You did it. You typed your industry and city into ChatGPT.
“Best [your service] in [your city].”
ChatGPT gave you a confident answer. A short list of businesses. And your competitor was on it.
You weren’t.
That moment stings. Especially when you know you’re better. You have more reviews. You’ve been around longer. You work harder. And yet some AI — that millions of people are now using to make buying decisions — decided your competitor was worth recommending and you weren’t.
So what’s going on? And more importantly, what can you do about it?
First, Understand How ChatGPT Picks Businesses
ChatGPT doesn’t search the web the way Google does. It doesn’t crawl every page and rank them by backlinks. It pulls from two main sources:
- Training data — a massive snapshot of the internet that ChatGPT learned from. If your business was mentioned clearly and frequently across that data, it remembers you.
- Real-time retrieval — for newer queries, some AI tools can browse the web. When they do, they look for pages that are structured, credible, and directly answer the question being asked.
In both cases, the same principle applies: AI recommends businesses it has seen mentioned clearly, consistently, and credibly across multiple sources.
Your competitor shows up because somewhere, somehow, they’ve built up that presence. You haven’t — yet.
The 5 Reasons Your Competitor Is Showing Up and You’re Not
1. They’re mentioned in more places
AI tools don’t just look at websites. They look at the whole web — directories, review platforms, Reddit threads, LinkedIn posts, news articles, industry associations, YouTube videos.
Your competitor might be listed in places you’ve never thought about: Clutch, the local Chamber of Commerce directory, a Malay Mail business feature, a thread on r/malaysia where someone asked for recommendations.
Every mention is a signal to AI that this business is real, known, and worth recommending.
What to do: Audit where your business is listed. Get on Google Business Profile, local directories, industry associations, and any platform where your customers hang out online. The goal is to appear in as many credible places as possible.
2. Their website answers questions directly
This is a big one. Most business websites are written like brochures — “We provide premium quality services with a commitment to excellence.” Sounds good. Means nothing. And AI can’t do anything with it.
AI tools are built to answer questions. So they prefer websites that are written to answer questions. Not marketing fluff — direct, specific, useful information.
Does your homepage clearly state: what you do, who you serve, where you operate, and what makes you different? Does your site have an FAQ? Does your blog answer the questions your customers actually ask?
If your competitor’s website does this better than yours, AI will quote them — not you.
What to do: Rewrite your homepage and service pages to answer questions directly. Add an FAQ section. Write blog posts that answer the real questions your customers ask. Make it easy for AI to understand exactly what your business does.
3. They have more reviews — and more recent ones
Reviews are social proof for humans. They’re also data for AI.
When an AI tool is trying to figure out which businesses to recommend, reviews are one of the clearest signals it has. A business with 80 genuine Google reviews and an active response pattern looks far more credible than one with 12 reviews from 3 years ago.
And it’s not just quantity. The recency and content of reviews matter. Reviews that mention specific services, locations, and outcomes give AI much more to work with.
What to do: Start actively asking customers for Google reviews after every successful job. Respond to every review — good and bad. Reviews are one of the fastest GEO wins available to you.
4. Their website is set up for AI crawlers
This is the technical side — and most business owners have no idea it exists. It’s one of the first things SeenBy Digital checks when running a GEO audit.
AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google use bots to crawl websites and gather information. But if your website accidentally blocks those bots — through your robots.txt file or certain security settings — the AI literally can’t read your site.
There’s also a newer standard called llms.txt — a file you can add to your website that tells AI tools exactly what your site contains and how to understand it. Almost no Malaysian businesses have this yet.
And then there’s schema markup — structured data code that tells AI precisely who your business is, what you offer, where you’re located, and what your opening hours are. Without it, AI has to guess. With it, AI knows.
What to do: Check that your robots.txt isn’t blocking AI crawlers — Google Search Central’s guide explains how crawler permissions work. Add schema markup (at minimum: LocalBusiness and Organization). Consider adding an llms.txt file. These are technical tasks — but the impact is significant.
5. Their brand has been around online longer
Businesses that have been actively building their online presence for years have a natural GEO advantage. They’ve accumulated mentions, reviews, backlinks, and content over time. All of that feeds into how well AI knows them.
If your competitor has been blogging, posting on LinkedIn, getting press coverage, and building directory listings since 2018 — and you’ve been quietly doing great work without much of an online footprint — AI simply knows them better than it knows you.
This isn’t permanent. But it does mean you need to start building that footprint now.
What to do: Start treating your online presence like an asset. Write content regularly. Be consistent on at least one social platform. Get featured in local business media when you can. Every piece of content and every mention compounds over time.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Your competitor probably isn’t better than you at their actual job. They might just be more visible to AI — whether intentionally or by accident.
GEO is still new enough in Malaysia that most businesses showing up in AI results haven’t deliberately optimized for it. They’ve just built up a solid enough online presence over time that AI noticed.
The gap between you and them isn’t necessarily large. But it will grow the longer you wait.
What You Can Do This Week
You don’t need to fix everything at once. Start with the highest-impact actions:
- Search for your business on ChatGPT and Perplexity. Know exactly what AI currently says about you — or doesn’t say.
- Check your Google Business Profile. Make sure every detail is accurate, complete, and up to date.
- Ask your last 10 customers for a Google review. Today. Not next week.
- Rewrite your website’s homepage. Make it answer: what you do, who you serve, where you are, why you’re the right choice.
- List your business in 3 directories you’re not currently on. Malaysian Business Directory, Hotfrog, FourSquare, Yelp Malaysia — start somewhere.
Small moves compound quickly when you’re starting from zero.
The next time someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation in your industry, you want your business to be the answer. That doesn’t happen by accident — but it absolutely can happen.