Increasing your online presence means being found in more places, with better information, by people searching for what you sell or for your company's name: on Google, on the map, in reviews, on social media, on industry sites and now in the answers of ChatGPT and Gemini too. It doesn't mean opening more profiles. It means taking the spots where customers already look, and knowing how much weight you carry in each.
On 10 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT, from the UK, the same question three times about the best UK manufacturers of LED video walls. It named 16 different companies; only 3 appeared in all three answers. Below you'll find that test, official data on where UK businesses stand today, a table to measure your presence surface by surface and the levers to grow it, in the order it pays to switch them on.
What a company's online presence is
Online presence is the set of places where a potential customer comes across a company on the web before getting in touch. They're different surfaces, each with its own rules:
- the pages Google shows when someone searches for the company's name;
- organic results for product or service searches;
- the Google Business Profile, which is what shows up on the map;
- reviews, on Google and on industry sites;
- social media profiles;
- mentions on other people's sites: directories, newspapers, trade associations, partners, suppliers;
- the answers of AI engines, from ChatGPT to Google's AI Overviews.
Having a profile is one thing; showing up when someone searches is another. A company can have a website, an Instagram account and a LinkedIn page and still not appear for a single search that brings in customers. It happens a lot, and usually because nobody has ever measured where the company is visible and where it isn't.
Where UK businesses stand
More UK businesses are offline than you might think. According to the UK Business Data Survey 2024 (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, June 2024; 3,911 businesses, fieldwork October 2023 to February 2024), 68% of UK businesses have a website: roughly one in three doesn't. Sole traders are at 65% and micro businesses at 74%; from small businesses upwards the figure is 93% or more. Mind the base: this survey covers every business, sole traders included, while most European surveys only count firms with at least 10 employees. It doesn't measure how many businesses use social media, and we haven't found a recent official UK figure for that.
| Indicator | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UK businesses with a website (all sizes, sole traders included) | 68% | DSIT, UK Business Data Survey 2024 |
| Sole traders with a website | 65% | DSIT, UK Business Data Survey 2024 |
| Micro businesses with a website | 74% | DSIT, UK Business Data Survey 2024 |
| Small, medium and large businesses with a website | 93%, 97% and 99% | DSIT, UK Business Data Survey 2024 |
| Share of retail sales made online | 28.8% (August 2026) | ONS, Retail sales, September 2026 |
| UK adults who use AI tools | 54% (79% of 16-24s) | Ofcom, April 2026 |
| AI chatbot visits going to ChatGPT | 80.02% (Gemini 10.14%) | StatCounter, September 2026 |
| Internet users in the UK | 68.1 million, 97.8% of the population | DataReportal, Digital 2026 |
| Google's share of search engines in the UK | 91.39% | StatCounter, September 2026 |
On the other side of the screen, habits are shifting. Ofcom reported in April 2026 that 54% of UK adults now use AI tools, rising to 79% among 16-24s. Among chatbots, ChatGPT gets 80.02% of UK visits and Gemini 10.14% (StatCounter, September 2026). Google is still where people search, though: 91.39% of searches go through it, and Ofcom's Online Nation 2025 report puts AI Overviews on about 30% of searches. A business without a well-kept website today is missing from the biggest surface and from the one that's growing, because AI engines draw largely on the same pages. The figures on the online population come from the DataReportal Digital 2026 report.
Before you increase it, measure it: the seven surfaces
Online presence is measured one surface at a time, with one number for each. Without those numbers you end up working on the surface you like best, often social media, instead of the one that brings in enquiries. The table below is the one we use in our first meetings with a client: for each surface, what to look at, where to find it at no cost and the sign that something is wrong.
| Surface | What to measure | Where, at no cost | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Searches for your name | Position and CTR of searches containing the company name | Google Search Console, Performance report filtered by name | You're not first for your own name, or a directory or a competitor sits above you |
| 2. Service or product searches | Impressions and clicks for searches without the name | Google Search Console, filter excluding the name | Almost all clicks come from people who already know you |
| 3. Map | Calls, direction requests and website clicks from the profile | Google Business Profile, Performance section | Unverified profile or a vague primary category |
| 4. Reviews | Reviews from the last three months, average rating, share with a reply | Google Business Profile and industry review sites | No recent reviews, no replies |
| 5. Social media | Reach and interactions on the channel where your customers are | Native insights (Meta Business Suite, LinkedIn) | Last post months ago, profiles opened and abandoned |
| 6. Mentions on other sites | How many sites name the company, with or without a link | Google search for "company name" -site:yoursite.co.uk, Google Alerts | Only automated directories mention you |
| 7. AI answers | In how many answers you appear across 10-20 questions about your sector, asked several times | ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Mode by hand; paid options include Semrush AI Toolkit or Ahrefs Brand Radar | You only appear if your name is already in the question |
The first row is the one people check least. For an outdoor equipment shop in Rome that we work with, between June and August 2026 searches with the shop's name had a CTR of 37.6% at an average position of 1.1; local searches without the name, such as "negozio trekking roma" (hiking shop rome), had 5.2% at position 1.7. Almost the same position, a sevenfold difference in clicks, because on generic searches the map sits above the first link. The full case is in our guide to local SEO.
Setting up the name filters in Search Console takes ten minutes: here's how. If you want to turn the seven rows into a dashboard you update every month, the SEO KPIs to track are the same.
The ChatGPT test: 3 answers, 16 companies, 3 always there
On 10 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT, located in the United Kingdom and through the DataForSEO interface, the same question three times: "Who are the best UK manufacturers of LED video walls and digital advertising displays?". We chose a sector we know well, because Macropix, a Milan-based maker of LED screens, has been our client for years; we had run the same test in Italy a week earlier. Every answer cited sources from the web. Here's who was named, answer by answer.
| Company named | Answer 1 | Answer 2 | Answer 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scanlite | yes | yes | yes |
| Dynamo LED Displays | yes | yes | yes |
| Pioneer LED | yes | yes | yes |
| LEDsynergy | yes | yes | no |
| digiLED | yes | yes | no |
| Unilumin | no | yes | yes |
| ADI | yes | no | no |
| Daktronics | yes | no | no |
| Leyard / Planar | yes | no | no |
| Absen | yes | no | no |
| Barco | yes | no | no |
| Spectra Displays | no | yes | no |
| Samsung | no | yes | no |
| LG | no | yes | no |
| LIKELED | no | no | yes |
| MetaLED | no | no | yes |
| Companies named | 10 | 9 | 6 |
Three things stand out. First: the list changes every time. In our Italian test on 3 October it was the same story, 14 companies named and 3 constant. Nor is it just us. Rand Fishkin of SparkToro and Patrick O'Donnell of Gumshoe ran 2,961 prompts through ChatGPT, Claude and AI Overviews (January 2026, international sample) and estimated less than a one-in-a-hundred chance of getting the same list of brands twice. That's why AI presence is measured as a percentage across many repeated questions, not with a screenshot.
Second: the companies that were always there had the strongest base outside ChatGPT. The websites of Scanlite, Dynamo and Pioneer LED were cited as sources in all three answers, and two answers out of three also drew on hola-led.com's list of 30 LED display companies operating in the UK, a directory-style page that names many of these firms. The model built its lists from company websites and industry directories, in other words from surfaces 1 and 6 in the table.
Third: ChatGPT repeated what the companies say about themselves, almost word for word. Scanlite's "more than 45 years" of experience, Spectra's claim to design and manufacture in the UK, Pioneer LED's claim to be the only UK maker of custom LED video walls (which ChatGPT flagged as "a company claim"). In our Italian test the third answer also opened with a box of local businesses taken from map data, with address and rating; in the three UK answers that box didn't appear. Three answers don't make a statistic, but they show the mechanism clearly: in AI engines you show up with the same foundations you need on Google, starting with a website that states plainly what you do. We go into more depth in the article on AI visibility.
How to increase your online presence: the levers, in order
The order matters more than the list. The levers run from the fastest and cheapest to the slowest, and each one works better if the one before it is already in place.
1. Make sure people searching for your name find you
Before chasing new customers, sort out the page seen by the people already looking for you: someone who met you at a trade show, heard about you from a colleague or saw your name in a ChatGPT answer. An up-to-date website, an about page with real people and a real address, company name, address and phone number identical everywhere, Search Console connected. Then the simplest check of all: in an incognito window, search for the company name on its own, then with "reviews" and with "complaints" after it, and look at what comes up.
2. Set up and look after your Google Business Profile, if you serve a local area
Google says local ranking depends on three factors: relevance, distance and prominence, and writes that "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking". In the Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors 2026 report, where 47 experts rated 187 factors, the top factor for the map is the profile's primary category. Choose the most specific one available, fill in everything and add real photos. The full process is in our guide to Google Business Profile.
3. Collect recent reviews and reply to all of them
In BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, covering 1,002 US consumers, 97% read reviews of local businesses, 74% look for ones from the last three months and 80% say they're more likely to choose a business that replies to all of them. The same study records a change in habits: Google as a source of reviews fell from 83% to 71%, while the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools to get recommendations for local businesses rose from 6% to 45%. These are US figures and we're not aware of a UK survey asking the same questions; the closest official UK figure is the ONS one on buying habits, with 28.8% of retail sales made online in August 2026. How to ask for reviews without pushing is explained in our guide to reviews.
4. Publish content that answers real searches
It's the slowest lever and the one that lasts longest. On the Italian keyword "monitor pubblicitario" (advertising monitor), Macropix moved from position 88 to 2 in five years of continuous work and today has a 25.55% share of voice on its keywords, ahead of Amazon at 18.08% (Semrush, July 2026, Google Italy): the case is told in our guide to SEO for manufacturing. The timescales are the same for everyone: according to Ahrefs only 1.74% of new pages reach the top 10 within a year, and 72.9% of pages in the top 10 are more than three years old (a study on US keywords). Start from the questions customers actually ask your sales team, check that someone searches for them and build an SEO strategy around those.
5. Choose a few social channels, the ones your customers use
The UK has 55.5 million social media user identities according to DataReportal, but there's no need to chase all of them. Which channel matters depends on the sector: a restaurant lives on Instagram and Google; a B2B company on LinkedIn, which also shows up in Google results, as we showed in a test on 30 Italian searches. Two channels kept up to date are worth more than five abandoned ones, which in fact tell anyone who finds them that the company isn't paying attention. How social profiles connect with search is covered in our guide to social media SEO.
6. Get other sites to mention you
This is the lever that carries most weight in AI answers. Ahrefs analysed 75,000 brands: the factor most closely correlated with appearing in AI Overviews is brand mentions on the web (0.664), far more than the number of backlinks (0.218). The 25% of brands with the most mentions appear on average 169 times in AI Overviews; the next quartile 14 times; 26% of the brands in the study never appear. In practice: complete listings in industry directories, trade associations, trade shows, partners and suppliers who name their customers, articles in local and trade press. It's the work of digital PR, and we explain how it turns into citations in AI answers in a dedicated article.
7. AI answers: same foundations, different measure
Google says so in its documentation for site owners: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." The levers are the ones above. What changes is the measure, because appearing doesn't mean getting clicks: the Pew Research Center tracked 900 US adults in March 2025 and found that when an AI summary was on the page they clicked a result on 8% of visits, against 15% without one. So being named inside the answer counts, not just being linked. If you want to work on this in a structured way, that's what we do with our SEO for AI service; for the first steps there's our guide on how to appear in ChatGPT answers.
8. Use advertising to speed things up where needed
Advertising buys presence for a set time: while you pay you're there, when you stop you disappear. That's why we use it to cover the slow surfaces while they grow. Contesini Consulenze runs two energy advice offices in the province of Mantua, in Italy, and had never used Google Ads: with a mobile landing page and Performance Max campaigns limited to the area around the two offices, it collected 299 enquiries at €7.20 each, 68% of them judged worth following up. How much to invest and how to set up the structure is in our guide to Google Ads for small businesses; if you'd rather hand over the campaigns, there's our Google Ads service.
The mistakes we see most often
The first is opening a profile on every platform and leaving it untouched after a month. An abandoned profile isn't neutral: whoever finds it assumes the business has stalled.
The second is measuring followers instead of enquiries. A B2B company with 300 LinkedIn followers and ten enquiries a month from its website has more presence than one with 5,000 followers and no enquiries.
The third is rebuilding the website before knowing where you're losing out. Often the website is fine and the problem lies elsewhere: no recent reviews, a Google profile with the wrong category, a directory sitting in first place for your name. The seven-surface table is there to prevent exactly this.
The fourth is buying reviews or mentions. Fake reviews break Google's policies and, in the UK, consumer law has prohibited them since April 2025 (CMA guidance on fake reviews). Mentions bought on low-quality sites bring neither customers nor citations in AI answers.
How long it takes
It depends on the lever. Your name, your Google profile and advertising can be sorted in days or weeks. Reviews and social media show results within a few months, if you keep at it. SEO and mentions on other sites take months or years: it took Macropix five years to go from position 88 to 2. There's an encouraging figure too: in the Ahrefs study, 40.82% of pages that reach the top 10 get there in their first month, so the right page on a search with little competition can move quickly. We've looked at SEO timescales in the article on how long it takes to see results. If you'd like an estimate for your own case, we start from the seven surfaces: Visilay's SEO service always begins there, and on our projects page you'll find our clients' results.
Frequently asked questions
It's the set of places where a customer finds it on the web: Google's pages for its name, results for service searches, its profile on the map, reviews, social media, other sites that mention it and the answers of AI engines. It's measured one surface at a time.
With one number for each surface: Search Console for searches with and without your name, the performance of your Google Business Profile, reviews from the last three months, mentions on other sites and the percentage of AI answers you appear in across a set of questions asked several times.
No. A social profile doesn't show up when someone searches Google for a service or a supplier, and in the UK Google handles 91.39% of searches (StatCounter, September 2026). Social media works on top of a website and a Google profile that are already in order.
It depends on the levers. Fixing your website, business details and Google profile costs mainly time; advertising is paid per click (in one of our local cases in Italy an enquiry cost €7.20); SEO and digital PR are ongoing work to budget over several months.
With the same foundations as Google search plus mentions on other sites. Google states that AI Overviews and AI Mode need no special optimisation, and in Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands the factor most closely correlated with appearing in AI Overviews is brand mentions on the web.
One thing the industry rarely says: the surface that most often decides a contract is the one almost nobody checks, the results page for the company's name. The people who land there have already decided to find out more, perhaps after reading your name in a ChatGPT answer. If they find a website untouched for years, a profile with no recent reviews and a directory in first place, all the work done on the other surfaces is lost at the last step. The check takes a minute: search for yourself in incognito, with your name on its own and with "reviews" after it, and look at what a customer sees.
