Reviews and mentions: getting onto the sites AI assistants trust

Why do AI assistants look beyond your own site?

An assistant asked “who should I hire?” searches the web and answers by “synthesizing information from multiple sources”, in the words of the paper that named generative engine optimization (Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024).

Most of those sources aren’t yours. University of Toronto researchers compared AI search with Google and found the AI engines lean heavily on earned media (independent media, review and comparison sites) over a brand’s own site and social posts. For US questions about consumer electronics, 92% of the sources a search-enabled version of GPT-4o cited were earned, against about half of Google’s results (Chen, Wang, Chen and Koudas, preprint, 10 Sep 2025).

Across 75,000 brands, Ahrefs, which sells search tools, found that how often a brand is mentioned on the web tracked its appearances in Google’s AI Overviews far more closely than its backlinks did (Ahrefs, 26 May 2025). In a December 2025 follow-up, mentions on YouTube had the strongest link to visibility in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews (Ahrefs, 12 Dec 2025). Ahrefs notes that correlation doesn’t prove cause.

Google confirms that other sites feed its own answers: its AI features “can show what’s being said about products and services across the web”, in blogs, videos and forum discussions (Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features, 10 Jul 2026).

Which sites do assistants read about local businesses?

BrightLocal, which sells local search software, traced 1.9 million citations in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews answers on more than 1,300 business locations in the US, UK and Australia. Google Business Profile was behind more than a quarter of all citations, and Yelp came second. It counted 415 directories in use, including specialist ones by trade, and about 93% of the cited domains were businesses’ own websites, so your site still counts (BrightLocal, Top sources and directories for local AI search, 26 Aug 2026).

For a business in the UAE or India, we’d start with your Google Business Profile and its reviews. The study covered only the US, UK and Australia, so find your own: the directories the assistants cite for your trade in your city. Ask the assistants and open their sources, as in the two-minute test in our guide.

Run that test several times. In BrightLocal’s follow-up of about 200,000 local searches, a business named once came back in about half of later runs (BrightLocal, 16 Sep 2026), and SparkToro found the same list of brands almost never comes back twice (SparkToro, 27 Jan 2026).

How do you get more reviews without breaking the rules?

Ask every customer, in the same way, at the same point, and offer nothing for it. Google allows asking for reviews, and its Maps policy rules out the following (Google Maps User Generated Content Policy):

• Offer payment, discounts, free goods or services for a review, or for changing or removing a bad one.
• Discourage negative reviews, or ask only the customers you expect to be happy.
• Pressure customers to review while they’re on your premises, or tell them what to write.
• Give staff a target number of reviews to collect.
• Post reviews from employees, family or anyone else with a conflict of interest.

Trustpilot’s guidelines rule out pre-screening: sending happy customers to the review page and unhappy ones to contact you directly isn’t allowed (Trustpilot, Guidelines for businesses, September 2026). In our reading, Google’s ban on asking only happy customers catches the same trick, so a feedback form that sends five-star answers to your review page and the rest to your inbox breaks both sets of rules.

In India, the standard IS 19000:2022 covers how reviews are collected and moderated, including reviews a seller collects from its own customers (PIB, 12 Dec 2022). In May 2024 the Department of Consumer Affairs said it seeks to make it mandatory (PIB, 15 May 2024).

What works inside the rules is plain. Google gives you a review link and QR code (Google Business Profile Help, Tips to get more reviews). Send it to every customer at one fixed step, such as with the final invoice or the handover message on WhatsApp.

Should you reply to every review?

Reply to every negative review and to every review where you can add something. Google suggests skipping the identical “thank you” and focusing on reviews where you can share an update or answer a question. It asks for short, polite replies with no deals or promotions in them (Google Business Profile Help, Tips to get more reviews).

For a bad review, Google’s advice is to keep the customer’s private details out, admit real mistakes, explain what you can and can’t do, and move a complicated case to phone or email (Google Business Profile Help, Tips to get more reviews). The reviewer is notified of your reply and can change their review after reading it (Google Business Profile Help, Manage customer reviews). If a review breaks Google’s policies, flag it instead of arguing in public.

How do you earn mentions without buying them?

Fix the mentions you already have. Search your business name, list every directory and profile that comes up, and make each one match your Google Business Profile: name, address, phone and hours. In India, claim your place on Mappls, which lets you manage and update its details (Mappls, Claim and manage place). If your chamber of commerce or trade body publishes a member list, make sure you’re on it with today’s details.

Then go where the assistants look for your trade:

• The sites your test turned up. If an assistant cites a trade directory or a “best firms in Dubai” article, find out how businesses get in and apply on merit.
• Local and trade press, partners’ case studies and event speaker pages. Bring something worth reporting: a finished project with numbers, a new service, or data from your own work.
• YouTube, given Ahrefs’ finding: a short talk or a walk-through of a real job.

If you sell in two languages, note that the Toronto study’s GPT engine switched to sources in the question’s language, and the authors advise earning coverage in local-language media (Chen et al., 10 Sep 2025). They didn’t test Arabic or Hindi.

Paid coverage is advertising. Google’s spam policies count paid articles, and sending someone a product in exchange for a write-up with a link, as link spam unless the links are marked rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" (Google Search Central, Spam policies, 28 Aug 2026). And Google says chasing inauthentic mentions “isn’t as helpful as it might seem”, because its ranking systems favour quality content and other systems block spam (Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features).