Perspective

Give AI a reason to recommend your brand.

A practical way to turn your positioning into information customers and AI assistants can use.

By Dharam SarvaiyaOctober 23, 20267 min read

A shop owner and customer work together at a luggage counter. Google, Shopify and Microsoft Copilot are named as platforms discussed in the article. AI-generated illustration.

If a customer asks an AI assistant for a recommendation in your category, what would make your business worth including?

“Great service.”“Premium quality.”“Competitive pricing.”

Those phrases could describe almost anyone. They give a buyer very little to compare, and an assistant very little to explain.

The more useful question is specific: which customer problem can your business solve especially well, and where is the evidence?

That is where I would start preparing a brand for AI-assisted discovery. Make the case for choosing you clear enough that someone else can repeat it accurately.

Choose the buying situation you want to win.

Start with a request a real customer might make.

For a luggage business: “I need a lightweight carry-on for a three-day work trip, under $200, arriving before Friday.”

For a commercial service business: “I need someone who can maintain our equipment after closing, cover our location, and explain what the contract includes.”

These are hypothetical examples, but the exercise should use your actual sales conversations. Look at recent inquiries, objections and reasons customers chose you. Find the situations where your business is a strong fit and can make money serving the customer well.

Then write one clear sentence:

We help [specific customer] solve [specific problem] with [meaningful difference], supported by [evidence].

“Luggage for business travelers” is a start. “A compact bag for short work trips, with published dimensions, empty weight and replaceable-wheel availability” gives the buyer something to evaluate, if those details are true of the product.

You do not have to be the best option for everyone. You do need to make your strongest use case recognizable.

Put the proof beside the promise.

Choose one important product or service page and read it as if you knew nothing about the company.

Can you identify who it is for, what it costs or how pricing works, its limitations, and what happens after purchase? Can you verify the reasons it gives you to choose it?

For the luggage example, replace a vague durability claim with the relevant construction details, warranty terms and repair options. Support performance claims with real testing where you have it. State dimensions and weight instead of expecting a photograph to explain them.

“Fast shipping” needs equally careful treatment. Dispatch time and arrival time are different. Explain order cutoffs, destination restrictions and customization delays wherever they affect the promise. Do not publish a delivery guarantee your operations cannot support.

For services, describe the work included, the locations served, what requires a site visit, and how to request a quote. A case study is more useful when it explains the original problem, what you did, the result and how you measured it. Get the customer’s permission and preserve the limits of the evidence.

Keep the important information in readable page text. A polished image can support a claim, but buyers should not have to decipher an image to find an essential condition.

The boutique team checks a product. An annotation contrasts vague marketing claims with concrete dimensions, weight, warranty, stock, delivery and return information. AI-generated illustration. — Vague: premium luggage, fast shipping. Useful: dimensions, weight, warranty, stock, delivery date, return terms.

Connect the facts to the channels you actually use.

This is where the platform details matter.

For Google: check that the important page is accessible and eligible for indexing. Keep your Business Profile and Merchant Center information current where relevant. Google’s guidance for AI Overviews and AI Mode emphasizes existing SEO practices, useful text and structured data that agrees with the visible page. It does not require a special AI file, and eligibility does not guarantee appearance. Google’s AI Search guidance

For products sold online, your website provider can check the product data embedded in the page and the feed supplied to Google Merchant Center. Google documents both as ways to supply product information; using both can broaden eligibility and help it verify the details. Make price, availability, variants, shipping and return information consistent. Google’s product-data guidance

For Shopify: open the Agentic section of your admin and check Shopify Catalog eligibility. If eligible, review the product count and data mapping, especially when your descriptions or attributes live in custom fields. Resolve missing or incorrectly mapped information before assuming the catalog represents your offer accurately.

Shopify documents different distribution routes: Google AI Mode and Gemini use the Google & YouTube channel, while Shopify Catalog serves channels such as Microsoft Copilot. Check the relevant channel settings and eligibility for your store. Availability and checkout capabilities vary. Shopify’s agentic storefronts support direct-to-consumer sales, so this is not a universal route for wholesale or service businesses. Shopify’s catalog and discovery documentation

For a service business: start with clear service pages, accurate business listings and a working inquiry process. A retail catalog integration is useful only when it fits what you sell.

Test whether your positioning survives the handoff.

Here is a small diagnostic I would use before buying more software.

Choose five genuine buying questions from your sales conversations. Include a comparison, a budget constraint, a delivery or location requirement, and a question about limitations.

Try them in the assistants your customers use. Record the date, exact question, platform, businesses mentioned, claims made and source links. Save an initial set of answers before making changes so you have something to compare with later.

Do not stop at “Did it mention us?” Ask what it understood.

If it describes your product incorrectly, inspect the sources it used and your own published information. If it cannot establish an important fact, check whether that fact is available and consistent. If it chooses another business, look at the stated reasons before assuming you have a technical problem. The competitor may simply fit the request better.

Correct the underlying information and revisit the same questions after it has had time to be rediscovered. Answers vary between runs and users, so a few prompts are a diagnostic, not a reliable market-share measure or proof that your edit caused a change.

The goal is to find a specific gap you can fix: an unclear offer, missing evidence, outdated terms or a page that is difficult to access.

Measure the business you earn.

Keep three separate questions in view: Are we being cited? Are relevant people arriving? Are those people becoming worthwhile customers?

Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance reporting can show citations and cited pages across supported Microsoft AI experiences, including Copilot. Microsoft explicitly distinguishes these counts from ranking or placement. Use the report to investigate which content gets referenced; it is not a complete view of every AI assistant. Microsoft’s AI Performance documentation

Then use your analytics and sales records to examine identifiable referral visits, qualified inquiries, purchases and repeat business. Ask new customers how they found you, while recognizing that neither referral data nor self-reported answers capture every step.

An increase in mentions alongside poor-quality inquiries may mean your positioning is attracting the wrong buyers. More sales with expensive returns or support needs may mean the promise is too broad. Track the outcome your business actually needs.

A customer and shop owner examine a suitcase. Three prompts ask whether the business is cited, contacted and chosen again, with Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Shopify named as relevant tools. AI-generated illustration. — Are you being cited? Are the right buyers arriving? Are they choosing you again?

Start with one offer worth getting right.

My recommendation is to give one person responsibility for one commercially important offer. Have sales identify the customer question, marketing make the explanation clear, and operations verify the promise.

Publish the missing evidence. Check the relevant distribution settings. Keep a record of what changed and review the resulting inquiries and orders.

That produces something useful even before you can attribute a sale to AI: a business that is easier to understand, compare and buy from.

The opportunity is to make your strongest reason to be chosen visible wherever the buying decision begins.