We Asked AI to Recommend a Marketing Agency in Chester. We Weren’t on the List.

What that taught us about how businesses get found in 2026, how we fixed it, and how to check whether yours is invisible too.

We build this agency on being straight with people. So here is us being straight about ourselves.

A few days ago, we opened an AI chatbot in a private window, no account, no history, nothing that knew who we were, and asked it the simplest question a potential client might ask: “marketing agency Chester.”

It gave a tidy, confident list of agencies. We read it twice.

We weren’t on it.

Alongside some genuinely good local agencies sat names we did not expect to see ahead of us, including a design and print business that has been going quietly since the mid-2000s. Nothing wrong with any of them, as they have clearly earned their place. The bit that stung was simpler than rivalry: asked cold, with no idea who we were, the AI had never heard enough about us across the web to say our name.

We have the website and the work to back ourselves up. The wider internet just had not got the message.

So if you run a business in Chester, this is the part to pay attention to. Because what happened to us is almost certainly happening to you.

“Are we in the AI’s answer?” is the new “Are we on page one?”

For twenty years, the question that kept business owners up at night was “Where do we rank on Google?” But now, a new one is creeping in beside it: “Does AI recommend us?“

The shift is real, even if the headlines oversell it. Google still handles the lion’s share of searches, around 80 per cent of them, so this is not the death of search. But more than a third of people now say they start their research with an AI chatbot rather than a search engine, and for B2B buyers building a shortlist of suppliers, it is roughly one in four.

And here is the number that matters most: about 85 per cent of people still go and verify what the AI tells them somewhere else.

Read that last one again, because it’s the whole game. People ask AI for a shortlist, then check the names it gives them against Google, your website and your reviews. If you are not on the AI’s shortlist, you are never in the running. The customer never even knew you existed to reject you. And if you do make the shortlist but the rest of the web does not back you up, you lose them at the verification stage instead. You do not get to pick one. You need both.

So we did the obvious thing. We audited ourselves to find out why we weren’t there. The answer surprised us.

It wasn’t the website

This is the part most people get wrong. We assumed the problem had to be technical, something on the site. It wasn’t.

Our website is, frankly, in good shape. It’s fast, it’s clearly structured, and behind the scenes it tells search engines exactly who we are, where we are and what we do. If the AI had only ever read our site, it would know us perfectly well.

The trouble is that it is not how AI works. An AI does not form its opinion of your business from your website alone. It builds it from everywhere your business is mentioned: the directories, the listings, the review sites, and the “best agencies in town” articles. It pieces together a picture from dozens of independent sources, and it recommends the businesses that show up consistently and clearly across all of them. Think of it as a consensus. If the wider web agrees on who you are, the AI is confident enough to put you forward. If the picture is patchy or contradictory, it quietly leaves you out and reaches for a name it is surer about.

When we looked at our own consensus, it was a mess.

What we found wrong with ourselves

The honest list:

• A directory still had our old address. We moved offices a while back, and one of the big agency directories never got the memo. It was still showing the old location and an out-of-date description of what we do.
• An old web address was still floating about. We changed domains at some point, and a review site was still pointing at the old one. To a human, a minor footnote. To an AI trying to work out whether two listings are even the same company, it is a reason to hesitate.
• We were missing from the listings we should have been on. Several of the directories our competitors appear in, we simply weren’t in at all.
• Our name isn’t unique. It turns out there are a few companies called “Spectra Media” dotted around. When the web cannot tell which one is the Chester marketing agency, the AI doesn’t guess. It stays quiet.

None of these is dramatic. That is exactly the point. A dozen small inconsistencies, none of them worth fixing on their own, added up to a business the AI couldn’t confidently describe. So it didn’t.

How we fixed it

The website work was the easy part, and it was already done. The real job was off-site: getting the whole web to tell one consistent story about us. Here is exactly what that took.

1. We standardised our details. One version of our name, address, phone and description, then we corrected every listing that disagreed, starting with the directory still showing our old office.
2. We cleared the old domain trail. We tracked down the listings still pointing at our previous web address and repointed them, so an AI sees one company, not two half-matches.
3. We claimed the profiles we were missing. We got Spectra into the directories AI actually reads, the ones our competitors were already in, and we weren’t.
4. We tightened our entity signals. We linked our structured data to our social profiles and kept the address identical everywhere, so a machine can tie every profile back to the one Chester agency.
5. We published an llms.txt file. A plain-language summary of who we are, written so an AI can read it without guessing. An early bet, since the big engines have not all committed to it yet, but it costs almost nothing, and we would rather be early. (We wrote a separate post on what it is if the term is new to you!)

Here is a bonus we did not expect: that exact same consistency work is what gets you into Google’s local map results too. So we were not chasing a shiny new thing while the basics gathered dust. We fixed one foundation that helps you get found by AI and by ordinary Google searches at the same time.

None of this changes overnight. An AI’s picture of a business updates slowly, as the web itself does. But the direction of travel is clear, and the businesses that tidy up first are the ones that get the head start.

Is your business invisible to AI? Here’s how to check in five minutes

You don’t need a tool or an agency to test this. Try it yourself, right now:

1. Open an AI chatbot in a private or incognito window. This matters. In your normal window, it may already know you and give a flattering answer that no new customer would ever see.
2. Ask the question a customer would ask: “best [what you do] in [your town].”
3. Are you there? If not, who is? That is your real competition for the next decade.
4. Now Google your own business name and check every listing that comes back. Is your name, address and phone exactly the same on all of them? Any old addresses, old phone numbers or old web addresses still live?
5. Check the obvious directories for your area and trade. Are you on them, and is the information right?

If you spot the same patchwork we did, you are not behind. Almost everyone is. But the businesses that fix it first are the ones AI will be recommending while everyone else wonders where their enquiries went.

We can do this bit for you

We turned the audit we ran on ourselves into something we now do for clients: a straight-talking AI visibility check that tells you whether AI is recommending you, or quietly sending your customers to someone else, and exactly what to fix.

No jargon, no scare tactics. Just an honest look at whether the web agrees on who you are.

We’ll run it by hand and walk you through what’s making you hard for AI to find and recommend, in plain English. Free, and no obligation.

Frequently asked questions

Will AI recommend my business?

Only if the wider web describes you consistently. AI builds recommendations from directories, listings, reviews and articles, not your website alone, and it surfaces the businesses it sees described the same way everywhere.

Is AI visibility the same as SEO?

They overlap, but are not identical. The consistency work that makes AI confident about you, the same name, address and details everywhere, also feeds Google local map results, so fixing it helps both. You need to be on the AI shortlist and have the web back you up when people verify.

How do I check if my business is invisible to AI?

Open an AI chatbot in a private window, ask it for the best in your trade and town, and see if you appear. Then Google your name and check that every listing shows the same, current details.