If you own a trade business with your own website, you've probably noticed the latest sales pitch doing the rounds. It used to be "we'll get you to the top of Google." Then it was "you need to be AI-ready." Now there's a fresh one: pay us, and we'll get your business mentioned all over the web so the AI search tools start recommending you.
It sounds clever. It's the kind of thing that makes you think, "Maybe I'm being left behind."
Here's the good news. Google has just come out and said it plainly: paying to manufacture those mentions doesn't work. So if someone's trying to sell it to you, you can keep your money in your pocket.
What's actually going on
When you Google something now — say "emergency electrician near me" — you'll often see an AI-written summary at the top before the normal list of websites. Google calls these AI Overviews and AI Mode. To build those summaries, the AI looks at what's being said about businesses across blogs, forums, videos and the like.
Naturally, a few marketing types spotted an angle: if AI is reading what's said about you online, let's just create loads of mentions of your business and trick it into recommending you. That's where the "get mentioned in 50 blogs" packages come from. There's now even software that automates the whole thing, churning out mentions designed to plant your name across Google, ChatGPT, Claude and the rest.
What Google actually said
One of Google's own engineers, Gary Illyes, was asked about this directly at a Google event in Sydney in May 2026. His answer, alongside colleague Cherry Sireetorn Prommawin, was blunt. Chasing paid-for or manufactured mentions to game AI search is the same old trick as buying links to fake your way up the rankings — and Google's systems are built to spot it, ignore it, and throw it out.
Worth being straight about one thing, though: they didn't promise the opposite either. They actually said they weren't sure how much any mention out on the web really moves the needle for AI search — genuine ones included. So this isn't Google saying "go and earn loads of mentions instead." It's Google saying "the paid, faked version is a dead end, and it'll cost you."
Google backed this up in fresh official guidance, where it listed a whole pile of trendy "AI SEO" tactics that simply aren't needed — special AI files, chopping your content into tiny chunks, rewriting everything in robot-speak, fancy code markup, and yes, chasing inauthentic mentions. Their summary of it all? AI search isn't some separate dark art. It's still just good, honest SEO.
Why this matters for tradespeople
Here's the part that should make you feel better, not worse.
A lot of these AI packages are aimed squarely at small business owners — plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers — because they're busy people who'd rather be on the tools than reading up on search algorithms. That's exactly who gets sold the dream.
But here's the reassuring part: while nobody can promise you a spot in an AI answer, the things that have always built a solid trade business online haven't changed a bit. That's what Google's own guidance keeps pointing back to:
- Real reviews from real customers who you've done a proper job for.
- A clear, useful website that actually explains what you do, where you work, and why people should trust you.
- A genuine reputation — the kind that builds up because you turn up, do good work, and people talk about you of their own accord. Not the kind you buy by the dozen.
You can't fake your way to that. And the brilliant bit is, you don't need to. Do the job well and let your website reflect that honestly, and you're building on solid ground — the kind no algorithm update can pull out from under you.
The simple takeaway
If a marketing company calls you up promising to "get your business mentioned everywhere for AI search," ask them one question:
Are these real mentions earned through genuine work, or manufactured ones you're charging me for?
If it's the manufactured kind, Google has just told you exactly what happens to it — it gets ignored. You'd be paying for something that, at best, does nothing, and at worst, gets your site flagged for spam.
And here's the sting in the tail. These tricks can look like they're working for a while — which is exactly why people keep falling for them. Then one day Google tightens the screws and the whole lot collapses overnight, taking your hard-earned visibility down with it. We've seen this film before with dodgy link-buying years back, and the people left picking up the pieces were the ones who'd paid for the shortcut.
Honest work, looked after properly online, still wins. It always has. The labels keep changing — SEO, AEO, GEO, "AI optimisation" — but the fundamentals underneath haven't moved an inch.
Spend your money on doing the job well and looking after your customers. Let the AI catch up to the truth on its own. It's pretty good at that.
