Why AI recommends your competitors and not you

AI assistants recommend the businesses that appear on the pages they read. Each assistant reads different pages. So a competitor can be named every time by Claude or Gemini while you're named every time by ChatGPT, for the same question, on the same day.

That's what happened to my own business. Here's the data, and the order I'd fix things in.

Same business, 4 different answers

SEOBurf is my SEO consultancy, based near Bath. WhereInAI asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews 3 questions about SEO consultants in Bath on 7 scans between 21 and 30 September 2026. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini got each question 3 times per scan; Google AI Overviews gives the same answer each time, so it was checked once.

ChatGPT's half of the story is in How ChatGPT decides which local businesses to recommend. This guide is about the other three.

What Claude, Gemini and Google read

WhereInAI records every page each assistant cites. Across those 7 scans, 3 pages did most of the work:

I checked all 3 on 1 October. SEOBurf isn't mentioned on any of them.

That's the whole explanation for Gemini's zero. Its answers were built from 2 roundup lists I'm not on, plus a competitor's own page. It can't recommend a name it never reads.

Two details are worth knowing before you go chasing roundups. Varn is number 1 on the SEOTakeoff list. And NUOPTIMA is number 1 on its own list, which tells you how some of these articles get written. Assistants cite them anyway.

Why Varn's page gets cited so much

It's a 2,227-word page written for one town. It answers the questions a buyer asks before hiring: what an SEO agency does, what it costs, how long results take, how to choose one. It mentions a local award by name.

Measured: assistants cited it 72 times. Inferred: they cite it because it answers the question in the words people use. A thin "we serve Bath" page with a contact form gives them nothing to quote.

The name problem

This one surprised me. Claude named "James Burfield" in 7 answers, but only said "SEOBurf" in 2. To a person reading the answer, that's me. To a tool counting mentions, it's someone else.

If people know you by your own name and your business by another (most sole traders), connect the two everywhere: "SEOBurf is run by James Burfield" on your website, in your Google listing description and on your directory profiles. Assistants build their picture of you from many pages, and a clear link saves them guessing.

We found this in our own data, and we're changing how WhereInAI counts mentions so owner names get caught too.

What I'd do, in order

1. Find the pages that matter for your questions. Run your questions and look at what each assistant cites. WhereInAI's free scan shows this per assistant. Don't guess from Google rankings; ChatGPT and Gemini cited different pages for the same question.
2. Get onto the roundups you're missing from. Email the author with a short, factual case for inclusion. Some will want payment. Decide whether that list is worth it based on how often assistants cite it, which you'll now know.
3. Write the page you wish existed. One page per town or service, answering the buyer's actual questions. Varn's page is a fair model for structure. Borrow the shape and write your own words.
4. List yourself consistently on directories. Same name, address and phone everywhere. TownDirectory is free. CitationHQ does the submissions for you. Both are run by the same company as WhereInAI.
5. Join your business name to your own name. See above.

Google's own guidance says there are no special requirements for its AI features: the page has to be indexed and eligible for a normal search snippet. So the work is plain: make your business findable on the pages the assistants already trust.

The limits of this

One business, one town, one trade, 10 days of scans. Citation counts move as assistants change what they search for. I'll update the numbers here as scans continue.

Run a free scan to see which pages the assistants use for your own questions.