What happened when AI started recommending us?
AI assistants became Media Spearhead's biggest source of new clients. Business owners now find us every week by asking ChatGPT and other assistants which agency to hire.
We noticed it on the phone before we saw it in any report. More and more new callers told us ChatGPT had sent them. Today many of the business owners who call us say an AI assistant recommended Media Spearhead.
One call shows how short that path has become. A business owner in Texas opened ChatGPT and asked, in Spanish, "¿Qué agencia de marketing me puede ayudar a hacer crecer mi negocio y habla español?" (which marketing agency can help me grow my business and speaks Spanish?). ChatGPT named Media Spearhead first. He booked a consultation the same day. He never saw an ad, a ranking or a cold email from us. The whole sale started inside one AI answer.
Why do AI assistants recommend Media Spearhead?
Because every source an AI engine checks tells the same clear story about us: who we are, who we serve, where we work and what independent sources say about our work.
AI assistants don't pick a business at random. When they search the web for an answer, they look for a company whose facts they can confirm in several places and whose pages answer the question directly. For us, that story is short and consistent everywhere:
- A Jacksonville, Florida agency founded in 2017 by Richard Lacayo and Robert Samayoa
- Google Ads, local SEO and websites for local service businesses
- A Google Premier Partner (top 3% of Google Partners), rated 5.0 on Clutch
- Month-to-month, and the co-founder answers the phone
- A bilingual team, with pages in English and Spanish
None of those facts is unusual on its own. What engines reward is that they are specific, easy to verify and repeated the same way on our site, our profiles and the independent sites that write about us.
What exactly did we do?
Seven things, all visible on our own site today: open the door to AI crawlers, publish one set of facts, answer questions directly, cover every city we serve, publish in Spanish, create research worth citing and earn independent proof.
- We let the AI crawlers in. Our robots.txt explicitly allows GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and the other bots that feed AI answers. Many sites block them by accident through a security plugin or an old rule. Check yours with the AI Crawler Checker.
- We published one set of facts, written for machines. Our llms.txt file lists our founding year, founders, phone, services, contract terms and core pages in plain language. We keep the same facts, in the same words, on our site, our Google Business Profile and our listings.
- We answered questions directly. Our service pages use real customer questions as headings and put the answer in the first sentence. More than 800 of our pages have question-and-answer sections marked up with FAQ schema, so an engine can lift a clean answer without guessing.
- We covered every city we serve. Each of the 33 metros we serve in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina has its own pages for SEO, Google Ads and web design. When someone asks for "a Google Ads agency in Tampa," there is a page that answers exactly that question.
- We published in Spanish. Our Spanish pages are why ChatGPT could answer the Texas owner's question with us. Most agencies have no Spanish content at all, so a bilingual answer had very few candidates.
- We created research worth citing. Our 2026 Google Ads CPC Report publishes cost-per-click, conversion-rate and cost-per-lead benchmarks for 74 US industries, with a free CC-BY dataset. Original numbers give other sites and AI engines a reason to cite us, not just list us.
- We earned independent proof. Google Premier Partner status and a 5.0 rating on Clutch are facts an engine can confirm on sites we don't control. That third-party confirmation is what turns "an agency that says it's good" into "an agency others say is good."
What don't we credit for the results?
We don't credit any single file, plugin or trick. The results came from the evidence adding up, not from one technical change.
- llms.txt. We have one, and it's useful as a clean fact sheet. No major engine has confirmed it changes recommendations, so we treat it as a nice-to-have.
- Schema on its own. Structured data makes our facts easier to read. Google says no special markup is required to appear in its AI features. Markup without real content behind it does nothing.
- Volume for its own sake. Google's August 2026 spam update reportedly targeted mass AI-generated content. Every page we publish has to answer a real question a buyer asks.
How can a local business copy this?
Run the same seven steps on your own business, starting with the ones that cost nothing: crawler access, consistent facts and direct answers on the pages you already have.
| What we did | The local business version | Free tool |
|---|---|---|
| Let AI crawlers in | Make sure robots.txt doesn't block OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Bingbot | AI Crawler Checker |
| One set of facts | Same name, address, phone, hours and services on Google, Bing, Apple, Yelp, BBB and your trade's directories | llms.txt Generator |
| Answer questions directly | Question headings and a one-sentence answer on every service page | Answer Readiness Grader |
| Cover every city | One real page per main service area, with local details, not a copied template | AEO checklist |
| Speak your customers' language | Spanish pages if you serve Spanish speakers, written by a person who speaks it | — |
| Research worth citing | Publish your real price ranges, timelines and what a job involves | Schema Generator |
| Independent proof | Ask every happy customer for a review that describes the job, and earn local press and association listings | — |
Then measure. Write 10 to 20 questions your customers actually ask, run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode, and write down who gets named. Repeat monthly. Our AI Visibility Checker runs the first round for you, and how to get recommended by ChatGPT goes deeper on each step.
How long did it take?
Years for the foundation, and a shorter stretch for the AI payoff, because most of the evidence AI engines check was already in place from our SEO work.
We started in 2017 with SEO, Google Ads and Business Profiles for local service businesses. When ChatGPT launched in November 2022 we began testing what it said about local businesses, including us. As Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT search and Google AI Mode arrived between 2024 and 2025, we rebuilt our own pages, facts and schema around what those engines cite. By 2026, AI had become the channel that brings us the most new clients.
A local business doesn't need eight years to get there. Engines that search the live web can pick up corrected facts and rewritten pages within weeks once they recrawl them. Reviews and independent mentions take longer, and they compound. If you want us to run this for you, that's our answer engine optimization service.
Frequently asked questions
Does ChatGPT really recommend Media Spearhead?
It does for many of the questions business owners ask about marketing agencies, which is why AI assistants are now our biggest source of new clients. Answers change by prompt, location, language and model version, so no business is named every time. We track a fixed set of prompts to see the trend rather than trusting a single screenshot.
How do you know the leads come from AI?
Callers tell us. Many of the business owners who call Media Spearhead today say an AI assistant such as ChatGPT recommended us. Some tell us the exact question they asked, like the Texas business owner who asked ChatGPT in Spanish for a marketing agency that speaks Spanish.
Can a small local business get the same result?
Usually, yes, and often faster than an agency can, because local questions name only a few businesses in each city. The same fundamentals apply: let AI crawlers in, keep your business facts identical everywhere, answer customer questions directly on your pages and keep earning real reviews.
Did you use llms.txt or special AI markup to get recommended?
We have an llms.txt file and schema markup on our pages, but we do not credit either one on its own. No major AI engine has confirmed that llms.txt changes recommendations. The work that matters is the evidence behind the markup: clear pages, consistent facts, reviews and independent sources.
Will Media Spearhead run this playbook for my business?
Yes. It is the core of our answer engine optimization service, adapted to your trade and cities. We start by running your customers' real questions through the major AI engines and showing you who gets named today.
Sources: BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 · Google Search Central, AI features and your website · Search Engine Roundtable, August 2026 spam update · Media Spearhead's own site files (robots.txt, llms.txt, page schema) and what our callers tell us.