Why this matters for accountants
Search moved. A growing share of people now ask an AI assistant to recommend a business, and act on the short list it gives. The list rarely shows ten links any more; it shows a few names. For the sourced figures behind that shift, see our State of AI Search briefing.
The good news: being named is shaped by signals you control. The tips below are the ones that move the needle for accountants, ordered roughly from quickest to most involved.
The questions your a business owners ask AI
These are the prompts that decide whether your name comes up. Your audit tests the full set; this is the shape of them.
- Q1best accountant for a small business in [your town]
- Q2accountant for contractors near me
- Q3accountant for landlords and property in [your town]
- Q4accountant for self-employed and freelancers in [your town]
- Q5affordable accountant for a limited company in [your town]
- Q6accountant for an e-commerce or Amazon seller in [your town]
6 practical tips
1. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile
Pick the right category, add your real service area, and keep the name, address and phone identical to your website. AI assistants lean on this for local recommendations.
2. Add AccountingService schema
A small block of JSON-LD that tells a machine you are an accounting business, what you do and where. Many practices have none, so AI has to guess.
3. Write pages shaped like the questions
A page titled 'Accountants for landlords' or 'Contractor accounting' matches the way people ask. Brand-led pages do not, so the AI cannot tie you to the question.
4. Add FAQ schema to your service pages
Mark up the real questions clients ask (cost, IR35, switching) so an assistant can lift the answer straight into its reply.
5. Get listed where AI looks
The unbranded answers lean on directories and review sites. Claim strong, review-rich profiles on the ones that keep getting cited in your area.
6. Let the AI crawlers in
Check your robots.txt does not block GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. If they cannot read you, they cannot recommend you.
A 10-minute self-check
You do not need us to start. Open ChatGPT or Perplexity and ask it one of the questions above, with your town. See whether you are named, and who is. Then view your homepage source and search it for "schema" or "application/ld+json" to see if you have structured data. Finally, check your robots.txt does not block GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. That is most of the picture in ten minutes.
Want us to do the check for you? A free Snapshot shows what AI says about your business, with the evidence. Or see the full picture for accountants on our accountants page.