For an AI assistant to recommend you, you need three things: a site that can be read without running JavaScript, concrete facts published on it, and what your site says matching what Google Business Profile, maps and directories say.

Models don't recommend whoever sells themselves best. They recommend whoever they can pull clear facts from and verify in more than one place. That changes how a website should be written.

1. The page has to be readable without running anything

Many modern sites assemble their content in the browser with JavaScript. A person sees it fine. The system deciding whether to cite you may never see it at all.

That is the main reason not to build a business site on a visual page builder. If you open your page's source and can't find your menu or your opening hours written there, a model probably can't either.

2. Concrete facts, published

Prices, opening hours, how many people fit, whether there's a terrace, whether dogs are welcome, how long it takes to walk from the lift, which languages you speak. Vague marketing prose gives a model nothing to quote. Specifics do.

This is also the uncomfortable part: publishing prices feels exposing. But a concrete price is a quotable fact and nobody quotes a vague range.

3. Everything has to say the same thing

The same name, address and phone on the site, in Google Business Profile, in maps and in every directory you appear in. Contradictions make the machine unsure who you are. And when it is unsure, it recommends someone else.

It is the first thing we check in any diagnosis, because it costs nothing to fix and it is almost always wrong.

Why it matters now

76% of people who search for something nearby on a phone visit a related business within a day, according to Google's own data from 2016. That search increasingly runs through an assistant. If the assistant can't read you, someone else gets the visit.

This is called GEO, Generative Engine Optimization. SEO goes after a place in a list; GEO goes after being the answer.

Source: Figure: Think with Google, mobile searches with local intent (2016).

A mountain business's Google profile needs four things before anything else: correct seasonal hours, photos from the last three months, concrete attributes, and a reply to every review. None of it costs money, only doing it properly.

Seasonal hours, not eternal summer hours

A valley business changes its hours three or four times a year, and the profile almost never reflects it. Google has special hours by date: load them the day you close for the season, at Christmas or at Easter. A profile that says "open" when you are closed earns you a one-star review you didn't deserve.

Recent photos, taken on a phone

You don't need studio photography. You need photos from this month: the dish you are serving now, the room with the fire lit, the snow that is actually out there today. Recent photos count in how Google decides which profiles to show, and a four-year-old photo of a menu you no longer serve does more harm than no photo at all.

Attributes: whatever people ask you on WhatsApp

If you get the same question by message every week, that is exactly what is missing from the profile. Terrace, accessible, dogs welcome, parking, children's menu, languages spoken, whether cards are accepted. Every attribute you fill in is a question you stop answering by hand.

Reply to every review, the good ones too

86% of consumers use Google to read reviews before deciding where to go, according to BrightLocal's 2025 survey. Replying isn't only good manners: it is fresh, specific content on your profile, written in the words your customers actually use.

Keep it short, use their name, and never use a template. Two lines beat a copied paragraph.

The order matters

If you only do one thing this month: the hours. That is the one costing you customers right now, and the one that takes the least time.

Source: Figure: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2025 (1,026 consumers).

A code-built website for a small business runs from €1,200 for one page done properly to €3,900 for a multilingual system with bookings. In between, €2,400 for a site of up to eight pages, which is what most businesses need. VAT excluded, and fixed before we start.

The sum almost nobody does

Before looking at what a website costs, look at what you already pay. Booking software runs from €150 to €400 a month. TheFork takes €1 to €3 per cover, which at normal volume is €400 to €1,500 a month. That is every month, forever, and the day you stop paying nothing is left.

A €2,400 website is three to six months of those commissions. Spread over three years, €2.19 a day. And you pay it once.

Why a cheap site turns out expensive

A €300 template usually comes with a monthly platform fee, the domain in somebody else's name, and a build that neither Google nor AI assistants can read properly. The entry price is low; the exit cost is that you can't take anything with you.

The useful question isn't "what does it cost" but "whose is it when I stop paying".

What any quote should include

• The domain in your name, not the agency's
• The code and your customer data, yours
• Structured data, so you can be read and cited
• A written number of rounds of changes
• A fixed delivery date

If a quote doesn't state those five things, ask before signing. Anyone who does this properly knows the answers.

Source: Booking-software and commission ranges: the providers' own public rates, 2026.