Ten places
people look.
One job.

Google, Google Maps, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. Here is how each one finds a business — and what we actually do about it.

The short version

Seven of the ten
are really two.

Most of these engines do not run their own index. They borrow one. That is good news: the work is far smaller than the list makes it look.

3

Run on Google

Google, Google Maps and Gemini all read Google's index.

4

Run on Bing

Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Copilot all lean on Microsoft's index.

3

Read the live web

ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude fetch pages themselves and write an answer.

Google · Google Maps · Gemini

Google, Google Maps and Gemini

All three read the same index. Do the work once and you show up in all three.

How it finds you

Google sends a crawler called Googlebot round the web. What it finds goes into one index, and that index answers ordinary Google searches, feeds the Maps results, and is what Gemini draws on when it answers a question about a business.

What has to be done

  • A site Googlebot can read: fast, mobile-friendly, no broken links, sensible page titles.
  • A sitemap submitted through Google Search Console so new pages are found in days rather than months.
  • A Google Business Profile set up and verified — this is what puts you on Maps and in the local pack.
  • Your name, address and phone number written the same way everywhere.
  • Pages that answer what people actually type, including the name of your town.

Bing · Yahoo · DuckDuckGo · Copilot

Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Copilot

One index behind all four. Most small businesses ignore it, which is exactly why it is worth doing.

How it finds you

Microsoft runs its own crawler, Bingbot, and its own index. Yahoo search results are supplied by Bing. DuckDuckGo builds its results largely on Bing as well. Copilot is Microsoft assistant sitting on the same index. Get into Bing properly and you have got into all four.

What has to be done

  • The site submitted through Bing Webmaster Tools, with its own sitemap.
  • A Bing Places listing, which is the Bing equivalent of a Google Business Profile.
  • The same clean, readable build — Bingbot wants what Googlebot wants.
  • Checking that nothing in robots.txt is accidentally shutting Bingbot out.

ChatGPT · Perplexity · Claude

ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude

These read the live web themselves. Being readable matters more here than being popular.

How it finds you

These assistants send out their own crawlers and fetch pages when someone asks a question. They are not ranking ten blue links — they read a handful of pages and write an answer. If your site is hard to parse, or the facts are buried in an image, you simply do not make it into the answer.

What has to be done

  • Structured data describing your business, services and prices, so a machine reads a price as a price.
  • An llms.txt file — a plain-text summary of what you do, written for assistants rather than people.
  • Facts written as text, not baked into images: prices, opening hours, areas covered, what you do and do not do.
  • Clear question-and-answer pages, because that is the shape an assistant looks for.
  • A robots.txt that lets the assistant crawlers in rather than blocking them by accident.

Who does the work

You do none
of this.

It is all included in the packages that carry SEO. We set it up, submit it, and keep it in order as your business changes.

🔎

Search Console and Webmaster Tools

Both accounts set up, both sitemaps submitted, both watched.

📍

Google Business Profile and Bing Places

Created, verified and filled in properly — hours, photos, service areas.

🤖

Structured data and llms.txt

The machine-readable layer that lets an assistant quote you correctly.

📝

Pages that answer questions

Written the way people ask, which is also the shape assistants look for.

Want to see it done? This site runs the lot on itself — have a look at /llms.txt, /sitemap.xml and /robots.txt.

Straight talk

What nobody
can promise.

  • No one can guarantee first place on Google. Google does not sell positions.
  • No one can guarantee an AI assistant recommends you. Nobody controls what they say.
  • What can be guaranteed is that nothing on your site stops them finding and understanding you.
  • A Google Business Profile can show within days. Search rankings usually build over three to six months.

Let's get you
listed.

Fifteen minutes on the phone and we will tell you where you stand.

📞 07446 285507 See the packages