AI My Site Research · Q2 2026
State of AI Search for Small and Medium Businesses
We scanned 500 small and medium businesses. Almost all are visible to AI assistants. Almost none are getting picked. Here's why, and how to fix it. No site rebuild required.
AI My Site - the action plan, not just the audit
500
small businesses
6
countries
6
industries
3
ai assistants
Why this matters now
At Google I/O on 19 May 2026, Google made the shift to conversational AI search official.
"Search has become less about individual queries and feels more like an ongoing conversation."
— Sundar Pichai, Google I/O 2026
1 billion+
monthly users on Google AI Mode, the conversational layer inside Google Search.
"We're entering the era of Search agents."
— Elizabeth Reid, VP of Search, Google
What this means for small businesses: customer questions are increasingly answered by AI directly, with a synthesised recommendation rather than ten blue links. This benchmark measures who AI is recommending in that conversation. Not whether you rank on the old algorithm.
Sources, fetched 4 June 2026: Pichai's I/O 2026 keynote post · Elizabeth Reid — Search at I/O 2026
What we measure - three scores, not one
Most SEO tools give you one number. We give you three, because the work behind each is different.
Every business in this study gets three scores out of 100. Each tells a different story about what's actually blocking AI from recommending you. Most traditional SEO tools only measure the first one.
TECHNICAL HEALTH
84 / 100
average across the 500
Is your site fast, mobile-friendly, indexable? Does it have the basics right? This is what traditional SEO tools measure and most small businesses are already doing fine here.
AI READINESS
74 / 100
average across the 500
Is your content structured for AI assistants to understand? Do you have schema markup, clear positioning, structured answers to category questions? This is where most small businesses fall behind.
AI VISIBILITY
73 / 100
average across the 500
Are AI assistants actually mentioning you when customers ask about your category? We tested 500 small businesses across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini using real customer-discovery questions.
0-39
40-59
60-79
80-100
0-39
Not yet competing. Big work to do across the basics or the AI-specific layer.
40-59
Falling behind. You're behind peers in your category fixable, but the gap is real.
60-79
The "Good" band. You're in the conversation, but you're one of several. 69% of SMBs sit here.
80-100
The recommendation. You're the answer, not just an answer. Top performers reach 88.
Most small businesses are visible. Almost none are winning.
Five numbers that show where the gap is, and why being mentioned isn't the same as being recommended.
Good SEO does not mean AI sees you
Most small and medium businesses pass the traditional SEO basics. Almost none are optimised for how AI assistants actually read and recommend sites, It's a different layer of work, missed by every traditional SEO tool.
Being recommended is not about being big
The small businesses topping our AI search benchmark aren't household names. They're regional brands with clear positioning and structured content. Everyone else can catch up. It's a checklist, not a rebuild.
499/500
have fixable issues blocking AI recommendations, losing customers they'll never see.
100%
had a gap in how AI describes their brand. Every single one.
9
high-priority issues per business, quietly costing customers right now.
What we found
Seven things every small business owner should know about how AI sees them.
You're being mentioned. You're not being recommended.
Being recommended is not about being big - it's about being clearer than the alternative
Here's the truth: getting mentioned by an AI assistant doesn't drive customers. Getting recommended does.
The average small business in our study is well in the middle of the pack. The top performers in each industry aren't the biggest spenders or the household names. They're regional brands that describe what they do clearly, structure their content for AI to parse, and have strong category signals. That difference is the difference between "someone heard about you" and "someone bought from you."
Of the 500 we scanned, 499 had fixable issues holding them back. Visible isn't winning. Picked is.
WHAT TO DO
You don't need a redesign. You need the prioritised list of fixes that close YOUR specific gap, and AI My Site delivers exactly that, ranked by impact, with step-by-step guides for each one. We walk you through it.
Your site is healthier than you think. It's just not AI-ready.
Good SEO does not mean AI sees you - they're separate layers of work
Most small businesses we scanned are doing the technical basics fine. Their sites load fast, they're mobile-friendly, they're indexable by search engines.
But the AI Readiness picture is different. The content on those sites isn't structured the way AI assistants read and recommend. There's a real gap, hiding in plain sight, between passing the SEO checks and being optimised for how AI parses sites. Traditional SEO tools were never built to find it.
Audit tools optimise the first layer. They were built for Google's classic algorithm, where backlinks and page speed win. AI assistants ask different questions and they reward different things.
WHAT TO DO
AI My Site adds the AI Readiness layer your traditional tools were never built to surface without replacing the tools you already use. The action plan tells you exactly what to add to your existing site so AI can find, parse, and recommend you.
AI doesn't always describe your business the way you would.
100% had at least one AI brand gap
When someone asks an AI assistant about your business, what comes back might not match how you'd describe yourself. Maybe AI confuses you with a competitor. Maybe it describes what you do in fuzzy terms. Maybe it misses the thing that actually makes you different.
Every single business we scanned had at least one gap like this where standard SEO tools don't catch them. These are problems that only show up when you look at how AI assistants actually talk about your brand with no priming.
WHAT TO DO
AI My Site scans how each AI assistant describes your business, then walks you through what to change so next time the answer is better. No other mainstream SEO audit tool surfaces this layer.
You don't need more tools. You need better instructions.
Average of 9 issues open per site regardless of platform or plugins
Most small business owners we talk to have tried to fix AI visibility the obvious ways: installing an SEO plugin, hiring a freelancer, or signing up to another audit tool. Almost all of them still have the same nine high-priority issues open.
Why? Because audit tools tell you problems exist but they rarely tell you which three to fix first. The work then scatters across the wrong things, a new plugin here, a freelancer brief there and ultimately the score barely moves.
It isn't a tooling problem. It's a prioritisation problem.
WHAT TO DO
AI My Site isn't another audit tool. It's your full prioritised action plan with every issue on your site ranked by impact on AI visibility and the exact replacement text ready to paste in. Our built-in step-by-step guides then walk you through each fix on your specific platform covering WordPress, Wix, Shopify, or your CMS of choice. No plugins to install. No freelancer to brief. Just clear instructions you can act on this now.
The simplest fixes are the most-skipped.
94 in 100 have weak meta descriptions
Your page title and the short description that show up under it in search results are the two things AI assistants use to understand what your site is about. They take minutes to write properly.
Almost no one does. 94 out of 100 small businesses have a description that's missing, generic or doesn't actually describe what they do. 92 out of 100 have the same problem with their page title. These aren't specialist optimisations. They're free to fix and they lift AI visibility significantly.
WHAT TO DO
AI My Site writes the recommended title and description for every page on your site with your brand name, what you do, and who you serve all built in. The text is ready to paste into your CMS with no further authoring required.
Half of small businesses are losing the race on ChatGPT specifically.
51% have ChatGPT as their weakest AI assistant · 22% have a 15-point spread between models
Not all AI assistants see the same site the same way. The typical small business we scanned has a 10.7-point spread between their best-performing and worst-performing AI assistant. One in five sites has a spread of 15 points or more. One in eleven has a spread of 20+ points being visible on Gemini, almost absent on ChatGPT (or the reverse).
And the bottleneck isn't random. ChatGPT is the lowest-scoring assistant for 51% of small businesses we scanned, meaning the biggest single blocker for half of all SMBs isn't "AI search" as a category, it's their ChatGPT performance specifically. Given ChatGPT's user base, losing there costs more than losing on the others.
Most of the extreme cases share a pattern: a business that's visible on one assistant has the brand-positioning signals working for that model, but is missing the signals the other models look for. It isn't a content-volume problem. It's a specificity problem.
WHAT TO DO
AI My Site shows your score on each AI assistant so you can see exactly where the gap is. The action plan is a single integrated list, prioritised by impact and designed to maximise your visibility across all the models from one set of fixes. You don't need different work for different assistants. You need the right list, in order. We give you that, with step-by-step guides for each fix.
Nine small issues are quietly costing you customers.
4,580 high-priority issues across the 500 businesses we scanned
None of them are catastrophic. No single broken thing. But the typical small business has nine high-priority issues open right now and together they keep you in the middle of the pack: visible to AI, but not the one it recommends.
Across our 500-business sample, that's 4,580 fixable items going unaddressed. Every one of them is a small loss: a customer who got recommended someone else, a question where your competitor's name came up first, a category search where you weren't in the answer.
You'll never see those losses directly. They show up as "slow months" or "competitors growing faster" never as an event you can point to.
WHAT TO DO
AI My Site shows you every relevant issue on your site, ranked in priority order by impact on AI visibility. You fix in sequence with no diagnostic work, no guesswork about which to tackle first, and step-by-step guides for each one so you never feel stuck. The list is the action plan, and we walk you through it.
See where your site stands
Find out exactly where you sit in this benchmark and get the prioritised action list that closes the gap. Same approach, your data, in under five minutes.
Top performers
These small businesses are leading their categories on AI Visibility right now, proving that being recommended isn't reserved for big brands.
SITE
INDUSTRY
COUNTRY
SCORE
verasseti.com
B2B SaaS
GB
87.7
curiosum.com
B2B SaaS
US
87.7
desdemoor.co.uk
Hospitality
GB
87.7
chilliapple.co.uk
Ecommerce
GB
87.3
pluspromotions.ie
Ecommerce
IE
87.3
estateintel.com
Estate Agents
US
87.3
growthhakka.com
Marketing Agency
GB
87.0
madebyshape.co.uk
Marketing Agency
GB
87.0
craftbeertours.co.uk
Hospitality
GB
87.0
rgcdigitalmarketing.com.au
Marketing Agency
AU
86.7
These sites get the basics right: clear page titles and descriptions, strong brand positioning, and content that explains what they do in language AI assistants understand. They're not necessarily bigger or better-funded - they're just clearer.
More from the data
For analysts, agencies, and the data-curious where the shorter read above is not enough this section is for going deeper.
How we did it
We scanned 500 small and medium-sized businesses across the United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Six industries: marketing agencies, ecommerce, professional services, B2B SaaS, hospitality, and estate agents.
Each business was scanned across three major AI assistants ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini using a standard set of customer-discovery questions ("Find me a [type of business] in [country]", "Tell me about [brand name]", and so on). We measured whether each business was mentioned, how prominently, and what AI assistants said about them.
All scans completed in early June 2026.
Want the deeper data behind this report? Email steve@goaimysite.com.
How to improve your AI search visibility
A practical step-by-step for small and medium businesses. The work is a checklist, not a rebuild.
1
Scan your site to understand where you stand
Measure how AI assistants currently describe and recommend your business. A scan returns three scores Technical Health, AI Readiness, AI Visibility and a prioritised list of fixes by impact. Run a scan with AI My Site →
2
Fix the meta tag layer
Update your title tag, meta description, and keywords on every important page. These are the first signals AI assistants use to understand what your site is about. 94% of the small businesses we scanned had unfixed meta description issues.
3
Add structured data (schema markup)
Add JSON-LD schema markup that tells AI assistants exactly what kind of business you are, what you sell, where you operate, and who your customers are. 66% of the small businesses we scanned were missing this.
4
Tighten your brand positioning
Write a clear, concise paragraph that describes who you are, what you do, and what makes you different. AI assistants use this to synthesise recommendations. 100% of small businesses we scanned had at least one unresolved gap in how AI describes their brand.
5
Optimise page speed and mobile experience
Improve page load speed, image compression, and mobile responsiveness. Roughly half the small businesses we scanned had page-speed issues. AI assistants don't directly measure speed, but the underlying signals (clean indexing, fast retrieval) feed into how confident they are in citing your site.
6
Build category-question content
Create content that directly answers the questions customers ask AI assistants about your category and what to look for, how to choose, common pitfalls. AI assistants reward sites that answer questions directly over sites that just describe themselves.
7
Re-scan to measure progress
Run another scan to confirm the fixes have landed and your AI visibility score has lifted. Most small businesses can close the gap to the top of their category within a few weeks of focused work.
AI My Site gives you the prioritised list
Steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 are the work most small businesses are missing. AI My Site shows you every relevant issue on your site, ranked by impact, with the recommended replacement text ready to paste in. The action plan, not just the audit.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers to the questions small business owners ask us most often about AI search.
The action plan, not just the audit.
Every business in this report can close the gap to the top performers in their category without a site rebuild, without a freelancer, and without guessing. The question is just which three things to fix first. AI My Site shows you, and walks you through each one. Scan your site to see your action plan.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Steve Homan and Andrew Neal co-founded AI My Site to give small businesses a prioritised action plan for AI search visibility. Both serve as Co-founders.
State of AI Search for Small and Medium Businesses — Q2 2026. Published 4 June 2026 by AI My Site. Sample: 500 small and medium businesses across the UK, US, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, scanned across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
AI My Site · goaimysite.com · The action plan, not just the audit.