More and more customers are asking ChatGPT to recommend a tradesperson: what does that mean for you?

Then AI simply won't mention you. Not because your work isn't good, but because it doesn't know you exist.

But AI barely draws on social media for information. What matters is your website and external mentions.

And if you're then at the top with a good advert: click. Customer.

They get found via AI, get confirmed via Google, and convert through a well built landing page.

AI then has nothing to recommend, and once your ad budget stops, you vanish from the radar entirely. If you want both sides properly sorted, take a look at our AI and automation service.

And they work. You'll find more practical guides like this in our knowledge base.

We help building firms in the Tilburg and Oisterwijk region with Google Ads and online visibility. No jargon, no long-running contracts. Just more customers calling.

The first way is that the model answers from what it read during training. That's a snapshot of the web from months ago. A business only makes it in if it was mentioned in many different places, long enough before that snapshot was taken. For a building firm in Tilburg, that's a high bar: you need to appear in business directories, on trade sites, in local media and on forums, not just once but consistently. This is the slow route, and it's exactly as slow as it sounds.

The second way is that the assistant searches the web there and then, pulls in a handful of pages and builds its answer from those. This is the route you can influence within weeks rather than years, because the ordinary rules of findability apply here: appear on the pages it fetches, and you exist. Don't, and you don't. That's why the boring basics, a site that explains what you do and where, are still the foundation under the modern story.

Ask the same question three times and you'll get three slightly different lists. That's not a fault, and it doesn't mean you've won or lost. It means you should never draw conclusions from a single try. To know where you stand, ask the question in different wordings, on different days, and count how often your name comes up. That number tells you something. A single screenshot tells you nothing, even when a salesperson waves it under your nose.

The honest part: for a question about a job in a mid-sized town, an assistant often doesn't come up with business names at all. It gives general advice, mentions a comparison site or points you to Google Maps. That's not a problem, and it's not new either: it means the map pack and your Google Business Profile still carry the most weight for now, and that the work for AI is the same work as the work for Google.

A homepage that says you do a bit of everything is no use to a model. A page that covers one service is: what the work involves, how it goes, roughly what it costs and where you do it. Start with the service that earns you the most money and write one honest page about it. Not fifty pages with the same text and a different town name dropped in: that's exactly what Google's spam policies describe as scaled content abuse, and it costs you more than it earns. Last checked on 25 August 2026.

Twenty reviews with nothing but stars are worth less than eight reviews that describe the work you did. That text is the one part of your online story you can't write yourself, and that's exactly why it carries weight. What you can do: ask someone to describe which job you did. What you can't do: dictate the wording or offer something in return. That's set out in Google's policy for user contributed content. How to ask without annoying your customer is covered in getting more Google reviews NL.

This is where the difference between existing and counting lies, and it's also where most money gets wasted. Useful are places real people actually visit: the trade association you belong to, the platform you get jobs through, the supplier who keeps a dealer list, the local paper that wrote about a project, the club you sponsor. Useless are the hundreds of business directories emailing you a package of fifty listings. Rule of thumb: if a human would never read that page, it does little for your findability either.

Name, address and phone number need to be identical everywhere. Street 12 versus Street 12a is the same business to you, but two businesses to a system, each with half the signals. Pick one spelling, write it down somewhere, and use exactly that on your site, your Business Profile, your invoices and every listing. Google's guidelines for representing your business literally ask you to show your business the way it appears in the real world, on your van and your shopfront, and to keep one profile per business. Last checked on 25 August 2026.

There's no sign up button, no ad slot inside the answer and no contact person you can arrange a listing with. Whoever sells you that is selling a gamble with an invoice attached. What someone can actually do is carry out the four building blocks above for you, and that's exactly what an honest offer puts in its quote.

Aside from breaking Google's policy, it shows in the text. Bought reviews are about nothing in particular: no street, no material, no problem that got solved. Exactly the words you need are missing, so you've paid for stars that carry no signal at all.

It's tempting, and it's made in an afternoon. It gives you a site that's worthless to a reader, and that falls under Google's spam policies. If you want to serve several towns, write about the jobs you've actually done there. That's fewer pages, and they actually work.

Your Facebook or Instagram page is fine for showing customers what you make, but it's not a foundation. What's posted there is poorly reachable for outside systems, and it disappears into the timeline. Put the work you're proud of on your own site too, with a few sentences alongside it. Then it's still there in two years.

Advertising while you're otherwise nowhere to be found means you pay for every click and everything stops the moment your budget does. The reverse happens too: everything neatly in order, and then not picking up the phone or leaving an enquiry unanswered for three days. Of everything on this page, that last one is the cheapest win, and the most often missed.

First, ask your own question to two assistants and write down who gets mentioned, including yourself if you're already on the list. Keep that list with the date on it, because that's your starting point. Then get your Google Business Profile in order: category, services, service area, opening hours, and ten photos with a caption. In the same weeks, fix your name, address and phone number to one spelling and correct anywhere it's shown differently.

Ask for a review after every finished job, with the direct link in a message. Five to eight in four weeks is realistic, and that's enough to make a difference. In the same period, write one genuine page about your most requested service, with an honest price indication. That takes one evening and gives you a page you'll benefit from for years afterwards.

Find the five places where businesses like yours in your region genuinely get listed, and make sure you're among them. Five good ones are enough; don't go for fifty. In week twelve, repeat the baseline check from week one, with the same questions, and lay the two lists side by side. If you don't see a difference yet, that's not a failure but information: most of the movement is still sitting in the reviews and mentions that have only just been picked up.