People used to type “plumber Ballina” into Google and ring whoever was near the top. Now a growing number type a whole sentence into ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI Mode and ask it to choose for them. The tool reads around the web, then names two or three businesses with a reason for each.
If your business isn’t one of those names, you never get the chance to quote. And the reasons a tradie gets named are less mysterious than the “AI SEO” crowd would have you believe.
What the questions look like
The biggest shift is length. Nobody types four words into a chatbot. They describe their situation, because the tool invites them to. These are the kinds of questions we’d expect a Northern Rivers customer to ask (these are illustrative, written the way people talk, not pulled from anyone’s data):
- “My hot water system is leaking from the bottom and it’s Sunday. Who can come out today near Alstonville?”
- “Which electricians in Lennox Head do solar battery installs and are licensed for it?”
- “I need a builder for a small bathroom reno in Ballina, budget around $25k. Who’s good and turns up on time?”
- “Is it worth getting my concrete driveway sealed or should I just grind it? Who does that around Byron?”
- “Plumber near Wollongbar who does blocked drains and doesn’t charge a call-out fee”
Notice what’s packed into each one: a specific job, a specific place, a time constraint, and often a trust question (“turns up on time”, “licensed for it”). The AI is trying to match all of that. A website that just says “All aspects of plumbing, Northern Rivers” gives it nothing to match.
What the AI needs to find before it names you
Every tool works a bit differently, but they all have to answer the same thing: is there credible, consistent evidence that this business does this job in this place? This is how that breaks down for the questions above.
| The customer says | What the AI looks for | Where it usually finds it |
|---|---|---|
| “hot water leaking” | You do hot water repairs and replacements, ideally by brand or type | A dedicated hot water service page |
| “Sunday, today” | Emergency or after-hours availability, and the hours that apply | Website, Google Business Profile hours |
| “near Alstonville” | Alstonville is inside your service area | Service area page, Business Profile service areas, mentions in reviews |
| “licensed for batteries” | Your licence and any relevant accreditation | About page, footer, job pages |
| “turns up on time” | Reviews that mention reliability, punctuality, communication | Google reviews, other review sites |
| “no call-out fee” | Your pricing approach stated plainly | Pricing or FAQ section |
None of that is exotic. It’s the stuff a good trade website should have said all along. The difference is that a human skimming your site would forgive a vague homepage and pick up the phone. An AI assembling an answer from text just moves on to a business that spelled it out.
The five things that move the needle
1. One page per service you want
If you want hot water work, have a hot water page. If you want switchboard upgrades, have a switchboard page. Each one should say what the job involves, what brands or systems you work with, the suburbs you cover for it, and roughly what affects the price.
This is the same advice we’d give for ordinary Google rankings, and that’s not a coincidence. Google’s own guide to its generative AI features says AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on its core ranking systems, that existing SEO practice still applies, and that you don’t need special AI files or markup to appear. It also warns against “AEO” tricks like rewriting everything for machines.
2. Name the places, honestly
List the towns you service, on a service area page and in your Google Business Profile. Don’t create 40 near-identical suburb pages with the name swapped. That’s a spam pattern and it reads badly to people too. A single good page that says “We’re based in Ballina and cover Lennox Head, Alstonville, Wollongbar, Cumbalum and out to Lismore for larger jobs” is clearer than any of that.
3. Your Google Business Profile, filled in properly
Categories, services, service areas, hours (including whether you do after-hours), photos of real jobs. Google’s guide specifically mentions Business Profiles as a way to make services visible in AI responses. If you only do one thing after reading this, open your profile and check every field.
4. Reviews that say something
“Great job, thanks!” helps a bit. “Came out same day to fix our switchboard in Alstonville, explained everything and cleaned up” helps a lot, because it names the job, the place and the trust signal in one go. You can’t script reviews, but you can ask at the right moment and suggest people mention what you did. Our article on what customers look for on an electrician’s website covers how to display reviews without cluttering the page.
5. Make sure the tools can read your site
This one is technical and easy to get wrong. Some security plugins and hosting firewalls block AI crawlers by default. OpenAI’s crawler documentation is clear that sites which block its OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT’s search answers. You can allow that one and still block GPTBot if you don’t want your content used for training. They’re separate settings.
Microsoft’s Copilot draws on Bing, and plenty of tradies have never set up Bing Webmaster Tools. It takes 10 minutes if you already have Google Search Console, because you can import the site from there.
What doesn’t work
A few things we see sold to tradies that we wouldn’t spend money on:
- “Guaranteed placement in ChatGPT.” Nobody can guarantee what a language model says. The same question asked twice can give different names.
- Stuffing pages with question-and-answer blocks written for robots. If it wouldn’t help a customer standing in their flooded laundry, it won’t help you.
- Fake reviews or paid mentions on random directories. Google’s guide specifically calls out “inauthentic mentions” as ineffective, and fake reviews breach Google’s policies and Australian Consumer Law.
A quick test you can run today
Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode and ask each of them the question your best customer would ask. Use their words, include the suburb and the urgency. Then ask: “Why did you pick those businesses?”
The answer is often revealing. You’ll see which review mentions, directory listings or website pages the tool is drawing on, and you’ll see what your competitors have published that you haven’t. Write down what you find, then fix the gaps in your service pages and profile first. If you want to know whether those changes bring visits, we’ve written up how to measure AI referral traffic in GA4.
Where to start
Most trade websites we review don’t need to be rebuilt for AI. They need service pages that say what you do, where, and how, plus a properly filled-in Business Profile. That is the structure we build to on our websites for tradies.
If your current site is a single page that says “All electrical work”, tradie.agency offers a free site check within 48 hours and fixed-price builds from a one-pager up to a full local SEO build. For ongoing reviews and profile work, that sits with our local SEO team.