Why doesn't ChatGPT mention my business?

Because it has not read about you anywhere except your own website. When a buyer asks an AI assistant to recommend a business, it searches, reads the list pages and directories that already compare the options in your trade and city, and names the businesses those pages describe. If the only page on the internet that says what you do and where is your own homepage, the assistant has one self-interested source on you and several independent ones on your competitors, and it picks the competitors. We ran the question for web design in Leeds five times and the same ten agencies came back.

What does an AI assistant read before it names anyone?

Third-party lists, then the businesses' own pages. On 8 September 2026 we asked Claude, with web search on, to recommend a web design agency in Leeds, five times in five fresh conversations. Every answer named six agencies. Splitpixel and Tall were in all five answers, Parallax, Ascensor and Little Green Jesus in four, Enjoy Digital in three, Crush Pixels in two, and Bolser, Pod Digital and Smith once each. Ten agencies in total, from five asks of the same question. We used Claude for this run because it is the engine we could sample today. ChatGPT is the assistant most buyers use, and when we asked it the same question about Manchester on 3 September the shape was identical: two agencies in five of five answers, eight sharing the rest.

Each answer listed the sources it drew on, and three pages appeared in all five lists. None of them belongs to an agency. They were the Sortlist directory page for web design in Leeds, the UK Agencies page for the same category, and a Business Journal guide to the best web partners in Leeds for 2026. DesignRush's Leeds page was in four of the five. The assistant went to the pages that had already done the comparing, took the names from there, and then drew on each agency's own site to describe it. Splitpixel's page titled "web design agency Leeds" was in the sources of all five answers, Tall's homepage and its agency page in all five, Parallax's homepage in four, and Little Green Jesus's "web design Leeds" page in four.

The list pages decide who is in the running, and your own site decides how you are described once you are. A business that is on none of the lists never reaches the second step, however good its website is.

Is it my website or my reviews?

Both, and the answers show which job each one does. The descriptions the assistant gave came straight from the sources it listed, most of them the agencies' own pages. Four of the five answers called Splitpixel accessible to "WCAG 2.2 AA", all five said it was strong with charities, and its Leeds page and its charity page were in the sources those answers listed. All four mentions of Little Green Jesus placed it in Farsley and gave it hospitality, food and drink, and leisure, with its own web design page in the sources each time. All four mentions of Ascensor said it had been building websites since 2007. All five mentions of Tall named LEGO and SharkNinja as clients, sourced to Tall's own pages and to Prolific North news stories. Three of the four mentions of Parallax repeated its 2025 Webflow award.

Each of those claims sat on a page the assistant listed as a source, most of them on the agency's own site, with news stories and directory entries repeating them. The assistant repeats what has been written down about you, and it prefers what has been written down by somebody other than you.

Two of the five answers wrote "Tall Agency" and three wrote "Tall". We counted them as one business because they are one business. A less careful count treats them as two, each with a weaker score, and that is what happens to you if your website, your Google Business Profile and the directories each spell your name a different way. The engines can split you into two businesses and share your mentions between them.

All six are based in Leeds and have public portfolios, so a quick look at recent work will show which style and budget level suits your project best.

That line closed the first answer. The assistant assumed the buyer would go and check, and it chose agencies whose sites would hold up when they did.

What do I fix first?

Get described by somebody other than you, then make sure the description matches what your own site says. The Leeds agencies that came up in every answer were on three list pages and had a page of their own that named the city and the service in plain words. Neither half is expensive, but both are slow, so start with the one that gets you onto the lists.

1. Count the places that describe you in the third person. Search your business name and note every page that is not yours: directories, best-of lists, news, reviews. If the answer is none, that is the whole reason you are missing, and growing that number is the job.
2. Use one exact name everywhere. Check your site footer, your Google Business Profile and the three directories that matter in your trade. "Tall" and "Tall Agency" cost that firm nothing this time because we merged them by hand. An engine may not.
3. Write one paragraph a stranger could quote. Who you are, what you do, where, and since when, on your about page, in the words a customer would use. That is the sentence the assistant lifts once you are on a list, and Ascensor's "since 2007" was repeated in all four of its mentions.
4. Put your best work in plain text. The assistant described Tall by its LEGO and SharkNinja work because those projects exist as text on Tall's own pages and in news stories. A portfolio that is only images or a showreel is invisible to it. Write a plain sentence under every project saying what it was.

Checking one question by hand takes an afternoon and tells you about one question. Cyted asks the engines your buyers' questions for you and counts who they name.