// book · The Solo Operator Series #2
Found by AI
How Small Businesses Get Recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI
You are not losing to a bigger ad budget. You are losing to a machine that does not know you exist.
// the five questions an AI asks
Five questions, one answer: you
Each chapter is one question an AI quietly asks before it recommends a business, and ends with a one-page tool you can run that day — grounded in verified 2025–2026 data, not guesses.
- Introduction — The New Front Door→ AI Visibility Snapshot
- Can I Even Find You?→ AI Crawler Access Check
- Can I Tell What You Are?→ Entity Clarity Sheet
- Do I Trust You Enough to Name You?→ Trust Signal Map
- Can I Quote You Cleanly?→ Citability Checklist
- Are You There When the Question Is Asked?→ Prompt-Match Map
- Conclusion — The 30-Day Visibility Build→ 30-Day Visibility Build
// problems this book helps with
Start from your problem
Each page below answers one real question in plain words, then shows where Found by AI goes further.
- ChatGPT describes my business wrong, or can't say what I do. Is it me?
ChatGPT gets your business wrong or calls it something vague. Here is how the AI builds a label for you, and the one sentence that fixes it.
- ChatGPT doesn't recommend my business. It names three others instead. Why?
ChatGPT names your rivals and skips you. Here are the five checks an AI runs before it names a small business, and how to see which one you fail.
- GEO vs SEO: what is the difference, and which one does a small business need?
GEO vs SEO side by side: ranking in a list versus being named in an AI answer. See what each one rewards and which one a small business needs.
- How does ChatGPT decide which business to recommend? The five checks, in order
How ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI pick which businesses to name: the five checks, in order, and where a small business should start.
- How to get your website quoted in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI answers
AI tools quote the cleanest sentence, not the prettiest paragraph. Here are four rules for writing answers ChatGPT and Perplexity can lift.
- Is SEO dead now that people ask ChatGPT instead of Google?
SEO is not dead, but the question changed. Ranking and being named by AI are different games. Here is what still counts and what to add.
- Why isn't my local business showing up when people ask AI for someone near them?
Nearly half of people now use AI to find a local business. Here is why yours may be missing from the answer, and how to start fixing it.
- My robots.txt is blocking GPTBot and other AI crawlers. How do I fix it fast?
Your robots.txt turns away GPTBot or ClaudeBot. Here is how to find what added the block, open the door, and check the AI can read your page.
- My website traffic dropped after Google AI Overviews started. What do I do this week?
Your Google clicks fell after AI Overviews arrived. Here is what changed, four steps to take this week, and what to stop wasting time on.
// Also on this topic
- postClaude Code skills for SEO: what to install and what not to automate
Which SEO jobs suit a Claude Code skill and which get worse when you automate them, plus the overlap problem in a 26-skill SEO install and how to fix it.
- postGEO + SEO for small shops: what actually moves the needle
The five SEO + GEO changes that move real traffic for a small shop. No tooling, no agency, no subscription. Just the structural choices that get you cited.
- postIs your site visible to AI crawlers? The 5-minute audit
A copy-pasted 2023 robots.txt block can erase you from ChatGPT and Perplexity. The 5-minute audit, the bots that matter, and the allow-search strategy.
- free toolllms.txt generator
A spec-valid llms.txt built in the browser, validated as you type.
- free toolAI crawler checker
12 AI crawlers tested against any robots.txt, with the matched rule.
- toolkitStructured Data Pro Pack
Six JSON-LD templates and a validator script. Start schema markup from the right fields.
- toolkitAI SEO Command Suite
30 SEO skills in one place. Run audits, find keywords, fix your site from the terminal.
The paperback, up close
inside
What you actually get
- · Check whether ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity can read your site at all
- · Make it obvious to an AI what you do and who you serve
- · Build the trust signals an AI needs before it will name you
- · Write content an AI can quote cleanly, in passages that stand on their own
- · Seven one-page tools — a visibility snapshot, a crawler-access check, an entity sheet, a citability checklist, and a 30-day build
not for
What this is not
- · A guarantee of AI recommendations — no tactic can promise that; this stacks the odds honestly.
- · A technical SEO manual — it is plain-language principles, not code or config dumps.
- · Advice for big brands with agencies — every example is a one-person or small business.
// kindle or direct PDF?
Same book, two ways to read it
The Kindle edition reads inside Amazon’s app and account. The direct PDF and EPUB are DRM-free — yours to keep, copy to any device, and print, no Amazon account needed. Amazon handles its own payment, delivery, and refunds. The direct edition is not on sale yet; the Kindle edition is the way to read it today. The words are identical.
Want the tools without buying the book?
Every tool in the book — the visibility snapshot, the crawler-access check, the entity sheet, the citability checklist, and the 30-day build — is also a free printable workbook.
Or see Chapter 1 · Can I Even Find You? run live in your browser: AI Crawler Checker.
// the series
The Solo Operator Series
Each book takes one problem the solo operator actually faces and solves it without the team, the budget, or the buzzwords.
- The Leverage StackHow One Person Runs What Used to Take a Teamon Amazon
- Found by AIHow Small Businesses Get Recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AIyou are here
- The One-Person MillionBuild a Real Business With AI Doing the Workon Amazon
- The Unfair SolopreneurCompete With Companies 100x Your Size Using AIon Amazon
- AI Won’t Run Your Business. You Will.Judgment and Doubt in the AI Ageon Amazon
Written by İsmail Günaydın
İsmail builds and runs digital businesses as a one-person operation. He writes about systems, leverage, and the practical tools that let a single operator do work that used to need a team. More on the About page and the rest of his books.
“You don’t need to rank anymore. You need to be the name it gives.”
// frequently asked
Questions buyers ask
- What do I get when I buy the PDF here?
- The full book as a DRM-free PDF and EPUB, delivered instantly after checkout. You read it on any device, no Amazon account and no app required. The free printable workbook of all the tools is separate and linked below.
- Is this just SEO with a new name?
- No. Traditional SEO is about ranking a blue link; this is about being the business an AI names inside its answer. They overlap, but Ahrefs found only about 12% of AI citations match the top Google results — so the trust, entity, and citability work here is its own discipline.
- Will this work for a local business?
- Yes. The running example is a one-person bookkeeping practice, and BrightLocal found nearly half of consumers had used AI to find a local business by 2026. The five questions apply whether you serve a town or the whole web.
- Is the data current?
- Every statistic is from a verified 2025–2026 source — Pew Research, BrightLocal, Ahrefs, Semrush — and cited in the book. Nothing is invented or guessed about a future that has not arrived yet.
- Can I get a refund?
- Yes. Under EU consumer rules you can withdraw and get a full refund as long as the file has not been downloaded yet. Once you download the PDF the digital-goods exception applies, which is why checkout asks you to confirm that before access starts.
- How long is it?
- Short on purpose — about 70 pages across the five questions plus a 30-day visibility build. Each chapter ends with a tool you can run the same day, not theory.