Guides for SMEs

ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity cite different sources in different ways. Here’s how each one decides who to recommend, and which your SME should prioritize first.

A client sent us three screenshots last month. She’d asked ChatGPT for the best providers in her category, a competitor was named. She’d Googled the same question and the AI Overview quoted a directory listing she’d never heard of. Then she’d tried Perplexity, which cited a two-year-old blog post from a third competitor. Her question was the obvious one: “Which of these is the real one?”

All three are real. Together they now field a meaningful share of the questions your customers used to type into a single search box, and each one assembles its answer from a different machine.

The good news is that the work you do to show up in one mostly helps with the others. The less good news is that “mostly” hides a few differences that decide where a small business should spend its first hours.