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Search used to hand people a list of links. Now it often hands them a written answer first. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search and Perplexity read several pages, write a reply and name the pages they used. For a small business, that means software reads the website before a customer sees any of the design.
The useful part of this is short. Software reads plain, specific, well organised pages best, and plenty of small business sites are none of those.
What Google asks for
Google's guidance on AI features says there is no special code and no extra technical requirement for appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The page has to be in Google's index and eligible to show a snippet. Beyond that, Google asks for the same helpful content for people that it always has. A package sold as AI search optimisation is, for the most part, ordinary search work under a new name.
The difference is tolerance. A person skimming a page will forgive a vague opening paragraph. Software building an answer from several pages will use a different page.
Give each question its own page
Google says its AI answers can run several related searches behind one question. For a small business site, that is a reason to give each real customer question its own page.
Take an accountancy firm with one services page and a paragraph about trusted partnership. Replace it with a page on what the firm does for sole traders, a page on how fees work and a page on VAT registration. Each opens with the answer in a sentence or two, then adds detail.
A service page should say what the service is, who it suits and what it costs. Cut the brand language. People find that version easier to read as well, so the effort is not wasted if AI search matters less than expected.
Make the page easy for software to read
Google says important content should be available as text. Plenty of small business sites keep opening hours and prices in images, key claims in sliders and answers in tabs that need scripts to open. Software may see none of it. Put all of that in the page itself, under headings in a sensible order, and write each section so it still makes sense if someone quotes it alone.
Then add structured data. This is extra code that states facts about the page in a fixed format. Google says it helps its systems understand a page and that it has to match what visitors can see. It does not guarantee a citation. For a small business the useful facts are the name, address, phone number and opening hours, the services offered and the author of any articles. Put questions and answers in the code only if they appear on the page.
Those details have to agree everywhere. The name, address and phone number in the code should match the footer, the Google Business Profile and the directory listings. Google's guidance also asks site owners to keep their Business Profile information accurate. If the site and the profile disagree, software has to pick one, and you do not get to choose which.
Check which bots can get in
Different AI companies run different bots for different jobs. OpenAI's GPTBot collects training data. A separate bot, OAI-SearchBot, builds the index behind ChatGPT search. Blocking GPTBot does not remove a site from ChatGPT search, and blocking OAI-SearchBot does. Anthropic and Perplexity also publish separate bots for search.
Many default settings, in the robots.txt file or in a host's bot protection, block every AI bot with one rule. That keeps the business out of the answers it wanted to appear in. Whether training bots get access is for the client to decide. Search bots are the easier call, because blocking them means choosing not to be cited. Google's Google-Extended setting has no effect on how a site appears in Google Search.
Read the robots.txt file and the host's bot settings before launch. It takes a few minutes.
Count enquiries
Google counts traffic from its AI features inside the normal Search Console numbers, and visits from other AI tools show up as plain referrals in analytics. Clicks can fall while a business is named more often, since the answer on the results page covers part of the question. Visits alone will mislead you.
Track form submissions, calls and booking requests from the first day, and watch how often people search for the business by name. That shows whether being named leads to conversations.
If you build sites for small business clients, fold all of this into the rebuild. Plan the page list from customer questions before anyone opens a design file, put the structured data and the bot check on the launch list, and agree at the start that enquiries are the measure. Selling it as a separate AI package invites the question of what the client was getting before.
If your agency is taking on rebuilds like this, the agency capacity calculator shows whether your pipeline fits your team, and our case studies show how we approach the build.
Further reading: Google's own guidance on AI features and your website.
