What the tools are trying to do
When someone asks an AI tool for the best family lawyer or pediatric dentist near them, the tool tries to give a safe, useful answer. It draws on web pages, business profiles, reviews and other sources it can access, then names the options it has the most confidence in.
Signals we see matter in practice
Based on the AI visibility we track for clients, a few patterns come up again and again. These are working observations from client programs, not a published study.
Clear entity information: your name, services, locations and contact details stated the same way on your site, your Google Business Profile and major directories.
Pages that answer the exact question: a page about “criminal lawyer in Surrey” performs better for that question than a generic services page.
Structured data: schema markup that labels your business type, services and FAQs.
Third-party mentions: directories, local news, associations and reviews that confirm what your site says.
Rankings: businesses that already rank well in Google tend to appear in AI answers more often.
What results can look like
For a personal injury firm in Joliet, Illinois, we track 109 keywords across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. The firm now appears in AI answers for all 109, with an average position of 2.9 and 113 citations earned in 30 days.
For a dental practice that started from zero AI visibility, early progress is smaller: cited for 4 of 111 tracked keywords after a few months, but in the top 3 every time it is cited. AI visibility tends to build in steps.
Where to start
Check how AI tools answer for your services today. Fix inconsistent business information. Build pages that answer the questions clients actually ask. Then measure, because what gets tracked improves.
Published by Oction Agency, October 31, 2026.
