We Tested Whether AI Can Find Us. It Couldn't.

We're a Generative Engine Optimization agency. Our job is to get businesses named when people ask an AI assistant for a recommendation.

So there was an obvious question we hadn't asked: can AI find us?

We checked. The honest answer was: mostly not.

How an AI assistant finds a business

An AI assistant doesn't answer "who should I hire?" from memory. It searches first, then writes its answer from what it finds — and each assistant searches a different index:

• Claude draws on Brave Search.
• ChatGPT uses its own index, with Bing behind it.
• Gemini and Google's AI Overviews use Google.

So "can AI find us?" is really three questions. We asked each index directly.

What we found

Google knew us. Our site ranked first for our own name, and Google's AI Overview described us accurately — our registration, our city and our products. But it hedged, asking whether we'd meant a traditional prayer called the Narayan Kavach. And it called us a lab that builds its own products rather than a company you'd hire, which meant we'd never be suggested to someone looking for help.

Bing knew a different us. It had indexed our site, but its description of our homepage was an old one, written for one of our products. As far as that index was concerned, we were a trading app.

Brave didn't know us at all. A search for our exact domain returned too few matches. Searching our name on its own, Brave assumed a typo for "niyam kavach" and returned devotional hymns. (Kavach is a protective prayer; niyam means rule.) Claude draws on Brave, so for Claude we effectively didn't exist.

The bigger lesson: websites aren't what gets cited

Being findable by name is only the start. Nobody searches for a company they've never heard of. They ask "what's the best GEO agency in Bengaluru?"

So we asked that, and "best AI solutions company in Bengaluru" too. The answers were built almost entirely from directories, review sites and "top 10" comparison articles — several of them written by agencies that rank themselves first. Company websites barely featured.

That changes where the work is. A business can have a technically perfect website and still be invisible, because the pages an AI actually reads for its category never mention it.

Can't you just buy your way in?

No. ChatGPT now carries ads, but they appear below the answer, and OpenAI says advertisers have no way to shape or rank what ChatGPT says. Claude and Perplexity don't show ads at all. An ad can bring a click; it can't make an assistant name you.

What we're changing

We're doing for ourselves exactly what we'd do for a client:

1. Get into every index. Submit our site to Brave, and ask Bing and Google to re-read it.
2. Say plainly who we are. Our homepage now says what we do, where we are and who we help — in the words people actually use when they ask.
3. Earn third-party mentions. List on the directories AI assistants read, and collect genuine client reviews.
4. Measure it. Ask the same questions of each assistant, month after month, and publish the before-and-after.

There are two things we won't do: rank ourselves first in a list we wrote, or invent reviews. We sell trust to AI engines. Faking it would be a strange way to start.

Can AI find your business?

The audit we ran on ourselves is free. Run it on your site — it takes about a minute.