Why is my business not showing up in AI search?

Reason 1: the crawlers cannot read you

Check robots.txt first, because it is the cheapest possible fix. Many sites block AI crawlers by default - some hosts and security plugins do it without telling you. If GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and CCBot are disallowed, your own site is not available as a source.

The other common version of this problem is content that only exists after JavaScript runs. If your key facts are not in the served HTML, assume some crawlers never see them.

Reason 2: your facts are not machine-readable

A human reads "Open until 8 on weekdays" fine. A model extracting structured facts wants schema. Without JSON-LD and an llms.txt file, an engine has to infer your hours, service area and offerings from prose - and when it is unsure, it names a competitor it is sure about.

Reason 3: your data is inconsistent

This is the most common cause and the least visible. Two phone numbers, an old suite number, a service area that says statewide on one page and city-only on another, a Google Business Profile with hours that no longer match your site.

Inconsistency does not just create doubt about the specific fact. It lowers confidence in your entity overall, which is why fixing consistency often lifts multiple engines at once.

Reason 4: nothing outside your site backs you up

Engines look for agreement. If every claim about you originates on your own domain, you are a single unverified source. Competitors with directory listings, local press, industry association pages and visible reviews look substantiated by comparison.

Reason 5: you never answered the question

Service pages describe what you sell. Buyers ask questions. "How much does a tankless water heater install cost in Phoenix" is a question; a page titled "Water Heaters" is not an answer to it.

The fix is one page per real question, opening with a direct answer. That is what makes a page eligible to be quoted rather than merely relevant.

How to find out which reason applies to you

Guessing is expensive. A MyFast AI audit runs 100 unbranded buyer searches through all seven engines and records the verbatim answers, so you can see whether you are absent everywhere (usually a technical or corroboration problem) or absent only on specific question types (usually a content problem).