The AI can't recommend what you never wrote down

A plumber who fixes boilers, unblocks drains and fits bathrooms usually has a website that says “Plumbing and heating services” and a phone number.

Everyone local already knows what that means. An AI assistant asked to find “someone to fit a new bathroom near me” doesn’t, and it can only go on what the page says.

A study published today puts a number on how common that is. Researchers looked at 481 small business websites and found the door wide open: almost all of them (98.6%) let AI assistants in to read the site. But 84.5% of them had no page or description for each service they offer. More than half didn’t give enough information for a machine to work out what the business actually does.

The researchers’ summary is the best line in the report:

“The door is open; there is simply little to read.”

The study covered businesses in the Netherlands, and it was run by a company that sells help with exactly this problem, so read the precise numbers with that in mind. But anyone who has looked at a few local business websites will recognise what it describes.

Why it matters right now

Shoppers are asking AI where to buy, and more of them every month. One large analytics firm expects visits to US shopping sites that come from AI assistants to be up 130% on last year over November and December. That’s a growth rate from a fairly small start, not a takeover. But it’s growing quickly, and it lands in the busiest weeks of the year.

When someone asks an assistant for a recommendation, it builds a short list from what it can read. A business whose website names its services clearly can make that list. One whose site says “quality services at competitive prices” gives it nothing to go on.

This is not about tricking a machine. You can’t recommend a plumber for bathrooms if nobody ever told you they do bathrooms, and nor can an AI.

The part that should cheer you up

It’s tempting to read all this as “the robots are taking over shopping”. The surveys say otherwise.

A survey of 4,000 American shoppers this autumn found that only 16% trust an AI assistant to complete a purchase for them. People are happy to let it suggest. They are not handing it their card.

A study this spring asked what people do after an AI recommends a brand they’ve never heard of. Only 2% said they would buy on the AI’s word alone. Most searched for the business, checked reviews or went to its website. When asked what they look at to decide, the top answers were reviews (68%), the website and how professional it looks (41%), and how long the business has been around (35%).

The head of the agency behind that study put it like this:

“A recommendation opens the door, but what consumers find after that determines whether they move forward.”

So AI has added a step before the old routine; the routine is still there. First the AI has to find enough about you to suggest you. Then a person has to find enough to believe it. Your website is involved both times, and it fails in the same way both times: when it doesn’t say what you do.

What “little to read” looks like

You can usually spot it in a minute. Common versions:

• One line for everything. “Hair, beauty and wellbeing” covers forty treatments and describes none of them.
• The services are in a picture. A price list photographed or designed as an image looks fine to a person on a laptop. Some software reads it as a blank.
• The real detail lives somewhere else. Your social posts mention the new gluten-free range, but the website was last updated three years ago.
• No place names. The site never says which towns you cover, so you only turn up for people who already know where you are.
• No prices, not even a range. Someone choosing between three suggestions will often pick the one that told them roughly what to expect.
• Nothing that shows you’re real. No “since when”, no names, no address. That’s exactly what the 35% checking how long you’ve been around are looking for.

None of these needs technical knowledge to fix. They need writing down.

The fair question

devkoi builds websites. Isn’t “write more pages” just a way to sell more pages?

It’s a fair worry, so here is what devkoi does and doesn’t do:

• It doesn’t make AI assistants recommend you. Nobody can promise that, and you should be wary of anyone who does. The same question asked twice can get two different answers. What you can control is whether the facts are there to be found.
• It doesn’t know your business. devkoi can turn what you tell it into clear pages, but the services, prices, areas and history have to come from you. If you make something up, it will be on the page as clearly as the truth would be.
• Pages are plain text that anyone can read. That includes people, search engines and AI assistants. No services hidden in pictures, and nothing that needs special software to read.
• Publishing is on the paid plans. Building and previewing is free and includes up to five pages. Putting a site on the internet starts at $19 a month with the Starter plan, which allows up to 100 pages. That’s room for a page per service for almost any small business.
• It doesn’t do reviews, shops or bookings. devkoi can link to where your reviews live and to the booking system you already use. It doesn’t run those things itself.

What to do this week

1. Write down everything you actually do. Not the categories, the jobs. Ask yourself what customers ring up and ask for, and list it. A plumber’s list might run to fifteen lines. That list is the raw material for everything else.

2. Give the main services a page each. Each page needs a sentence on what it is, who it’s for, roughly what it costs and how to book. With devkoi you can do that in one message:

“Add a page for each of these services, with a short description, a price range, and a button to call or email: [your list].”

3. Say where you work. Name the towns or areas you cover, in plain words, on the pages where it matters.

“On every service page, add a line saying we cover [town], [town] and [town].”

4. Turn any picture of text into text. If your price list, menu or opening hours are an image, have them typed out. Keep the picture as well if you like it.

“Replace the price list image with the same prices written out as text.”

5. Answer the “are they real?” check. Say when you started, who runs the business and where you are. Link to where your reviews live so people don’t have to go looking.

“Add a short ‘About us’ section: started in [year] by [name], based in [town], with a link to our reviews.”

6. Ask an AI assistant about yourself, then check the answer. Ask it what your business does, the way a customer would. If it’s wrong or vague, compare what it said with what your website says. The gap is usually obvious. Then fix the page, not the AI.

7. Preview it, then publish before the busy weeks. Every change in devkoi comes with a preview link, so you can check it on your phone before it goes live. Publishing is a separate step.

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For years the advice for small business websites was to keep them short and tidy. That still helps the people reading them. But now there’s a second reader working out what you do, and it only knows what you’ve written down.

You don’t need to be clever about it. Write down what you do, for whom, where and for roughly how much. That gives the AI something to recommend, and the customer who checks has something to believe.