An AI search optimisation checklist for UAE businesses

The first four checks decide whether the other sixteen matter, and three of them involve no writing at all. That's the logic of the list: twenty checks in five groups, ordered by how little they cost against what they're worth. Mark each one pass, partial or fail as you go.

Google's guidance for its AI features asks for two things, an indexed page and permission to show a snippet, and it covers Google only. For ChatGPT and the rest, the list sticks to checks you can verify yourself and facts that stay true whichever engine reads them.

Access: can machines reach and read your pages?

1. 01Read your robots.txt line by line. A rule left over from a staging site, or a blanket block added against "AI bots", can keep your pages away from the tools you want to be quoted by. Bad sign: a rule nobody can explain in one sentence.
2. 02Inspect your ten most valuable pages in Google Search Console and confirm each is indexed. Google makes indexing a condition for its AI features, and any assistant can only use pages it can find. Bad sign: the page that earns the most money is listed as discovered but not indexed.
3. 03Search the source of those pages for nosnippet and max-snippet directives. Snippet eligibility is the second condition Google names, and these directives switch snippets off. Bad sign: a plugin set them across the whole site and nobody noticed.
4. 04Put the facts in text. Prices, services, areas served and opening hours should be words on the page, not an image, a slider or a scanned PDF. If a machine can't read it, it can't repeat it. Bad sign: the price list is a JPEG.

Facts: does everything say the same thing about you?

1. 01Write one short description of the business and use it on your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and every directory. A tool that finds three descriptions has to pick one. Bad sign: two different founding years.
2. 02Spell your name the same way every time, in English and in Arabic, including the Latin-letter version of the Arabic name. Variants of transliteration can look like different businesses. Bad sign: three Latin spellings of one Arabic name across your listings.
3. 03Publish prices or at least a starting price, say whether they include VAT, and put a checked-on date beside them. An assistant asked what you charge can only repeat what someone has published. Bad sign: "contact us for pricing" on every page, so the only figure online is an old directory entry.
4. 04Make your name, address, phone and WhatsApp number identical across your site and every listing (NAP consistency). When sources disagree, whoever reads them has to guess. Fix the oldest listing first. Bad sign: an old number on a directory you forgot you joined.

Content: does each page give an answer worth quoting?

1. 01Open each page that earns revenue with a direct answer in two or three sentences, written so it still makes sense if it's quoted alone. Bad sign: the first paragraph begins "Welcome to".
2. 02Phrase headings as the questions buyers ask, and let the sentence beneath each one answer it. That makes every section quotable on its own. Bad sign: headings such as "Our approach" and "Why choose us".
3. 03Add what only you can say: your process, service area, turnaround, terms and exclusions. A page that repeats what ten competitors say gives an assistant no reason to pick yours. Bad sign: a paragraph that would fit any competitor's site unchanged.
4. 04Give Arabic its own pages, written in Arabic, on their own addresses and linked to their English twins (the hreflang details). Both of Google's AI features list Arabic as a supported language, so Arabic questions are in scope. Bad sign: Arabic pages that are machine translations, or an Arabic version loaded by script on the English address.

Proof: does anyone else vouch for you?

1. 01Collect reviews on Google and reply to them. Google says local results rest on relevance, distance and popularity, which its help page explains under the heading prominence, and prominence draws on links and reviews. You can't pay for a better local ranking. Bad sign: your newest review is two years old.
2. 02Publish case facts you can stand behind, with the sector, the country and the client's permission. A claim with a named context can be checked, and one without can't. Bad sign: "hundreds of happy clients" with no names, sectors or numbers.
3. 03Get listed where other people describe you: trade bodies, supplier and partner pages, local press, and the main platforms in your sector. A system summarising a business can only summarise what's written about it. Bad sign: your own website is the only place your name appears. Third-party mentions have their own post.
4. 04Source the claims that need it: figures, dates and rules. It's the habit the GEO research tested, and it lets a reader check you. Bad sign: a statistic you can't trace back to where you found it.

Measurement: how will you know anything changed?

1. 01Write down twenty questions your buyers ask, in English and in Arabic, and freeze the wording. A list that changes every month can't show change. Bad sign: asking whatever comes to mind on the day.
2. 02For each run, record whether you were mentioned, whether it was accurate, who else was named and which pages were linked. A wrong mention is worse than none. Bad sign: screenshots in a chat thread with no dates. The full method has its own guide.
3. 03Add "ChatGPT or another AI assistant" to the "How did you hear about us?" question on your forms and in your first WhatsApp reply. In GWI's Q2 2026 survey, published by DataReportal, 84.1% of UAE internet users aged 16 and over said they'd used WhatsApp in the past month, so a WhatsApp reply is a natural place to ask. Bad sign: every AI-driven enquiry logged as direct.
4. 04Review monthly, and trace any wrong claim to its source before doing anything else. An assistant repeats what it finds, so the fix is at the source. Bad sign: you spotted a wrong price in an answer three months ago and still haven't traced it.

What do the results tell you to do next?

If more than half of the first eight checks fail, you don't have an AI search problem. You have a website problem, and it's the cheaper one to fix. Do those eight before you pay for a tool, a retainer or a new file.

If you'd rather hand the first eight to someone else, they overlap heavily with the technical and content side of an SEO audit, which our Growth Audit Sprint includes at AED 18,000 excluding VAT. The llms.txt file is deliberately not on the list. If you add one, add it after these twenty.

Start with check one today. It takes about five minutes, and if robots.txt is blocking something it shouldn't, that's the cheapest problem on the whole list to fix.