Getting Found and Getting Described Right

In the first article in this series we laid out the AI Visibility Framework — the five things that decide whether AI assistants recommend your business. This post digs into the first two, Presence and Representation, and there's a reason they come first. If AI can't find you, or finds you and gets you wrong, nothing further up the framework can do much for you. Sort these out and everything above them gets easier.

Presence: do you exist where AI looks?

Presence is the plainest question of the lot: does your business exist where AI looks, beyond your own website?

Most owners think about the website first, which makes sense — it's the thing you built and the thing you control. But it's a small slice of what an assistant actually reads. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a recommendation, it isn't just visiting your homepage. It's stitching together an answer from business directories, review platforms, local listings, industry sites, social profiles, the occasional YouTube video, community threads on places like Reddit, and local news. Your site is one source in that pile.

So Presence isn't really "do I have a website." It's whether you turn up across the places AI bothers to check.

For most local businesses the gaps are pretty predictable. A plumber in Geneva might have a tidy website and almost nothing else — no profile on the directories locals actually use, no Google Business Profile, no trace in the neighbourhood threads where people ask who to call in an emergency. The website is there. The business is still close to invisible.

And that's the trap worth naming: pour all your effort into the one domain you own and you end up with a surprisingly thin footprint. AI has a single source to go on, and a single source rarely adds up to confidence. It's a bit like being the only person willing to vouch for you — better than nothing, but not exactly persuasive. Presence is about turning up wherever your customers are already searching, asking, and leaving reviews, not only on the page with your logo on it.

Representation: do they describe you right?

Say AI does find you. The next question is whether it describes you correctly and consistently — and this is where plenty of visible businesses quietly come unstuck.

Picture an accountant whose website says "accounting firm for startups," whose LinkedIn says "tax advisor," and who's listed in a directory as a "financial consultant." A person reading all three shrugs and assumes they're roughly the same thing. AI isn't so relaxed about it. It sees three different signals and has to guess which one is really you. So when a customer asks, "who's a good accountant for a small restaurant?", the assistant hedges — and hedging usually means it recommends someone whose story is clearer.

Think back to the five-people test from the first article. Ask five sources to describe your business and you want them broadly agreeing. When they don't, doubt creeps in, and AI leans on consistency the same way a cautious customer would. SEO was about position; this is about representation, and representation falls apart the moment your own profiles start contradicting each other.

The fix is smaller than it sounds. Write one clear, plain sentence that says what you do, who it's for, and where, then use that exact sentence everywhere — your website, your Google profile, your directory listings, LinkedIn, all of it. Not five clever variations. The same boring sentence, repeated, beats a brilliant one rephrased five different ways, because the repetition is the signal.

Auditing your own Presence and Representation

You can get a rough read on both in an afternoon.

For Presence, jot down the places your customers genuinely look — the local directories, the review sites, Google, the community forums for your area and trade — and check whether you're actually on each one. Every blank is a gap AI has no way to fill. For Representation, open every profile you do have side by side and read how each one describes you, hunting specifically for the contradictions: a different category here, an old address there, a business name you stopped using two years ago. Each little inconsistency is a small dose of doubt.

If piecing all that together by hand sounds tedious, the free aipickme score gives you the bottom line quickly. It shows how ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity currently describe your business and where you land on the AI Visibility Ladder, which tells you in a glance whether you're dealing with a Presence problem (you don't come up at all) or a Representation one (you come up, described wrong).

The usual culprits

A few patterns turn up again and again with local service businesses.

Outdated profiles are the most common: an old number, a previous address, a former name. They don't just confuse customers, they actively argue with your current information. Close behind is category drift — the business moved on but the listings didn't, so you now do high-end kitchen renovations while half your profiles still say "general contractor," and AI believes the listings over your intentions. Then there's inconsistent NAP, where your name, address, and phone vary just slightly from site to site (Ltd one place, Sàrl another, the street abbreviated here and spelled out there). It looks trivial to a human and matters a lot to a machine trying to match one exact record. And underneath all of it sits the website-only habit we already covered, which is simply the most reliable way to end up with a small footprint.

None of these are hard to fix. They're just nobody's actual job, which is exactly why fixing them quietly puts you ahead.

Where this leads

Get Presence right and AI can find you. Get Representation right and it finds the real you. Between them they hand AI a clear, consistent picture of who you are and what you do — which is most of the battle.

There's a ceiling to it, though. There's only so much weight AI puts on what you say about yourself. Sooner or later it wants to know whether other people back you up, and that's the next pillar.

Next in this series: "Why AI Trusts Some Businesses More Than Others" — the Authority pillar.

If you haven't yet, it's worth getting your baseline first. The free aipickme check shows where you sit on the AI Visibility Ladder today, which is the starting point the rest of the framework builds on.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between Presence and Representation? Presence is whether your business exists where AI looks — directories, reviews, listings, forums, not just your website. Representation is whether AI describes you correctly and consistently once it finds you. You need both; being found but mislabeled is nearly as weak as not being found.

Do I really need directory listings if my website is good? Yes. AI builds recommendations from many sources, and your own site alone rarely gives it enough confidence. Independent listings widen your footprint and back up what your website already says.

How much does it matter to use the exact same description everywhere? A lot. AI looks for consistent, repeated information, and contradictory descriptions read as uncertainty — which makes it more likely to recommend a clearer competitor instead.

How do I tell a Presence problem from a Representation problem? Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity the questions your customers would ask. Never appearing points to Presence; appearing but described wrong points to Representation. The free aipickme score shows you both at once.