If a prospective client opened ChatGPT right now and typed "best accountant for landlords near me", would your firm be one of the names that comes back? Most independent firms have never checked. This guide shows you how to check it yourself in about ten minutes, why it matters, and the practical foundations that move the needle. Plain English, no jargon, no hype.
Why does this suddenly matter for accountants?
Because the place people start their search has moved. A growing share of prospects now ask an AI assistant, which returns a short list of named firms instead of ten blue links to scroll through.
The behaviour shift is real and recent. The figures below are indicative, drawn from UK industry and regulator sources in 2025–26, but the direction is not in doubt:
~48% of UK adults now use AI tools to find information, up sharply year on year.
~42% of UK searches now return an AI-generated summary above the usual results.
On queries where one of those summaries appears, clicks to the traditional results can fall by around 61%.
// Sources: Ofcom 2025; UK AI-search studies 2025–26. Figures indicative and rounded; treat as direction, not precision.
For an accountancy firm that wins work through being found and recommended, that's the front door moving. If the assistant names three local rivals and not you, you never even get the enquiry, and you'll never see it happen in your analytics, because there was no click to miss.
Isn't this just SEO with a new name?
Related, but not the same. A firm can rank perfectly well on Google and still go unnamed in ChatGPT or Perplexity. The two overlap far less than people assume.
Traditional SEO optimises for a page of ranked links. AI assistants do something different: they read across many sources, then synthesise a short answer that names a handful of firms. The signals each assistant leans on vary. Industry analysis in 2025–26 suggests ChatGPT draws heavily on third-party directories, Gemini tends to favour brand-owned websites, and Perplexity leans on industry directories and cites more sources per answer. Strikingly, only around one in ten cited domains shows up across more than one engine.
The practical consequence: being visible on one assistant tells you very little about the others. They have to be checked separately. Good SEO foundations are necessary, but they aren't the whole story.
How can I check it myself in about ten minutes?
Ask the assistants the questions your clients actually ask, in a clean session, and write down who gets named. Run each question a few times, because answers vary.
// The ten-minute self-check
Do this once, with a notepad open
- Write down 3–4 real client questions. Think how a prospect phrases it, not how you would. For example: "best small-business accountant in Harrogate", "accountant for IT contractors and IR35", "who should I use for my limited company tax return near [your town]".
- Open each assistant in a fresh, logged-out session. Use ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews (just search the question on Google), Perplexity, and Gemini if you have access. A logged-out or incognito window stops your own history skewing the result.
- Ask each question, on each assistant. Read the answer and note: Is your firm named at all? Who else is named? In what order?
- Run each question two or three times. AI answers are non-deterministic, so the same question can return different firms on different runs. One result is an anecdote; three runs is a pattern.
- Tally it up. A simple grid (engines down the side, questions across the top) tells you instantly where you're invisible and which rival keeps appearing instead.
Two honest caveats. First, results genuinely vary run to run, so don't over-read a single answer. Independent testing puts the rate at which assistants get facts wrong or inconsistent at roughly 9%, which is exactly why multiple runs matter. Second, these tools change their behaviour without notice, so a check is a snapshot of today, not a permanent verdict. Date everything you record.
What actually decides whether AI names a firm?
No one outside the AI companies knows the exact recipe, and anyone who claims certainty is guessing. But the foundations below are what assistants consistently draw on, and they're all within your control.
Think of these as the groundwork. Getting them right won't guarantee a recommendation, but neglecting them is the most common reason a perfectly good firm stays invisible.
- 1Google Business Profile. Complete, accurate, and specific. The right primary category, the services you actually offer (including niches like contractors or landlords), correct opening hours, and a real description. Assistants and AI Overviews lean on this for local intent, so a thin or miscategorised profile is a quiet leak.
- 2Reviews. A healthy, recent body of genuine Google reviews. They're a trust signal assistants frequently cite, and freshness matters as much as volume. Never buy or fake them. Beyond being against the rules, it's the kind of thing that corrodes a firm's reputation when it surfaces.
- 3Structured data (schema markup). Code on your website that spells out, in a machine-readable way, that you're an accountancy practice, where you're based, what you do, and your contact details. It's invisible to visitors but helps machines read you correctly. Your web developer will know it as JSON-LD.
- 4Directory and professional listings. Consistent, up-to-date entries on the directories assistants check: your ICAEW or ACCA listing, reputable local and sector directories, and anywhere your name, address and phone number appear. Inconsistent details across listings confuse the machines and dilute trust.
- 5Clear, answer-shaped website content. Pages that plainly state who you help and the questions you answer. Say "accountant for limited company contractors in Leeds", not "bespoke financial solutions". Assistants quote text that directly answers the question, so write the way a client asks.
- 6AI-crawler access. The robots file on your site (robots.txt) shouldn't be blocking the assistants' crawlers, bots such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. If a previous developer blocked them, or a security plugin does, the assistants can't read you at all. This one is easy to overlook and easy to fix.
A note on AI-crawler access: the silent one
This last point catches people out. It's possible to do everything else right and still be invisible because your site quietly tells the AI crawlers to go away. Some hosting setups, firewalls and privacy plugins block these bots by default. A quick look at your robots.txt (it lives at yourfirm.co.uk/robots.txt) will show whether anything is being disallowed. Practising what we preach, this very site publishes an llms.txt file, a short, plain summary that helps assistants understand what we do.
What should I do once I've checked?
Fix the foundations in priority order, re-check in a few weeks, and don't expect overnight changes. This is groundwork, not a switch.
If your ten-minute check shows you're absent across most engines, start where the leverage is highest and the effort is lowest: confirm the AI crawlers aren't blocked, then tidy your Google Business Profile and your professional listings so your details are consistent everywhere. Schema and content improvements come next and usually need your web person. Then re-run the same questions a few weeks later, with the same multiple-run discipline, and compare.
Be patient and be honest with yourself about cause and effect. Assistants update on their own schedule, so it's rarely possible to prove a single change caused a single result. What you can do is get the well-understood foundations right and give yourself the best chance, which is all anyone can responsibly promise.