What does AI say about your company? How to help shape the answer
Key takeaways
- AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Mode answer questions about providers by running many individual searches themselves and summarizing the results.
- In our GeoUp measurements, 81% to 96% of all AI mentions of smaller providers are based on their own website as the source. That makes it the most important lever you control yourself.
- Complete and correct schema markup, together with consistent details in directories, profiles and trade media, ensures that AI recognizes you clearly and describes you accurately.
- Regular measurement across several AI systems shows how your visibility develops and which measures are working.
As of September 2026
A prospect has seen your offer and wants to know more before picking up the phone. Instead of clicking through search results, they ask ChatGPT what to make of your company. The answer arrives within seconds. Ideally, it reflects exactly what sets you apart.
This behavior is already widespread. According to a representative survey by Bitkom, Germany's digital industry association, from November 2025, half of all internet users in Germany at least occasionally use an AI chat instead of a traditional search engine. Among 16- to 29-year-olds, the figure is two thirds. The good news: you can actively help shape how AI talks about your company.
How AI puts together its answer about a company
Modern AI assistants don't answer from memory alone. They search the web, and they do so several times. For its AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google describes a technique called query fan-out: a question is broken down into subtopics, for which the system launches a large number of searches at the same time. AI Mode has been available in Germany since October 2025. ChatGPT also rewrites questions into one or more targeted search queries for its web search.
For your company, this means two things:
- When someone asks about you directly, they get a summary of what the AI finds under your name.
- When someone asks about providers in general, they get a list of recommendations. It includes the companies the AI comes across in its sub-searches and knows enough about to recommend them.
In both cases, the AI draws on the same sources. If you maintain these sources, you help shape both answers.
Which sources AI draws on
With our tool GeoUp, we regularly measure which sources AI systems link to in their answers. In an analysis of 12,769 AI answers about 27 companies from the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), 56% of the answers linked to sources, with more than 56,000 links in total. At the top were YouTube, industry and provider directories such as wlw.de, gelbeseiten.de and sortlist.de, as well as Reddit, trade media, press portals and Wikipedia.
Looking at all companies together, AI therefore often cites the places where others write about a company. For smaller providers, the picture is different. In our ongoing measurement series covering 19 client websites and 17,790 AI answers, 81% to 96% of all mentions of four smaller providers were based on the AI linking to their own website as the source. For two well-known brands, the figures were 21 and 23%.
For smaller providers, this is a real opportunity. Their own website is often the most detailed source there is, and therefore the place where the AI's answer is decided. And that is exactly the place they control themselves.
Your own website: four pages that answer questions about you
When a person or an AI wants to know more about your company, it almost always comes down to the same questions: Who is behind it? What exactly do you offer? What do others say about you? What can you point to? Each of these questions deserves its own page that answers it clearly.
About us
Year founded, location, owner or management, specialization, target group, number of employees: these are facts an AI can use directly. The more specific your details, the more accurately the AI describes your company. Google recommends adding information about your organization to your home page or your "About us" page.
FAQ
Collect the questions your sales and customer service teams are actually asked, and answer each one in a way that makes sense without the rest of the page. AI systems usually pick up individual paragraphs, and self-contained answers are particularly well suited for this.
Testimonials
Testimonials with a name or company name and a date convince readers and AI systems alike. They show in concrete terms what your customers value about you.
Awards and references
Awards, certifications, quality seals, memberships, press coverage and reference projects belong together on one page, each with the issuer and the year. These very details make your claims verifiable for people and machines.
A consistent presence: name, domain and core messages
Four good pages have the greatest effect when their key messages also appear on your home page and your main service pages. A consistent presence is just as important. In our analysis, 65% of all AI mentions came via a company's domain and 35% via its written-out name. For AI systems, the website address is the most stable anchor. So use one domain, one spelling of your name and the same address and phone number everywhere.
Structured data: your details in the language of machines
Structured data based on schema.org, or schema markup for short, makes your details machine-readable. It sits in your website's code and tells search engines and AI systems clearly who you are. For a company, these elements matter most:
- Organization or LocalBusiness: name, logo, address, phone, email, year founded and, for local businesses, opening hours
- sameAs: links to your profiles on other platforms, such as LinkedIn, your Google Business Profile or industry directories
- Service or Product: your services and offerings
- FAQPage and Person: your frequently asked questions and the people behind the company
What matters is that the markup is complete and matches the visible information on the page. Then an AI can attribute your data to your company beyond any doubt. Google describes the properties in detail in its documentation on Organization and LocalBusiness. For our clients, complete schema markup is a standard part of our AI visibility service. With Schema & Snippets, GeoUp generates matching markup and quotable text blocks directly from your visibility gaps and adds them to your website with a single click.
Sources beyond your website
The better known a company becomes, the more weight is carried by what others write about it. Every mention in a directory, a trade publication or on a portal is further confirmation for the AI.
Three areas are especially worthwhile:
- Directories: Keep your listings in the directories that matter in your industry complete and consistent with the details on your website. In our measurements, they are among the most frequently cited sources.
- Platform profiles: A complete Google Business Profile and profiles on the platforms your target group uses, such as LinkedIn, give the AI further confirmation.
- Trade media and press: Expert articles, interviews and press releases create mentions that don't come from you. Genuine occasions work best: a new project, an award, a study or an expert article with your own perspective.
Review platforms round out the picture. Ask satisfied customers for a review and respond to every piece of feedback. The source analysis in a GeoUp measurement for your own company shows which platforms AI draws on in your industry. With Authority Building, GeoUp finds the portals that matter in your industry and checks whether your name, address and phone number match everywhere.
What AI says about you today: measure regularly
You can get a first impression yourself: ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot what they know about your company and which providers they recommend for your service, and pay attention to the sources they show.
For a reliable trend, regular measurement pays off, because AI answers are snapshots. In our analysis, the most visible and the most reserved AI system differed by a factor of 4.5, with identical questions. And the figures for individual companies shifted noticeably within a single week.
This is exactly why we developed GeoUp. With every measurement, our tool asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews 30 typical customer questions from your industry and evaluates whether your company is mentioned, in which position and which sources the AI cites for it. Because the measurement runs regularly, up to weekly, you see a trend instead of a snapshot. You can add your own questions, for example ones that ask specifically about your company name.
The initial measurements show how much potential there is: at the start, the companies in our analysis were mentioned in a median of 2.5% of relevant AI answers. That leaves plenty of room to grow. With GeoUp, you see where you are starting from and track month by month how your work on your website and your sources pays off.
Frequently asked questions
Can I influence what ChatGPT says about my company?
Yes, through the sources the AI uses to put together its answer. If you provide clear, consistent and verifiable information on your own website and in directories, profiles and trade media, you shape the basis from which the answer is created.
Which pages on my website matter most for this?
Pages that answer the typical questions people have about a company: "About us", FAQ, testimonials, and awards and references. Ideally, your core messages also appear on your home page and your most important service pages.
Do I need structured data for AI to understand me?
Yes. Complete and correct schema markup makes your details machine-readable: who you are, what you offer, where you are based and on which other platforms you can be found. This allows the AI to clearly attribute your data to your company.
How often should I check what AI says about me?
Ideally at least once a month and across several AI systems, because the answers differ between systems and from week to week. An automated measurement with GeoUp shows the trend and the cited sources.
Can I hand over the whole topic?
Yes. Our team takes care of website content, schema markup and your presence in directories and trade media, and uses GeoUp to measure the results. You can book our SEO and GEO expert team at any time in addition to GeoUp. Write to us at our email address. You can find out more on our AI visibility page.
Conclusion
Whether a prospect trusts you is increasingly decided in a brief exchange with an AI. You don't lead that exchange yourself, but you supply the sources the answer is built from. For smaller companies, their own website is the strongest lever, complemented by complete schema markup, well-maintained listings and genuine mentions. If you measure regularly, you see which of these efforts get through.
How visible is your company in ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI assistants?
With the free GeoUp quick check, you can see in moments, based on sample questions, whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews mention your company. GeoUp is a product by njudev.
You can book our SEO and GEO expert team at any time in addition to GeoUp. Simply write to us at our email address or learn more about our AI visibility service.
Sources
- Bitkom: "Internet-Suche im Wandel: Hälfte nutzt KI-Chats", press release, November 20, 2025. https://www.bitkom.org/Presse/Presseinformation/Internet-Suche-Wandel-Haelfte-nutzt-KI-Chats (in German)
- Google: "KI-Modus startet in der DACH-Region", Google Blog, October 8, 2025. https://blog.google/intl/de-de/produkte/suchen-entdecken/ki-modus-startet-in-dach/ (in German)
- OpenAI Help Center: "ChatGPT search". https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-chatgpt-search
- GeoUp: "12.769 KI-Antworten ausgewertet", July 24, 2026. https://geoup.io/news/ki-sichtbarkeits-auswertung-12769-antworten (in German)
- GeoUp: "Wann zitiert die KI die eigene Website? Bei kleineren Anbietern in bis zu 96 Prozent der Nennungen", September 10, 2026. https://geoup.io/news/eigene-website-als-ki-quelle (in German)
- Google Search Central: "Organization structured data", as of September 8, 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/organization
- Google Search Central: "Local business (LocalBusiness) structured data". https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/local-business
- schema.org: "Organization". https://schema.org/Organization