How to Get Recommended by ChatGPT: AI Search for IT Service Providers and Vendors

Part of the Lead’n the Channel series with Visibility Wins

Author: Adam Grant

Date: September 7^th

The way IT buyers discover vendors and service providers is changing. Half of B2B technology research now begins with an AI chatbot, and the shortlist a buyer arrives with is increasingly one that ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity has built for them.

What the data already shows:

• McKinsey found that 50% of buyers name AI tools like ChatGPT as the top digital source they use to make purchasing decisions.
• G2's 2026 AI Search Insight Report found that 51% of B2B software research now starts with an AI chatbot.
• Adobe Analytics reported that visitors arriving from LLMs generate 53% more revenue per visit than visitors from non-AI channels.

For IT service providers and vendors, this is both a large opportunity and a significant risk. The opportunity is obvious: high-intent buyers arriving pre-qualified. The risk: Being misrepresented in these tools and losing business as a result.

What's actually changed for IT buyers?

IT buying has always been relationship-led. Before AI tools, a buyer scoping a new provider would typically ask colleagues, check in with partners, and look at analyst coverage. Google played a role, but mostly for validation, checking a name they'd already been given, or answering a specific question.

The hardest part of that process was always the first step: who should I be talking to? That question depended almost entirely on who you knew and who they knew.

AI tools have compressed that step into a single query. A buyer can now ask:

"Which managed service providers in Dublin specialise in Azure cloud migrations for mid-market manufacturers?"

And get a credible, structured answer in seconds. With no one trying to sell them anything

This doesn't replace peer recommendations, distributor conversations, or the trust built through partnership over years. Those still matter (and often matter more.) What changes is the state a buyer is in before those conversations happen. This often depends on who the buyer is.

Technical buyers are notorious for doing their own research and not wanting to be sold to. LLMs aren’t teaching them what the landscape looks like, but rather letting them learn faster. Comparing multiple solutions side by side, stress-test vendor claims, and evaluate fit against very specific requirements. They arrive at the point of sale with a clear view of what they want, and often who they want to work with.

Business owners are the opposite. They may not know the landscape or what a good MSP looks like. For them ChatGPT educates them on who to look at for what needs, and how to evaluate them. They arrive at conversations with a shortlist an AI helped build.

Either way, both the technical and business side of the buying equation are leveraging these tools to shortlist providers and educate themselves on who to do business with.

How do AI tools decide who to recommend?

Tools like ChatGPT don't answer from memory alone. When someone asks a specific question, the model runs what's called query fan-out: it issues a batch of live searches (usually Google or Bing), crawls anywhere from 20 to 100 sources, and blends what it finds with its training data to write a single answer.

That means your business isn't represented by your website alone. It's represented by everywhere the crawl lands: your site, directories, review aggregators, industry publications, analyst mentions, community forums, and social platforms.

The businesses that get recommended most often share three traits:

They're visible across multiple high-authority sources: More than just their own website

They have a clear, consistent identity: what they do, who they do it for, and what makes them a fit.

They're easy to verify: Reviews, awards, certifications, and case studies

The low-effort, high-impact way to increase your AI visibility

There's a sliding scale of investment and impact. At the top end sits a full AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) strategy. At the minimum, you want to make sure you're not being misrepresented.

For the IT channel specifically, the 2026 IT and Cyber AEO Report from Visibility Wins looked at how AI tools decide who to recommend for IT service providers and vendors in Ireland and the UK. The key finding: this sector leans heavily on directories and review aggregators. Three come up repeatedly:

• Clutch
• Cloudtango
• io

If you do nothing else this quarter, claim your profile on those three sites and complete each one properly: services, specialisations, vendor partnerships, certifications, awards, case studies, and client reviews. It makes it easy for LLMs to find and verify what your business does.

This won't transform your pipeline overnight. But it stops you from losing deals for being misrepresented.

Creating A focused AI search approach to drive new business

Once the baseline is in place, the businesses seeing real inbound impact from AI search are doing three things:

1. Map how your buyers actually ask. The old keyword list ("Azure migration services") isn't the query anymore. The query is a full sentence with geography, industry, size, and context. Sit down and write out 20–30 of the questions your ideal buyer would type into ChatGPT.
2. Benchmark who's already being recommended. Run those queries. See who shows up and, see which sources the model cites to justify each recommendation.
3. Get visible in the sources driving the answers. If a specific analyst blog, community thread, or directory keeps appearing in citations for your category, that's where your next case study, guest post, review push, or partnership placement should go.

The pattern is straightforward: AI search rewards businesses that show up consistently in the places the model already trusts.

The takeaway

The buying journey for IT services isn't going to stop involving humans or relationships. But buyers now have a powerful research tool they can use to be more informed, thus moving the point at which you are speaking to buyers further down in the buyer's journey.

You can't opt out of being ranked by these tools. You can only decide whether to influence what they say about you.

If you are interested in learning more about how AI is reshaping the way IT buyers discover and evaluate solutions, and what providers can do to get recommended more often Visibility Wins is hosting an Master Class on October First: Register Here

Frequently Asked Questions

What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)?

AEO is the practice of optimising your online presence so AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity accurately represent and recommend your business in their answers.

How does ChatGPT decide which IT providers to recommend?

It runs multiple live searches (a process called query fan-out), crawls 20–100 sources, and blends what it finds with its training data. The providers recommended most often are the ones visible across multiple trusted sources: directories, review sites, publications, and their own website.

How is this different from SEO?

AEO layers on top of SEO rather than replacing it. SEO is one of the levers that impacts AI visibility. SEO optimises a single page to rank on a results list, while AEO makes sure that once your page (and every other mention of you across the web) is found, the model has enough consistent, verifiable context to describe and recommend you accurately.

How can I tell if my business is being recommended by ChatGPT?

Ask it. Run the questions your ideal buyers would ask with the right geography, industry, and use case and see whether you appear. Then check which sources the model cites so you know where to focus.

About the Author:

Adam Grant leads the Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) team at Visibility Wins. Adam specialises in helping B2B IT companies become discoverable across Google and LLMs. His work focuses on building the content and authority signals that get brands recommended as trusted answers.