Making a Northern Rivers pet business easier for AI to recommend

Why AI visibility matters for this business

Pet owners increasingly ask AI tools questions like “who is a good dog sitter near Byron Bay?”. Local pet services are a specific category with a limited number of providers in each area, which makes it a good test: if AI engines can understand exactly what a business does and where, it has a realistic chance of being the one they name.

Starting position (before September 2026)

• Google search was the main source of online orders.
• AI tools, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, were sending almost no visitors and no orders.
• Enquiries came through the website forms, with no way to tell whether any started with an AI tool.

In short: Google search was doing the work, and AI tools were barely sending anyone. Much of the business’s detail, such as its services and service areas, was written for people but not described in a form machines could reliably read.

What we changed (September 2026)

1. Business schema. A LocalBusiness record describing the business, the regions it serves and each of its services, with a plain-English description.
2. FAQ content and FAQ schema. The FAQ page was expanded around the questions pet owners actually ask, and every question and answer is now output automatically as FAQPage structured data, so the markup always matches what visitors see.
3. Google Business Profile. Completed so its categories, services, service areas and description match the website.
4. Directory and community listings. Consistent name, services and areas on the regional directories and community groups where local customers look for services.
5. Enquiry tracking. The enquiry forms ask how people heard about the business, with options for ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers, so AI-driven enquiries can be counted directly.

Results: first measurement (October 2026)

We asked six questions a local customer might ask, covering Byron Bay, the Northern Rivers, the Tweed Coast and the Gold Coast, once each on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity: 18 answers in total. We then asked each engine what the business is.

Example (ChatGPT): “Best first enquiry: [the business], as they specifically advertise themselves as a Northern Rivers … service.”

What the results show

• ChatGPT and Gemini now understand what the business does and where, and name it first for most of the local questions that mention Byron Bay or the Northern Rivers.
• Its own website is being used as the source, which means the new structured data and FAQ content are being read.
• Perplexity did not name it for any of the local questions, and no engine named it for the Gold Coast or transport questions. Those are the next targets: more Gold Coast coverage and third-party listings, which Perplexity leans on heavily.

What happens next

We will re-run the same questions on the same engines, add Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and track AI-referred visits and enquiries through the website forms. We will update this page with the comparison.

Limitations

• One business in a specialised, low-competition category; results in crowded markets will differ.
• Because a member of the Cited AI team co-owns the business, changes were made faster than a typical client engagement allows.
• We did not run a formal AI test before the changes, so this is a first measurement, not a before-and-after comparison.
• One run per question per engine; AI answers vary between runs, dates and locations.
• Other factors, such as seasonality, advertising and new reviews, can also affect enquiries and will be noted alongside the re-test.

What this means for other businesses

The first step for most small businesses is the same: make sure AI engines can read exactly what you do, where and for whom, and that the rest of the web agrees. That is the foundation of our AI visibility service, and it is measured with the method in our case study framework.