Field guide
Your next customer isn't googling you. They're asking an AI.
Something changed in how people find local businesses, and most owners haven't noticed. Instead of typing "accountant Montreal" into Google and scrolling ten blue links, a growing share of buyers now ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini a full question: "Who should I trust to restructure my company's debt in Montreal?" — and they get three names back, with reasons.
Either your business is one of those names, or it doesn't exist for that buyer. There is no page two.
This is what we call AI visibility, and it works differently from classic SEO. Google ranks pages; assistants recommend businesses. They favour companies whose sites state plainly who they are, who they serve, and what they've actually done — in text a machine can read and verify. Beautiful design means little to them. Clear facts mean everything.
The good news: because most businesses haven't adapted, the ones that do move fast get named quickly. At Be Preferred we measure exactly this — we put your buyers' real questions to the assistants and record who gets named, then work until the answer includes you. That first measurement is free, and it's a single honest page: five grades, no forty-page audit.
Most businesses fail it. That's the opportunity.