Troubleshooting
Missing from AI Overviews and chatbots: what to check
Start at the top and stop at the first row that fits. Most missing-business problems are dull, and dull problems are cheap to fix.
Read this first
Order matters more than cleverness
Work down the table. Crawl and content faults come before links, because they cost nothing to test and they cancel everything else out.
- One change at a time
- Wait for the next Search Console update before judging
- Write down the date of each fix
Symptom, likely cause, check
| Symptom | Likely cause | Check | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your site is absent from Google results for your own name | Not indexed, or noindex tag | Search Console, URL Inspection | Remove the tag, request indexing |
| AI tools quote a wrong address or phone | Conflicting details across your pages and listings | Search your business name and compare each listing | Make every listing match the footer of your site |
| Perplexity never cites your domain | robots.txt blocks PerplexityBot or a firewall does | Read yoursite.com/robots.txt; check host logs | Allow the crawler |
| Your page exists but is a few lines long | Nothing worth quoting | Read it aloud; does it answer the customer's question? | Add prices, hours, service areas, FAQs |
| Rivals appear and you do not, same content quality | Fewer places mention you | Compare referring domains with the free lookup | Earn mentions: local directories, supplier pages, press |
| Everything looks fine and you are still absent | Answers vary run to run | Repeat the prompt five times on different days | Log it; keep going monthly |
A note on the link row
Only one row in that table involves backlinks. That proportion is deliberate.
We sell link data, and we would still rather you fix a robots.txt line than pay for a pull. If you reach the link row, compare yourself with the rivals the tools actually name, using the checklist for a cited competitor, not with some national brand.
Google's own guidance says its AI features follow the same technical requirements as Search: the page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. That matches what we see in the table, where most fixes are plain crawl and content work.
Most owners want a verdict in an afternoon. This takes a month, and a month is the honest answer.
Small businesses win here more often than they expect. Specific beats big.
Check what a crawler is allowed to do
Open this file on your own domain and read it line by line. A blanket Disallow for everything is a common leftover from a staging site.
yourshop.com/robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: / <- blocks everyone, including search crawlers
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: / <- allows OpenAI's search crawlerHow to repeat a prompt test without fooling yourself
- Use a private window, signed out where the tool allows it
- Type the question the way a customer would, typos included
- Run it five times over a week and keep every answer
- Record the tool, the date and whether web search was on
- Count how often your domain appears, not whether it appeared once
- Change nothing on your site during the test week
Quick answers
How long until a fix shows up in AI answers?
Weeks, not days. Google needs to recrawl and reindex the page, and chatbots that search the web follow their own schedules. Check again at your next monthly review and keep the earlier log for comparison.
Should I pay someone to get me into AI Overviews?
Be sceptical. Nobody controls those boxes, and Google has said eligibility follows normal Search rules. Ask any seller to show the method and repeatable results across months, not one lucky screenshot.
