If you run a business anywhere around Pakenham, Berwick, Officer or Cranbourne, there is a good chance someone has recently emailed you about “AI SEO” — an urgent-sounding offer to get your business mentioned by ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers, usually for a monthly fee, usually with a warning that you are already falling behind.
It is a well-timed pitch, because the underlying worry is real. More people genuinely are asking an assistant “who’s the best plumber in Berwick?” instead of scrolling a page of results. But before you pay anyone for a special AI package, it is worth reading what Google itself has published on the subject, because it is remarkably blunt.
What Google actually says
In its official Search Central documentation on AI features, Google states plainly: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.”
It goes further, and this is the line worth remembering next time someone quotes you for an AI package: “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features.”
To be eligible, a page needs to be indexed and able to appear in normal Google Search with a snippet. That is it. There is no separate AI index to buy your way into, no secret file to upload, and no proprietary technique that unlocks the door.
You can also see the results without buying a tracking tool. Traffic arriving from AI features already appears in your Google Search Console performance report, under the “Web” search type, mixed in with your regular search data.
So why do some businesses get mentioned and others don’t?
Here is the part the documentation does not spell out, and where the confusion comes from.
“No special optimisation required” is not the same as “nothing you do matters.” It means the things that make an assistant confident enough to name your business are the same things that made you rank in the first place — not a new discipline sold at a new price. When an assistant answers a question like “best web design agency in Melbourne’s south east,” it is not scoring businesses out of ten. It is assembling an answer from whatever trustworthy sources mention businesses matching that description.
Which means the real question is not “how do I rank higher in AI.” It is “is there enough about my business, in enough credible places, for an assistant to name it without guessing?” For a lot of local businesses, the honest answer is no — and no monthly package fixes that, because the fix is not on your website.
The four things that actually decide it
When an assistant answers a local “best” or “near me” question, it is drawing on a small pool of sources. In rough order of weight:
- Your Google Business Profile. The structured record of who you are, where you work, what you do, and what your categories say. If this is thin, out of date, or in the wrong category, everything downstream suffers.
- Your reviews. Not just the star rating — the volume, and crucially the recency. Twelve reviews from two years ago reads like a business that may not exist any more. A steady trickle reads like a business that is busy.
- Third-party mentions. Directories, industry listings, “best of” roundups, local press, chamber directories. Assistants lean on the same lists humans do. If nothing outside your own website mentions you, you are relying on the one source that has an obvious interest in praising you.
- Your own website. Used mostly to confirm and describe you once the first three have surfaced your name — not to surface you in the first place.
Notice that three of the four sit outside your website entirely. That is why “AI SEO” sold as a website service so often produces nothing. The work that matters is unglamorous: claiming profiles, asking clients for reviews, and getting listed in places that already have credibility.
What this means for a business in Melbourne’s south east
Local queries are where smaller businesses have a genuine advantage, and most do not realise it.
Ask an assistant for “the best digital agency in Melbourne” and it has thousands of candidates, no clear basis to rank them, and every reason to hedge. Ask for “a web designer in Pakenham” and the field narrows dramatically. Ask for something more specific still — a bookkeeper in Officer who works with trades, a physio in Beaconsfield who does dry needling — and there may only be a handful of businesses that have ever publicly described themselves in exactly those terms.
That is the opening. Not competing with agencies in the CBD on generic city-wide terms, but being unmistakably the clearest answer to the narrower, more specific question your actual customers ask. This is the same principle behind good local SEO, and it applies almost unchanged to AI answers.
The catch is that it only works if the specific description is true and consistent. If your Google profile says one thing, your website says another, and your Facebook page says a third, you have given the system three weak signals instead of one strong one.
What to do this month
In order, highest impact first:
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Correct primary category, accurate service area, every service listed with a real description, and photos. This is the single biggest lever and it is free. We have a step-by-step setup guide if you have not done it.
- Ask ten past customers for a review. Ask them to mention what you did and where they are based — “they rebuilt our website, we’re a plumbing business in Berwick” is far more useful than “great service.” Then keep one or two coming every month. Never offer anything in exchange; that breaches Google’s policy and Australian Consumer Law.
- Make sure your details are identical everywhere. Same business name, same phone format, same address wording, on every listing you have.
- Get listed somewhere that isn’t yours. Local directories, your industry association, the chamber of commerce, a supplier’s stockist page.
- Say plainly on your website what you do and where. You would be amazed how many business websites never state their suburb in readable text.
How to check where you actually stand
You can test this yourself in five minutes, and there is one rule that matters more than the rest.
Use a temporary or logged-out chat. If you ask ChatGPT about businesses in your industry from your own account — the account that has been discussing your business for months — it will very likely name you, and that result tells you nothing. Open a temporary chat, or use a private browser window, and ask as a stranger would.
Then try a few phrasings a real customer might use: your trade plus your suburb, your trade plus “near me,” and a more specific version that includes your speciality. Note whether you appear at all. Repeat it in a month, after you have done the list above, and you will have a genuine before-and-after rather than a vendor’s dashboard.
Where we fit
We are a small agency in Pakenham, and we would rather tell you this honestly than sell you a package with “AI” in the name. Most of the work above you can do yourself, and you should.
Where businesses tend to want help is the part underneath it — a website that states clearly what you do and where you do it, in text a search engine can actually read; a brand and visual identity consistent enough that you look like the same business everywhere someone finds you; content that answers the questions your customers genuinely ask, rather than stuffing keywords; and social media that keeps an active, current footprint rather than a page last posted to in 2023. You can see how we approach all four on our services page.
None of that is an AI service. It is just the ordinary work of being findable, done properly — which, as Google says in its own documentation, is the whole requirement.
If you want a straight answer about where your business currently stands, we are happy to take a look and tell you what we find, including if the answer is that you do not need us. You can reach us at contact@madexify.com or on +61 424 485 087.
Source: Google Search Central — AI features and your website.
