// book · The Solo Operator Series #2
Found by AI
How Small Businesses Get Recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI
You are not losing to a bigger ad budget. You are losing to a machine that does not know you exist.
// the five questions an AI asks
Five questions, one answer: you
Each chapter is one question an AI quietly asks before it recommends a business, and ends with a one-page tool you can run that day — grounded in verified 2025–2026 data, not guesses.
- Introduction — The New Front Door→ AI Visibility Snapshot
- Can I Even Find You?→ AI Crawler Access Check
- Can I Tell What You Are?→ Entity Clarity Sheet
- Do I Trust You Enough to Name You?→ Trust Signal Map
- Can I Quote You Cleanly?→ Citability Checklist
- Are You There When the Question Is Asked?→ Prompt-Match Map
- Conclusion — The 30-Day Visibility Build→ 30-Day Visibility Build
inside
What you actually get
- · Check whether ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity can read your site at all
- · Make it obvious to an AI what you do and who you serve
- · Build the trust signals an AI needs before it will name you
- · Write content an AI can quote cleanly, in passages that stand on their own
- · Seven one-page tools — a visibility snapshot, a crawler-access check, an entity sheet, a citability checklist, and a 30-day build
not for
What this is not
- · A guarantee of AI recommendations — no tactic can promise that; this stacks the odds honestly.
- · A technical SEO manual — it is plain-language principles, not code or config dumps.
- · Advice for big brands with agencies — every example is a one-person or small business.
// kindle or direct PDF?
Same book, two ways to read it
The Kindle edition reads inside Amazon’s app and account. The direct PDF and EPUB are DRM-free — yours to keep, copy to any device, and print, no Amazon account needed. Amazon handles its own payment, delivery, and refunds; the direct edition runs through the ToolGenX checkout with a 14-day refund as long as the file has not been downloaded. The words are identical. Pick whichever fits how you read.
Want the tools without buying the book?
Every tool in the book — the visibility snapshot, the crawler-access check, the entity sheet, the citability checklist, and the 30-day build — is also a free printable workbook.
// the series
The Solo Operator Series
Each book takes one problem the solo operator actually faces and solves it without the team, the budget, or the buzzwords.
- The Leverage StackHow One Person Runs What Used to Take a Teamcoming
- Found by AIHow Small Businesses Get Recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AIyou are here
- The One-Person MillionBuild a Real Business With AI Doing the Workcoming
- The Unfair SolopreneurCompete With Companies 100x Your Size Using AIcoming
- AI Won’t Run Your Business. You Will.Judgment and Doubt in the AI Agecoming
Written by İsmail Günaydın
İsmail builds and runs digital businesses as a one-person operation. He writes about systems, leverage, and the practical tools that let a single operator do work that used to need a team. More on the About page and the rest of his books.
“You don’t need to rank anymore. You need to be the name it gives.”
// frequently asked
Questions buyers ask
- What do I get when I buy the PDF here?
- The full book as a DRM-free PDF and EPUB, delivered instantly after checkout. You read it on any device, no Amazon account and no app required. The free printable workbook of all the tools is separate and linked below.
- Is this just SEO with a new name?
- No. Traditional SEO is about ranking a blue link; this is about being the business an AI names inside its answer. They overlap, but Ahrefs found only about 12% of AI citations match the top Google results — so the trust, entity, and citability work here is its own discipline.
- Will this work for a local business?
- Yes. The running example is a one-person bookkeeping practice, and BrightLocal found nearly half of consumers had used AI to find a local business by 2026. The five questions apply whether you serve a town or the whole web.
- Is the data current?
- Every statistic is from a verified 2025–2026 source — Pew Research, BrightLocal, Ahrefs, Semrush — and cited in the book. Nothing is invented or guessed about a future that has not arrived yet.
- Can I get a refund?
- Yes. Under EU consumer rules you can withdraw and get a full refund as long as the file has not been downloaded yet. Once you download the PDF the digital-goods exception applies, which is why checkout asks you to confirm that before access starts.
- How long is it?
- Short on purpose — about 70 pages across the five questions plus a 30-day visibility build. Each chapter ends with a tool you can run the same day, not theory.