There's a common assumption floating around: AI only recommends big brands with massive marketing budgets. If you're a solopreneur or a small consultancy, why bother? The Goliaths have already won.
It's a reasonable concern. And it's mostly wrong.
We've been tracking AI recommendations across hundreds of prompts and industries. Small businesses absolutely get recommended, and in some categories they outperform the big players. But it's not random. There's a specific pattern to which small brands show up and which ones stay invisible.
The specificity advantage
Here's the pattern in one sentence: the more specific the query, the more likely a small business gets recommended.
Ask ChatGPT "What's the best CRM?" and you'll get Salesforce, HubSpot, maybe Zoho. The generic query surfaces generic answers, and generic means big.
But ask "What's the best CRM for freelance wedding photographers?" and the landscape shifts. Suddenly, a niche tool built specifically for that audience has a real shot at being the top recommendation. The big brands are too broad. Their positioning doesn't speak to that specific need.
This is where small businesses win. Not on broad queries, but on specific ones where their focus becomes their advantage.
Real examples from the data
A solo HR consultant who specializes in startup culture audits kept appearing in ChatGPT recommendations for queries like "HR consultant for tech startups" and "culture assessment for growing teams." Meanwhile, larger HR firms with 50+ consultants were invisible on those same queries. The consultant's clear niche positioning made her the obvious answer.
A small project management tool designed exclusively for construction teams regularly outperformed Asana and Monday.com on construction-specific prompts. The big tools had more features, more users, and infinitely more marketing spend. None of that mattered when the query was specific enough.
A freelance copywriter who positioned herself specifically around SaaS landing page copy was recommended by Perplexity ahead of major content agencies. Her website was crystal clear about what she did and who she served. The agencies had bigger portfolios but vaguer positioning.
What small businesses get wrong
The small businesses that don't show up in AI recommendations usually share a common problem: they're trying to sound bigger than they are.
Their websites use vague, corporate language. "We provide comprehensive solutions to help businesses grow." That doesn't help AI understand what they actually do or who they serve. It could describe any company in any industry.
They list every service they've ever provided instead of focusing on their core specialty. An accountant who lists "tax preparation, bookkeeping, financial planning, business consulting, payroll services, and estate planning" gives AI no reason to recommend them for any single one. An accountant who says "I help freelance designers handle quarterly taxes and maximize deductions" is immediately recommendable for that specific query.
The instinct to cast a wide net works against you with AI. Narrow positioning creates strong signals. Broad positioning creates noise.
The five things that get small brands recommended
Based on what we've observed, five factors consistently separate recommended small businesses from invisible ones.
1. Laser-focused positioning
AI needs to match your brand to a query. If it can't figure out exactly what you do and who you serve, it moves on. The clearest positioning wins.
"I help B2B SaaS companies write email sequences that convert trial users" is infinitely more recommendable than "I'm a marketing consultant."
2. Content that demonstrates expertise
You don't need a blog with 500 posts. You need a handful of genuinely deep pieces that demonstrate you know your subject. A consultant with three detailed case studies and a few thoughtful articles about their specialty creates more signal than someone with dozens of generic "10 tips for..." posts.
Depth beats volume.
3. Third-party mentions
AI weighs what others say about you more than what you say about yourself. A mention in an industry newsletter, a guest appearance on a podcast, a testimonial on a third-party review site. These are the signals that build credibility in AI's assessment.
You don't need press in Forbes. A mention on a respected niche blog in your industry can be enough. The relevance of the source matters more than its size.
4. Consistent presence
Your LinkedIn, your website, your directory listings, your guest posts. They should all tell the same story about who you are and what you do. AI aggregates information from multiple sources. If those sources tell a consistent story, it strengthens the signal. If they tell different stories, the signal gets diluted.
5. Recency
AI platforms increasingly factor in how current your information is. A website that hasn't been updated in two years sends a weaker signal than one with recent content. You don't need to publish constantly, but showing signs of life matters.
The honest limitations
Let's be real about what doesn't work for small businesses with AI visibility.
Generic, highly competitive queries are tough. "Best accounting software" is going to return QuickBooks, Xero, and FreshBooks regardless of how well you position yourself. You're not going to out-recommend established category leaders on their core queries.
If your business has virtually no web presence, no reviews, no mentions, no content, AI has nothing to work with. You need some baseline of online presence for AI to even know you exist.
And AI visibility alone won't save a bad product or service. It can introduce people to you, but they still need to be impressed when they arrive.
Why this matters right now
The window of opportunity for small businesses is open because most of them aren't paying attention yet. The solopreneurs and consultants who build AI visibility now are establishing positions that will be harder to claim later as awareness grows.
Think about what happened with SEO. The businesses that started early, even small ones, built domain authority that competitors spent years trying to match. AI visibility is at that early stage right now.
You can track your current visibility with tools like Mentionable to see where you stand across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Grok. But even a manual check of your top queries on each platform gives you a starting point.
The brands that own specific queries early will have an advantage as AI becomes a bigger part of how people discover businesses. And specific queries are exactly where small businesses can compete.
You don't need to be the biggest. You need to be the clearest.
