Ask ChatGPT who it recommends in your field: if your name doesn’t come up, here’s where AI gets its names and where you can act

If you ask ChatGPT who the best professional in your field and area is, and your name doesn’t come up, you’re already invisible to a growing share of clients. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI answer don’t make up names: they pull them from the industry pages they find online. That’s where you can act.

Why does AI search change how clients find you?

More and more people no longer open Google when they need to choose someone to hire. They ask ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity directly, or they read the answer Google places above the classic links.

The difference from a search engine is clear:

• a search engine shows you a list of results and you do the choosing;
• an AI assistant gives you the answer directly, often with two or three names;
• sometimes the AI assistant doesn’t even show a link to the sites those names came from.

If you’re not among those two or three names, for that search you basically don’t exist.

This is not niche behavior. In February 2026 OpenAI announced that ChatGPT had passed 900 million weekly active users. Google, too, shows its AI-generated answer, AI Overviews, ahead of the traditional results more and more often.

Where does ChatGPT get the names it recommends?

ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode and Perplexity read the pages that talk about your field:

• rankings;
• articles;
• reviews;
• directories of professionals.

If those pages mention three of your competitors and not you, the AI assistant will tend to repeat exactly what it found. The AI’s recommendation mirrors what the web already says about your industry.

Is an llms.txt file enough to show up in AI answers?

No. Many people think creating an llms.txt file on their site is enough to appear in AI search engines. In practice, AI assistants build their answer by reading industry pages written by others: rankings, reviews, directories. A file on your site doesn’t replace being present in those sources.

When is showing up in AI answers worse than not showing up?

When the AI assistant repeats wrong information about you. If the web still lists an old price, the wrong opening hours, availability you no longer have or a service you no longer offer, ChatGPT or Perplexity can pick that up and pass it on to the client as fact.

That’s why it pays to check not only whether the AI names you, but also what it says about you.

How do you start getting found by AI without being a developer?

There are two steps you can take today, without writing a line of code.

1. Run the test in your field

Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google and ask the same question a client of yours would ask. For example: who is the best wedding photographer in Turin? Swap in your profession and city, and note where you show up and where you don’t.

2. Look at the sources the names come from

Look at who shows up instead of you. Above all, look at the pages the AI assistant takes those names from. When you run a search, ChatGPT tells you which sites it’s checking. Those sites are where you need to be present.

It’s the same principle as classic SEO, applied to a new channel: understand where the answer is formed before you change anything. I covered it in the SEO audit I ran with Fable 5 too.

What does this mean for your business?

The question your clients ask AI already exists, and the answer is already taking shape with or without you. Run the test in your field today: you’ll find out whether ChatGPT recommends you or your competitors, and which pages to start from.