How to Get Any Business Recommended by AI (Not Just Shopify)

Most of what you hear about AI visibility is aimed at ecommerce stores. But the shift is bigger than shopping. People are asking AI for the best lawyer, the best contractor, the best software, the best agency, the best clinic, every kind of business, product and service alike. And AI answers with a short list of names. If your business isn't on it, you're invisible for that customer. This video is how to get any business recommended by AI, whether you sell products or services.

CHAPTER 1: The Shift Is Bigger Than Shopping

Most of what you hear about getting recommended by AI is aimed at online stores. Products, feeds, ecommerce. And that leaves a lot of business owners thinking this doesn't apply to them. It absolutely does, because the shift is way bigger than shopping.

Think about how people are actually using AI now. They ask it for the best lawyer in their city. The best contractor for a remodel. The best software for their team. The best agency, the best clinic, the best accountant. Every kind of business, services just as much as products. And AI answers the same way it does for shopping, with a short list of specific names, recommended directly.

So if your business isn't on that list, you're invisible to that customer, whether you sell a product or a service. This is not an ecommerce thing. It's an everything thing.

This video is how to get any business recommended by AI. I'll show you the system, why it's the same across every industry, the two layers that apply to everyone, and then specifically what's different if you're a service or local business rather than a store, because there are real differences, and I don't want to leave the service folks guessing.

If we haven’t met already, I am the digital avatar of Steve, the founder of Ecommerce Agency working Digital. While he is helping Shopify brands scale with AI, I am here to keep you up to date with the latest AI strategies for ecommerce. Steve reads every comment, so make sure to drop one below.

Let's start with why one system works everywhere.

CHAPTER 2: Why the System Is the Same Everywhere

Here's why the same playbook works whether you sell running shoes or legal services: AI works the same way in every industry.

AI does not test your business. It never hires your firm, tries your product, or evaluates your quality. It reads. It works off what it can find about you across the web, and it recommends what it can read, quote, and trust. That's true for a jewelry store and it's true for a dentist. The mechanism doesn't change by industry.

Which means the winners are the same kind of business everywhere. Not the best businesses, the most readable, quotable, and trusted-as-a-source businesses. The lawyer AI recommends isn't necessarily the best lawyer. It's the one AI can read clearly, whose content it can quote, and whose reputation it can verify. Same as the store.

Sit with that for a second, because it stings a little. A plumber in your town does the best work by a mile and never shows up when someone asks AI for a recommendation. Meanwhile a decent-but-not-great competitor gets named every time, because that competitor has a clear website, a few helpful articles, and a pile of honest reviews. AI can't feel the quality of the work. It can only read the signals around the work.

And that's the opportunity, because "readable, quotable, and trusted" is completely within your control in any industry. You can't easily become the best firm in your city overnight. You can absolutely become the most readable and quotable one, and that's what gets recommended. So the two layers that make that happen, being findable and being the answer, apply to every business. Let’s take them one at a time.

CHAPTER 3: Layer 1 - Can AI Find and Understand You

The first layer is the foundation: making sure AI can actually find, read, and understand your business. If it can't, you're invisible before anything else matters, and this is true for a store and a service alike.

For any business, the basics are the same. Can the AI crawlers reach your site, are they allowed, or is something blocking them? Does your important information actually appear in a form AI can read, not hidden behind scripts? And are you a clear entity, does AI understand who you are, what you do, who you serve, and where, from clean, current information on your site?

That last part, entity clarity, matters even more for service businesses than for stores. A store has products with obvious attributes. A service business has to make crystal clear what it does, for whom, in what area, and what makes it distinct, because AI is trying to match a person's need to a provider, and if it can't tell exactly what you offer and to whom, it can't confidently recommend you. Vague "we do everything for everyone" positioning is invisible to AI. Specific, clearly-stated service and audience is readable.

Take two accounting firms. One site says "we provide financial solutions for businesses." The other says "we handle tax and bookkeeping for restaurants and bars in the Phoenix area." When someone asks AI for an accountant who understands restaurant margins in Phoenix, only one of those firms is legible enough to name. The specific one wins, not because it's better at accounting, but because AI can actually tell what it does and who it's for.

So step one for any business: make sure AI can reach you, read you, and understand exactly what you are and who you serve. It's the gate. But being findable isn't the same as being recommended, and the second layer is where the recommendations actually get won.

CHAPTER 4: Layer 2 - Be the Answer to Your Industry's Questions

The second layer is content, and it's the same core move in every industry: be the answer to your industry's real questions.

When someone asks AI an open question, "who's the best X for Y," "how do I choose a Z," "what should I look for in an A", AI answers from content that addresses that question. Guides, comparisons, explainers. It names the businesses that content names. So if you've published the answers to your industry's real questions on your own domain, AI quotes you and recommends you. If you haven't, it recommends whoever did.

This works identically for products and services. A store publishes "the best options for this use case." A law firm publishes "how to choose a lawyer for this kind of case" or "what to expect in this process." A software company publishes "the best tools for this job" or "this approach versus that one." Different topics, exact same mechanic: answer the real questions your prospects ask AI, on your own site, written so AI can quote them.

Notice what that content is really doing. It's proving expertise in public. A roofing company that publishes a clear, honest guide on when a roof needs repair versus full replacement is showing AI it knows the trade, and it's answering the exact question a worried homeowner is typing at eleven at night. When AI pulls from that guide to answer, the roofer's name rides along with the answer. You're teaching the machine to see you as the expert on your own category's questions.

And it compounds the same way everywhere. One answer cited is a fluke. A library covering your industry's questions is a moat. The firm or store or company that publishes the answers to its category's questions, consistently, becomes the source AI keeps recommending. The foundation gets you found. The content gets you recommended. That's the whole game, and it's industry-agnostic.

CHAPTER 5: What's Different for Service and Local Businesses

Now the real differences, because service and local businesses aren't identical to stores, and I don't want to pretend they are.

The biggest difference: product businesses have a feed and a catalog, structured product data that does a lot of the "get found" work. Service businesses don't have that. There's no product feed for a law firm. So for services, the game leans even harder on the content and the reputation layers, because you don't have a catalog carrying you. Your published content and your trust signals are doing almost all the work.

That's actually clarifying. If you're a service business, don't wait around for some product-feed equivalent. Your entire play is: be crystal clear about what you do and for whom, publish the answers to your prospects' real questions on your own site, and build the reputation signals AI reads. The content and trust layers aren't one part of your strategy, for a service business, they're basically the whole strategy.

For local businesses specifically, add location clarity to everything. AI often answers "best X near me" or "best X in this city," so your location, service area, and local relevance need to be unmistakable in your information and your content. A local business that's vague about where it operates is invisible to a location-based question, which is a huge share of local intent.

And local content can lean into the location on purpose. A dentist writing "what to know before getting a crown" is competing with every dentist on earth. The same dentist writing about their specific city, their neighborhood, the questions their actual patients ask, gives AI a reason to surface them for a local search. Name your town, your service area, the landmarks people recognize. That specificity is what turns a generic page into the answer for "best dentist near me."

So the adaptation for services and local: same two layers, but content and reputation carry more of the weight since there's no catalog, and location clarity becomes essential for local intent. Everything else, be findable, be the answer, holds exactly.

CHAPTER 6: The Off-Site Trust Layer - Reviews and Community

There's one more layer that matters for every business but is often the whole ballgame for services: the off-site trust layer. The reviews and the community discussions, on the sources AI trusts, that vouch for you independently.

AI doesn't only read your own site. It reads the wider web to decide whether to trust you, your reviews on the platforms that matter, the discussions where people recommend businesses like yours, the third-party mentions. And for services especially, this is enormous, because when AI recommends a lawyer or a contractor or a clinic, it's putting real weight on independent reputation. Nobody wants AI recommending a service provider with no verifiable track record.

So for any business, but service businesses most of all: build genuine reviews on the platforms AI reads, and get honestly discussed in the communities where people ask for recommendations in your space. Reddit is one of the most-cited sources AI trusts for this, because it reads as real people giving real opinions. If people are asking "who's a good X in this area" in communities and forums and your name never comes up, AI has no independent signal to recommend you on.

The way to earn that isn't to spam your own name into threads, which reads as fake and gets you nowhere. Show up as a real, helpful voice in the places your prospects gather. Answer questions honestly, even when the answer isn't your business. Do good work and ask happy customers to leave an honest review where it counts. Over time you become the name that comes up naturally, and that natural mention is exactly the kind of signal AI weighs heaviest.

This off-site trust layer is the half most businesses ignore entirely, which makes it an edge when you do it. Earn the reviews, show up genuinely and helpfully where your prospects ask for recommendations, and you build the independent web of trust that makes AI confident naming you. Pair that with the content on your own site, and you've got both halves working together.

CHAPTER 7: Where to Start in Your Industry

So here's where to start, whatever business you're in.

First, measure. Ask AI your industry's real questions, "best X for Y," "who should I use for Z in this city", signed out, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI, and see if you get named. That's your baseline, and most businesses have never checked it.

Second, fix the foundation, make sure AI can find and read you, and that you're a crystal-clear entity about what you do and who you serve, with location clarity if you're local.

Third, run the content engine, publish the answers to your industry's real questions on your own domain, one a week, written so AI can quote them.

Fourth, build the off-site trust, reviews on the platforms that matter and genuine presence in the communities where people ask for recommendations in your space.

Same four moves, adapted to your industry. And the same truth applies everywhere: most of your competitors haven't started, so the business that moves first tends to become the one AI recommends and holds that position as it compounds.

If you want to see where your business stands in AI answers right now, any industry, product or service, that's what our free AI visibility audit shows you: what AI can find, what it can't, and whether you're the answer it gives. Link's in the description.

That wraps this stretch of the series. Whether you sell products or services, the shift is the same, from ranking in a list to being the answer AI recommends. The businesses that act on it while it's still early are the ones who win it. Go find out where yours stands.