Short answer: AI assistants recommend the companies that third-party sources describe clearly and consistently. Getting recommended is therefore a checklist, not a mystery: one consistent entity, machine-readable facts, complete directory profiles, answer-first pages, presence in the sources that already get cited, and a quarterly self-test with the questions your buyers actually ask. This checklist is the operational companion to our explainer on how AI search builds its supplier answers — that article covers why; this one is the to-do list.

Part 1 — Fix the entity (an afternoon)

  1. Use one name, everywhere. Legal name, brand name, logo text, directory profiles, social accounts: pick the form customers should repeat and use only that form. Two name variants read to an AI system as two companies, and each gets half your evidence.
  2. Publish Organization structured data on your site — name, description, headquarters country, founding year, product categories — and make sure it matches your visible text word for word in substance. Structured data that contradicts the page is worse than none.
  3. Make the same facts appear in every profile you hold. Same description, same categories, same markets served, in every directory and platform listing. Assistants cross-check sources against each other; agreement is what makes a fact quotable.
  4. Remove or redirect dead pages. Retired product lines and 404s in your own sitemap quietly subtract from your credibility with crawlers and assistants alike.

Part 2 — Complete your citation-grade profiles (a day)

  1. Claim and complete your directory profiles. A profile with products, markets, sources and a last-verified date is a page an assistant can cite safely; a stub is not. On GlobleMatch, profiles in the company directory are free and human-reviewed — complete beats clever.
  2. Write your facts as text, not only as PDFs and images. Specifications, payloads, markets served and certifications locked inside brochure PDFs or banner images are largely invisible to the systems that build answers.
  3. Add one page per buyer question. "Best [category] suppliers for [market]", "[product] for [use case]" — one page each, answer in the first paragraph, your evidence below. Assistants cite pages that state an answer.
  4. Publish comparison content honestly. Roundups and comparisons dominate AI citations in most B2B categories. A fair comparison page that includes competitors — and states where you genuinely differ — is citable in a way a pure brochure never is.

Part 3 — Be present where answers are built (ongoing)

  1. Find the sources cited in your category and get listed in them. Ask an assistant your own category questions and note which directories, roundups and publications it cites. That list is your work plan; presence bought as advertising does not carry the same weight as editorial and directory presence.
  2. Earn trade-press and review presence. One accurate profile in a trade publication or review platform outlasts a year of social posts, because assistants re-read those sources constantly.
  3. Keep every listing current. Update profiles when products, markets or contact routes change. A verified date that moves is itself a signal an assistant can use; a profile untouched for a year reads as a company that may no longer exist.

Part 4 — Measure like an auditor (quarterly)

  1. Run a fixed question set and record the answers. Twelve buyer-style questions for your category, your company name never in the question, run on a schedule, answers archived. Count mentions and citations — yours and your competitors'. Without the baseline, later improvement is a story; with it, it is a number. This is exactly the method behind the AI Growth Scan, which is currently free in pilot: we run the question set, a person reviews the results, and you receive the score, the citation map and a fix-first plan.

What not to do

Do not pay anyone who guarantees citations — the outcome is probabilistic and no vendor controls it. Do not stuff pages with keyword lists written for machines; assistants cite pages that answer questions, and they are increasingly good at telling the difference. And do not expect movement in days: practitioner experience puts first citation changes at roughly three to six months after the fixes land. The checklist is unglamorous because the mechanism is unglamorous — assistants recommend companies the record describes clearly. Make the record clear.

Cognex logo
The Cognex logo. Cognex’s listing in the GlobleMatch directory’s machine-vision section is the kind of citation-grade profile Part 2 works through. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Frequently asked questions

What is the single highest-value step to get recommended by AI search?

Consistency of the record: one company name and the same facts — description, categories, markets — in your structured data, your own pages and every third-party profile. Assistants cite facts that multiple sources agree on.

How long until the checklist shows results?

Expect months, not days. Practitioner experience puts first citation movement at roughly three to six months after fixes land, which is why a baseline measurement should be taken before the work starts.

Can I do this without a directory listing?

A directory profile is only one source among several. It helps because it is structured, reviewed and cross-checked — but the checklist also covers your own site's structured data and answer-first pages, plus presence in the roundups and publications cited in your category.