A client of ours told me recently that a new lead called the office and said, “ChatGPT recommended you.” He had no idea how that happened. I did, because we’d spent months building the things these tools look for, and that phone call is what it looks like when it works.
A year ago I was comfortable telling firms not to worry about AI search yet. People were still going to Google for their accountants, their plumbers and their lawyers, and they still are. Google is still where most people look for an accountant. But now Google has AI Overviews at the top of the page, and a lot more people are just asking ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. Across our clients, we’re seeing real inquiries come in from those tools, and the people who arrive that way are usually pretty far along in their thinking.
So this guide is everything I’d tell you across the desk about AI search for accountants. It covers how these tools decide which firms to name, how each of the big ones works, and what actually gets a firm recommended. I’ll start with the part most people find a little mysterious, which is how the AI makes its pick.
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How AI search picks a firm
AI search picks an accounting firm by taking someone’s question, checking the sources it trusts, and then naming the few firms those sources back up.
The first step is the question itself. Someone types something like “I need an accountant near me who works with restaurants” or “should I elect S corp status in Texas,” and the tool goes looking for an answer.
The second step is where your firm wins or loses. The tool checks sources it trusts, like your website, your reviews, directory listings, and what other people have said about you on sites like LinkedIn and Reddit. It’s looking for evidence that a real, credentialed firm is behind the name and that the firm actually does what the person asked about.
The last step is the answer. It names a few firms, usually with a sentence on why each one fits, and sometimes with a link. If your firm isn’t in the sources it checked, you won’t be in that short list.
“I need an accountant near me who works with restaurants.”
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It checks sources it trustsYour website, reviews, directories and what people say about you on other sites.
Your websiteGoogle reviewsDirectoriesLinkedIn and Reddit
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It looks for proofA real, credentialed firm that does exactly what the person asked about.
Then it names a few firms“Here are a few firms that work with restaurants near you…”
What surprises most owners is how specific the questions have gotten. People used to search something broad like “accountant for dentists.” Now they ask a full question about their own situation, because they expect a direct answer back. When the question is that pointed, the tool goes looking for the page that answers that exact thing.
And honestly, AI search isn’t a totally different discipline from SEO. They’re pretty much one and the same, and the same content and trust signals feed both. There are just a few differences in where each engine pulls its sources from, which is why I want to walk through them one at a time.
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Engine by engine
Each engine reads the web a little differently. Here’s what matters for each one.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the AI tool most of your future clients are already using, and across our clients it sends far more AI referrals than any other engine. People use it the way they’d ask a friend. They describe their business, their income and their problem, then ask who can help, or they ask a tax question and follow up with “who handles this in my area?”
When ChatGPT searches the web, it reads pages through OpenAI’s own search crawler, called OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI’s crawler documentation is clear that a site has to let OAI-SearchBot in to show up in ChatGPT’s search answers, and that this setting is separate from the one about AI training. We check this first for every firm, because a robots.txt file or a security setting that quietly blocks the crawler makes everything else pointless.
What helps a firm show up in ChatGPT is the same thing that helps a human trust you. That means pages that answer specific client questions, a real About page with real people on it, and reviews and mentions on other sites. ChatGPT also leans on user-generated sources like LinkedIn and Reddit, where people give their actual opinions about firms they’ve worked with. A firm that’s talked about in those places has a head start, even if it never did anything on purpose to get there.
Google AI Overviews and Gemini
Google AI Overviews and Gemini build their answers on Google Search, so the work you do to be found on Google carries straight over. AI Overviews are the summaries at the top of the results page, and AI Mode is the fuller chat version inside Google Search. Gemini is Google’s assistant, and plenty of people use it on their phones without thinking of it as search at all.
Google says it pretty plainly in its guidance on AI features in Search. To be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet. There are no extra technical requirements. Gemini’s answers can be grounded in live Google Search results too, which Google describes in its developer documentation on grounding.
The part that catches firms off guard is clicks. Your blog can still be showing up on Google for the same searches, and traffic can drop anyway, because the AI Overview answered the question before anyone scrolled down to you. So when I look at a traffic dip, the first thing I check is whether the firm stopped showing up or just lost the click.
What helps here is giving Google a reason to quote you inside the overview. That comes from clear answers near the top of each page, fuller bios that show real expertise, and a Google Business Profile that’s complete and accurate.
Claude
Claude is Anthropic’s AI assistant, and we’re seeing real leads come through it for accounting firms, alongside ChatGPT. People tend to ask it the way they’d ask a sharp colleague, with something like “I’m buying a dental practice, what should my CPA be checking?” followed by “who does that?”
Claude can search the web and read pages when someone asks a question. Anthropic’s support article on its crawlers lists three separate bots. ClaudeBot collects content for training, Claude-SearchBot indexes pages to improve search results, and Claude-User fetches a page when a person asks Claude something. Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot or Claude-User can reduce your visibility in its search answers, so those two are the ones a firm should leave open.
What helps with Claude is the same credibility trail that helps everywhere else. Pages that are specific, well organized and clearly written by people who know the subject are the easiest ones for it to use. A detailed bio with your credentials, the industries you serve and why you do this work gives it something solid to cite. A page that makes big claims without backing them up gives it a reason to skip you.
Perplexity
Perplexity is an AI search engine that shows numbered sources with every answer, so the person can see exactly where each line came from. That makes it popular with people who like to check the work, which is a lot of business owners and pretty much every accountant I know. For one of our financial advisory clients, Perplexity was the second-biggest AI source of traffic after ChatGPT. Our read was that their niche skews toward a technical audience, and that’s who uses Perplexity most.
Perplexity reads the web with its own crawler. Its crawler documentation says PerplexityBot is built to surface and link websites in Perplexity’s search results, and it recommends allowing PerplexityBot in your robots.txt file if you want to appear there.
What helps a firm show up in Perplexity is content that answers one question completely, with sources of its own. Because Perplexity shows its citations, it tends to favor pages that link out to authoritative places, like the IRS, a state revenue department or a professional body. We build those outbound citations into every blog we write for clients now.
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot answers questions inside Windows, Edge and Microsoft 365, and it gets its web information from Bing. That matters for accounting firms, because a lot of your clients spend their whole workday in Outlook, Excel and Teams, with Copilot sitting right there.
Microsoft explains how this works in its documentation on web search in Copilot. When web search is on, Copilot turns the person’s prompt into a short search query, sends it to the Bing search service, and uses what comes back to write its answer with citations. So if Bing doesn’t know your firm well, Copilot won’t either.
What helps here is the part most firms skip, which is Bing itself. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your sitemap, and make sure your business details on Bing Places match your Google Business Profile exactly. After that, the same content and trust work that helps on Google and ChatGPT carries over.
Free AI Search Check
See if ChatGPT recommends your firm.
If you want to know where you stand across all of these engines today, we built a tool for that. It scores your website against the 20 signals these tools look at and shows the fix for each one.
It takes about two minutes, and most fixes help you on Google too.
04
What gets a firm recommended
What gets an accounting firm recommended in AI search is proof, on your site and off it, that real experts are behind the firm and that you serve the person asking. When we run our check for firms, the same gaps show up almost every time.
Reviews show AI tools that real clients chose you and were happy with the work. Nobody outside those companies knows exactly how much weight each engine gives them. We’ve still seen enough AI referrals line up with strong review profiles that I wouldn’t ignore yours, even if you’re a national firm.
Directory listings
AI tools pull from directories when they recommend professionals. Your firm should be listed accurately in the main business directories and in any accounting or industry directory that fits your niche. Your name, address and phone number should match everywhere, and so should the way you describe what you do.
Schema markup
Schema is code on your pages that tells machines plainly what your firm is, where it is and what it offers. There’s a type built for accounting firms, AccountingService on Schema.org, along with types for your people, your FAQs and your articles. Your professional memberships belong in there too.
llms.txt
An llms.txt file is a short plain-text summary of your firm and your most important pages, placed at the root of your website for AI tools to read. It’s a newer, proposed standard described at llmstxt.org, and none of the big engines have said they rely on it. It’s quick to set up, so we add one for our clients as a small extra.
Mentions on other sites
Mentions are how AI tools confirm you’re real and respected. When a competitor is all over AI search and the owner can’t figure out why, nine times out of ten it’s years of being talked about on forums, Reddit threads, LinkedIn and local news. Getting quoted in a respected publication, even once, goes a long way.
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Do it yourself or have us do it
The right choice mostly comes down to how much of your own time you want to give it.
Learn it
The Claude Marketing Course
The Claude Marketing Course for accountants is coming in December 2026. Join the waitlist now to learn the same system we use, run with Claude, at your own pace.
Our GEO service for accountants gets your firm found and recommended on Google and AI search. Markology LITE is a smaller-scope version of our full package, with SEO, AI search and content handled for one monthly fee.
Either way, AI search and Google work off the same foundation, so it helps to have the basics of SEO for accountants in place too.
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FAQ
What is GEO for accountants?
GEO stands for generative engine optimization. For accountants, it means making sure your firm shows up and gets recommended when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews for help. We treat it as part of the same job as SEO, since both run on the same content and trust signals.
Is AI search different from SEO for accounting firms?
AI search and SEO overlap a lot, and most of what helps you on Google helps you in AI search. The differences are in where each engine pulls its sources from. AI tools lean harder on user-generated sites like Reddit and LinkedIn, on credentials and bios, and on pages that answer one question completely.
Is GEO the same as AEO?
GEO, AEO (answer engine optimization) and LLM SEO are mostly different names for the same goal. Each one is about being the answer an AI tool gives when someone asks a question. You’ll see the terms used interchangeably, so I wouldn’t spend much time on the label.
How can I check whether ChatGPT or Gemini recommends my accounting firm?
Ask them the questions your clients would ask, like “who’s a good CPA for restaurants in Dallas,” and see who they name. For a fuller picture of why you are or aren’t showing up, run our free AI Search Check on your website.
How long does it take for an accounting firm to show up in AI search?
For a brand-new website, showing up on Google and AI search usually takes around six to nine months. An established site with good content can see AI referrals sooner, because the engines already have something to pull from. Either way, it compounds over time as your blogs, reviews and mentions add up.
Do people who find an accounting firm through AI search become clients?
Yes, and we’re seeing qualified leads come in from ChatGPT and Claude for the firms we work with. The volume is still smaller than Google. The people who arrive tend to be engaged, because they came with a specific question already formed.
Can my firm pay to show up in ChatGPT?
ChatGPT has started showing ads, and I’ve seen them in my own account at the bottom of an answer. We’re testing them, but when someone opens ChatGPT they want an answer and aren’t really in the mood for an ad. I’d treat it as a small test and put your real effort into being the firm the answer names.
We get accounting firms found on Google and AI search.
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