Under the hood, most AI answers are a search plus a summary. The system turns your question into a few searches, pulls the top results, reads what it can, and writes an answer with links back to the pages it leaned on. Google, Perplexity, ChatGPT and Copilot all work roughly this way, with different search indexes behind them. So the first filter is still ranking. If your page does not come back in the search step, nothing else about your site matters.
The second filter is whether your page is easy to lift from. Models favor pages that state facts in sentences: what you do, where you do it, what it costs, how long it takes, who you serve. Clear headings that match real questions help, because the heading plus the next paragraph is already a usable answer. Pages built around slogans, sliders and stock photos give a model nothing to quote, so it quotes a competitor or a directory listing instead.
The third filter is corroboration. If your name, address, phone and services say the same thing on your site, your Google Business Profile, and a few third party listings, you look like a real business. If they conflict, you look risky and get left out. None of this is published as a formal ranking factor, so treat it as informed pattern reading rather than a rulebook. The useful part is that the habits overlap with what makes a site good for humans.
Send the site over. We will tell you what is broken, what you could rank for, and whether AI search knows you exist. No charge and no pitch deck.
