Ask your phone where to get good sushi nearby and, more and more often, you will not get a list of ten links. You get an answer: a short paragraph, a handful of named places and a reason for each. Google’s AI Overviews do this at the top of the results page, and assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity do the same in conversation.
For an independent café, restaurant or shop, that is worth paying attention to. Being on the first page of results used to be the goal. Now the question is whether you are one of the three names in the answer.
Where the answer comes from
An AI assistant does not know your business. It assembles an answer from sources it can read and has reason to trust:
- Your Google Business Profile: name, category, hours, location, photos and reviews.
- Your own website: menus, product pages, your story, where you are and when you are open.
- What others say about you: reviews, local press, food writers, social posts.
- Listings: maps, directories and delivery platforms.
When those sources agree with each other and say something specific, you are easy to recommend. When they are thin, out of date or contradict each other, the safe choice for the AI is to recommend somebody else.
Be specific about what you are known for
“Great food, friendly service” describes every restaurant there is. Answers are built from specifics: the dish people mention, the occasion you suit, the thing only you do.
- Name your signature items on your website and in your profile, in the words customers actually use.
- Describe the occasion: a quick lunch, a date night, a family table, takeaway only.
- Mention the practical details people ask about: vegetarian options, outdoor seating, parking, late opening.
If reviews keep praising the same thing, that is your clue. Say it in your own words as well.
Make your website readable, for people and for software
Many small business websites keep their most useful information inside pictures: a menu photographed as an image, opening hours set into a graphic, an address that only appears on an embedded map. A person can read those. Software often cannot.
- Put your menu on the page as real text, not only as a PDF or a photo.
- Write your hours and address as text, in the same format everywhere.
- Give important things their own page: the menu, each location, catering, private events.
- Add structured data (schema markup) for your business type, address and hours, so search engines can read them without guessing.
Keep your profile alive
A profile set up years ago and never touched sends a quiet signal. Keep hours accurate, holidays included. Add new photos through the year. Reply to reviews, the critical ones most of all, briefly and calmly. Replies show a real business that is paying attention, and they add more of your own words to the picture.
Consistency beats being everywhere
You do not need a listing on every directory. You need the places you do appear to agree: the same name, the same address format, the same phone number, the same hours. Small mismatches, such as an old number on a directory or a closed location still listed, are exactly the kind of doubt that keeps you out of an answer.
What not to do
- Do not stuff pages with “best sushi near me” phrases. It reads badly, and search systems recognise it.
- Do not buy reviews or reward five-star ratings. Platforms remove them, and it can count against your listing.
- Do not chase every new AI tool. The basics above feed all of them.
Your website is the source you control
Reviews, mentions and directories you can only influence. Your website you own outright, which makes it the most important source to get right. On the website we designed for Miyuki Sushi, the menu is written out on the page and split the way the restaurant thinks about it, with lunch, rolls, sushi and sashimi, the kitchen and drinks each on their own page, plus a glossary for the Japanese terms. Each of the two locations has its own page, with its hours written as text.
If you would like an honest look at how findable your business is, let’s talk.