How Advocate works
AI assistants are becoming the way people find local businesses. Advocate's job is to make sure that when someone asks an assistant for a recommendation in your category, your business is something the assistant can find, understand, and cite. Here's what that looks like.
- 01
You tell us about your business
You answer a few plain-language questions about what you do, where you do it, and who you serve. No technical setup, no code, no plugins. We turn your answers into a structured, machine-readable profile.
- 02
We make your profile readable to AI
We publish a profile page built for how AI crawlers actually read the web — clean semantic markup and structured data describing your business. The same details a person would want, laid out in a form assistants can parse without guessing.
- 03
We keep you ready for every assistant
Different assistants read the web in different ways. We keep your profile aligned with how the major AI assistants discover and cite sources, so you're represented consistently across them as they change.
- 04
We show you the signals we can measure
We record visits from recognized AI crawlers to your Advocate profile and clicks through Advocate links. Those are useful, verifiable signals, but they do not capture every recommendation or tell us what happened inside a private AI conversation.
What this means for you
When the answer to “who should I call?” increasingly comes from an AI assistant, being visible to those assistants matters. Advocate is how you show up in that conversation — described accurately, in your words, ready to be cited. We focus on making your business discoverable and understandable to AI; we don't sell rankings or promise specific placements. We make sure the information is there and built to be found.
Frequently asked questions
What does Advocate actually do?
Advocate turns the facts about your business — what you do, where you work, who you serve, and what makes you credible — into a structured profile that AI crawlers can read. We publish that profile so assistants have a clear, accurate source to find, understand, and cite.
How is Advocate different from SEO?
SEO helps search engines rank webpages in traditional search results. Advocate focuses on making your business legible and citable to AI assistants: clear facts, semantic markup, structured data, and a profile built for AI crawlers. The two can work together, but neither guarantees placement. After your profile is published, discovery often takes two to six weeks, sometimes longer.
Do I need a new website or technical setup?
No. Advocate gives your business a hosted, machine-readable profile, so you can start without rebuilding your website or writing code. If your plan includes delivering the same information through your own site, we will guide that connection separately.
Which AI assistants does Advocate work with?
We build for the open-web signals used by major assistants, including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Each company chooses its own sources and changes its systems over time, so we cannot control or guarantee how any assistant uses your profile.
How long until I show up in AI answers?
There is no fixed timeline. Once your profile is live, AI crawlers still need to discover it, revisit it, and decide whether it is relevant to a question. That often takes two to six weeks, sometimes longer. We do not promise a ranking, a citation, or a specific placement.
How will I know whether it is working?
We show the signals we can verify: visits from recognized AI crawlers to your Advocate profile and clicks through Advocate links. Those signals show that AI systems accessed your information and that someone followed a tracked link; they do not capture every recommendation or reveal what happened inside a private AI conversation.