This is November's issue of Bolder, our monthly newsletter for business owners. Subscribers got it on Tuesday 3 November.
The Shift
If AI can't describe you, it won't recommend you
Here's something we've noticed: people now ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for a recommendation the way they once asked a colleague. The answer isn't ten links. It's a short list, with a line on why each name made it.
That line is the whole game. AI tools build it from what they find about you: your website, your Google profile, directories, reviews, articles. If those sources say slightly different things, the summary gets vague, and vague brands get left out.
This isn't a technical problem first. It's a clarity problem. The businesses that get recommended say one clear thing about themselves, in the same words, everywhere.
The Example
We put one question to three AI tools: "Can you recommend a branding studio in Dublin?" Perplexity named us first. ChatGPT put us third. Google's AI Mode made us its top pick.
That didn't happen by accident. We spent time on our website, making what we do easy to sum up in a line. Google's answer even used our own words: launching, refreshing and rebranding businesses across Ireland.
One detail kept us humble. Perplexity recommended us for packaging and web design, two services we don't promote. AI repeats what it finds about you, so make sure what it finds is right. And the lists change with every ask (more on that below), so this is a snapshot, not a trophy.
We asked three AI tools about ourselves
The Find
Rand Fishkin of SparkToro and the team at Gumshoe had around 600 volunteers run the same prompts nearly 3,000 times across ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI. The same list came back less than once in a hundred tries. The useful part: some brands still appeared in the majority of answers. Chasing a ranking is a lottery. Being easy to describe isn't. A short, honest read.
NEW Research: AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products (January 2026). Reported by Search Engine Land.
The Question
If someone asked AI about your business today, would it get you right?
There's no wrong answer. Tap yours and we'll share what tends to work from there.
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