?
- An inquiry
- What work did the person need? Did it fit your service?
- A paid project
- Was work agreed and paid for? What source did the client report?
If you improve a page and later get an inquiry, record both events without assuming one caused the other. Over time, your own records can help you decide how much attention this channel deserves.
Keep a short record
Use these fields for one check, then print your notes. Keep private client details out of the record.
Your entries stay on this page. They aren’t sent or saved. Print a copy before leaving or reloading.