INTRO ARTICLE: Why You're Writing for Machines, Not People
Your website tells your story to people. Your Aiprobase profile tells AI agents exactly who you are, what you do, and how to work with you.
This changes how you should write. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity "find me a freelance React developer in Manchester" or "recommend a bakery near London Bridge that does custom cakes", the AI doesn't read marketing copy the way a human does. It extracts facts: what you do, where you are, who you serve, how to reach you. Then it matches those facts against the question.
This means one rule governs everything in this guide: specifics beat adjectives. "Award-winning, customer-focused digital solutions" gives an AI nothing to match. "Shopify store development and migration for retail brands, based in Manchester, projects from £3,000" gives it everything.
How to read this guide:
- Required fields — your profile can't be published without them.
- Recommended fields — optional, but skipping them measurably reduces how often AI can match you.
- Optional fields — fill them if they apply to you.
Each section explains what AI does with that data, walks through every field with examples, and tells you what you lose if you skip it.
SECTION 1: Entity Type — Choose Who You Are
What this does for AI
Your entity type sets the vocabulary AI uses to understand you. A Person is matched against "find me a specialist who…" queries. A Local Business is matched against "near me" and location-based queries. This choice also determines which fields appear in the rest of the form — so getting it right first saves you rework.
How to choose
- Person — you work under your own name. Freelancers, consultants, independent experts. Even if you have a registered sole-trader status, if clients hire you, choose Person.
- Local Business — clients physically come to you: a shop, café, salon, clinic, office that receives visitors. The defining question is not "do I have premises" but "do clients walk through my door".
- Online Business — you sell services or products remotely: agencies, SaaS, e-commerce, remote consultancies. You may have an office, but clients never need to visit it.
- Corporation — a registered company at enterprise scale, typically with multiple departments or locations.
Common mistake: a freelancer with a registered Ltd choosing "Corporation" because it sounds more serious. AI agents looking for a corporation expect teams, departments, and scale. If a client would say "I hired her", not "I hired them" — you're a Person. Choose based on how clients experience you, not on your legal paperwork.
Impact note: Entity type can only be changed later through support, so take a minute here.
SECTION 2: Basic Information — Your Name Is Your Anchor
What this does for AI
Your name is the anchor AI uses to connect everything it knows about you across the web — your website, LinkedIn, reviews, mentions. If your name here doesn't match your name elsewhere, AI treats them as different entities and your reputation splits in half.
For freelancers and specialists
Full Name (Required). Use the exact name you work under everywhere — website, LinkedIn, invoices. If you're "Aleksandr Lacey" on LinkedIn, don't become "Alex Lacey" here.
✅ Good: Mark Carter
❌ Bad: Mark Carter | Web Dev Wizard 🚀 — taglines and emoji break entity matching. There are separate fields for what you do.
Professional Title (Required). Your actual specialisation, in the words a client would search for.
✅ Good: Software Architect or Wedding Photographer
❌ Bad: CEO & Founder — of your own one-person company? AI learns nothing about what you actually do. Digital Ninja — nobody asks an AI to find them a ninja.
Professional Status (Required, dropdown). Pick the one that matches your legal working arrangement. This signals to AI how engagement with you works — contract, invoice, employment.
For businesses
Business Name (Required). Your public brand name, exactly as it appears on your website and signage. Not the legal name — there's a separate field for that.
✅ Good: Bloom Coffee
❌ Bad: Bloom Coffee Ltd — Best Coffee in Shoreditch! — the legal form goes in Legal Name, the pitch goes in Descriptions.
Legal Name (Optional, recommended for registered companies). Your name as it appears in the official registry, including the legal form: Bloom Coffee Ltd. AI cross-references this against public registries — a match is a strong trust signal.
Founded Date (Optional). Year is enough: 2014. Longevity is a trust signal AI agents weigh when choosing between similar options.
Logo (Optional). A square image, at least 512×512 px, on a clean background. This appears when AI tools display your profile visually.
Registration Email (Required, all types). This is your private management email — for edit links and renewal reminders. It is never published and never shown to AI. Your public contact email comes later, in Section 6. Use an inbox you actually check: losing access means losing the ability to edit your profile.
Impact note: Name inconsistency is the single most damaging mistake in this section. Before moving on, check that your name here matches your website and your main social profile character for character.
SECTION 3: Registration Status — Prove You Legally Exist
What this does for AI
A business registration number lets AI verify you against official government registries — Companies House in the UK, state registries in the US. A profile whose registration checks out is recommended with more confidence than one that can't be verified. This is one of the cheapest trust signals you can add.
Fields
Registration Number (Optional, strongly recommended for businesses). Your official company registration number — the one publicly searchable in your country's business registry.
✅ Good: 14438520 (a UK Companies House number)
❌ Bad — and important: never enter a personal tax ID. No SSN, no National Insurance number, no personal tax reference. These are private identifiers, publishing them can violate privacy law, and AI can't verify them anyway. Only use numbers that already appear in public registries.
Country of Registration (Required if you entered a number). The country where the registration was issued — AI needs to know which registry to check against.
Consent checkbox (Required if you entered a number). You're confirming the number is public information and authorising its publication. This is your data — we only publish what you explicitly approve.
For freelancers: if you're registered as a sole trader or individual entrepreneur with a publicly searchable number, add it. If your country doesn't publish individual registrations, leave this section empty — an empty field is better than a private ID.
Impact note: skipping this won't block your profile, but verified registration is a core ingredient of the Verified badge later, and AI agents systematically prefer verifiable entities when the stakes of a recommendation are high — legal, financial, medical, or anything involving prepayment.
SECTION 4: Descriptions — The Most Important Section in Your Profile
What this does for AI
When someone asks an AI "find me someone who can X", the AI matches the meaning of that question against the text in this section. Your keywords and services help, but this is the text AI actually reads to decide whether you're the answer. A specific, factual description is the difference between being found and being invisible.
Short Description (Required, max 150 characters)
One sentence: what you do, for whom. This appears in AI answer snippets and search previews. Every word must carry information.
✅ Good: Custom software development for enterprises — AI integration, process automation, cloud solutions.
❌ Bad: We are a passionate team dedicated to delivering innovative solutions that exceed expectations. — 96 characters, zero facts. What solutions? For whom? An AI reading this learns nothing it can match against a query.
Test: could this sentence describe a thousand other companies? If yes, rewrite it until it could only describe you.
Full Overview (Recommended, 500–2000 characters)
This is where matching actually happens. Write it as if answering a thorough client who asked: "What exactly do you do, for whom, and what makes you the right choice?"
Include, in plain prose:
- What you do — name the actual services, technologies, methods. "React, Node.js, PostgreSQL" matches queries; "modern tech stack" doesn't.
- Who you serve — industries, company sizes, types of clients. "E-commerce brands doing £1–10M revenue" is matchable; "businesses of all sizes" is noise.
- What problems you solve — described the way clients describe them, because that's how they'll phrase the question to AI.
- Concrete markers — years of experience, number of projects, notable specialisations.
✅ Good (fragment): Since 2014 we've built custom software for manufacturing and logistics companies — ERP integrations, warehouse automation, and AI-powered demand forecasting. Typical projects run 3–9 months with teams of 2–5 engineers. We work with companies that have outgrown off-the-shelf tools but aren't ready to build an internal dev team.
❌ Bad: We leverage cutting-edge technology to deliver world-class solutions tailored to your unique needs. Our experienced team is committed to excellence and customer satisfaction in everything we do. — this is the description equivalent of an empty room.
Common mistake: writing for impression instead of retrieval. Adjectives ("leading", "premier", "trusted") are invisible to AI matching. Nouns and verbs ("migrate", "Shopify", "wedding", "same-day") are what gets you found.
Impact note: a profile with a weak Full Overview is findable only by name. A profile with a strong one is findable by every problem it mentions solving.
SECTION 5: Address & Location — Where AI Places You on the Map
What this does for AI
Location queries dominate AI search: "near me", "in Manchester", "who ships to Germany". This section determines which of those queries you can win. It also lets AI distinguish you from same-named entities elsewhere.
Fields
City / Town (Required). The city clients would name when searching for you. If you're based in a suburb nobody outside the area knows, consider whether the nearest major city is the honest, useful answer.
Region / State and Country — fill both. Country is required for matching ("UK-based developer"); region helps with broader area queries ("photographer in Dorset").
Full Street Address. Rules differ by type:
- Local Business — required and always public. This is the address clients visit; hiding it would defeat the purpose. Make sure it matches your Google Business Profile exactly — AI cross-references the two, and a mismatch undermines trust in both.
- Everyone else — optional, hidden by default. Your full address is stored for verification, but only your city and country are published. Freelancers working from home: keep it hidden, you lose nothing — city-level matching is all AI needs for you.
Service Area (Optional, recommended). Where you actually serve clients — which can be much bigger than where you sit.
✅ Good: Worldwide for a remote developer; Greater London, Surrey, Kent for a mobile dog groomer.
❌ Bad: leaving it empty as a remote freelancer in Lisbon — AI may assume you only serve Lisbon, and you silently lose every "find me a remote…" query from everywhere else.
Impact note: for Local Businesses this section is half the value of the profile. For remote businesses, Service Area is the field that prevents AI from accidentally shrinking your market to your home town.
SECTION 6: Contact Information — Make Yourself Reachable
What this does for AI
AI agents don't just find businesses — increasingly they act: draft an email, suggest a call, link a website. This section is what makes your profile actionable rather than just informational. A profile AI can't act on is a dead end, and AI agents prefer recommending options that aren't dead ends.
Fields
Contact Email (Required, public). This is the email clients and AI agents will see — different from your private Registration Email. Use a role address if you have one: hello@, sales@, info@ on your own domain.
✅ Good: [email protected] — matches your website domain, instantly credible.
⚠️ Acceptable: [email protected] — fine for freelancers and small businesses, but if you own a domain, an address on it is a meaningful trust signal: it proves the profile and the website belong to the same entity.
Website (Required choice):
- I have my own website — enter the full URL of your main site. Your homepage, not a deep link, not your Instagram.
- Create a free page for me — if you don't have a website, we generate an AI-optimised public page from your profile. It's a real, indexable web presence, not a placeholder.
Business Phone (Optional). International format with country code: +44 1202 123456. If you never answer unknown numbers, skip it — a listed phone that's never answered is worse than no phone.
Impact note: after this section, your free profile is complete and publishes automatically. Everything below — Sections 7 to 11 — is part of the Verified tier.
SECTION 7: AI Search Optimization — Speak the Language of Queries 🔒 Verified
What this does for AI
Keywords here map directly to the knowsAbout field in your structured data — the most literal matching signal your profile has. Your description tells AI what you do in prose; keywords tell it in exactly the terms queries use.
Search Keywords (Required for Verified, 3–20 tags)
Think in queries, not categories. A client doesn't ask AI for "digital services" — they ask "find someone to migrate my store from WooCommerce to Shopify". Your keywords should be the phrases inside those questions.
✅ Good: Shopify migration, WooCommerce to Shopify, e-commerce SEO, Shopify Plus development
❌ Bad: quality, professional services, innovation, digital — nobody's query contains these words as the thing they're looking for.
Three rules:
- Specific beats broad.
React Native developerwins matches thatdevelopernever will — broad terms put you in competition with everyone, specific terms put you in competition with almost no one. - 5–7 focused keywords beat 20 scattered ones. Twenty keywords spanning unrelated fields dilute what you're actually about.
- Use your clients' words, not industry jargon. If clients say "fix my website",
website repairoutperformsfull-stack remediation services.
Language Assistance (Optional)
List every language you can genuinely serve clients in. AI uses this to match you with users searching in other languages — a German-speaking client asking ChatGPT in German for a UK accountant will be matched to profiles listing German. This field is free reach that most profiles forget to claim.
Impact note: this section is the highest-leverage part of the Verified tier. If you only spend ten extra minutes anywhere, spend them here.
SECTION 8: Pricing & Offers — Help AI Answer "How Much" 🔒 Verified
What this does for AI
A huge share of real queries include budget: "logo designer under £500", "CRM around $100 a month". Profiles without pricing simply can't be matched against these queries — AI won't guess your prices, it skips you. Listed services also give AI a precise menu of what can be bought from you, beyond what your description implies.
Services
Service Name — name services the way clients buy them, one service per entry.
✅ Good: Brand Identity Design, Monthly SEO Retainer, Kitchen Renovation
❌ Bad: Our Services as a single entry, or Solutions — AI can't match a query against a label that means nothing.
Service Description — one or two sentences on what's included. This is matching text, same rules as Section 4: facts, not adjectives.
Price Range — your honest, typical range. A wide-but-true range (£3,000–£25,000) is fine and far better than nothing. The fear that listed prices scare clients away works in reverse with AI: no price means you're excluded from every budget-qualified query, and the clients who do come through have no expectations set.
Pricing Page URL — if you have a public pricing page, link it. AI agents follow it for details and treat public pricing as a transparency signal.
Products
Same logic, plus: SKU if you have one, Billing Period (one-time, monthly, annual — critical for SaaS, since "per month" queries are budget queries), and In Stock status.
Impact note: pricing is the most commonly skipped section and the most expensive skip. Every query with a budget in it — and that's a large fraction of high-intent queries — passes you by.
SECTION 9: Delivery & Operations — Set Expectations Before First Contact 🔒 Verified
What this does for AI
Queries carry operational constraints all the time: "open on Sunday", "same-day response", "can come to my office", "ships to Ireland". This section lets AI filter you in — or correctly filter you out, which also matters: wrong-fit enquiries waste your time too.
Fields
Working Hours and Time Zone — your real availability. For Local Businesses this is essential — "open now" is one of the most common query filters in existence. Format like Mon–Fri, 09:00–18:00.
Response Time — pick honestly. "Within an hour" wins urgent queries, but a broken promise here costs more than a modest one: clients arrive with the expectation AI set for them.
Work Format — Remote, On-site (you visit the client), In-person (clients come to you). Select all that genuinely apply. This single field answers "can you find me someone who'll come to our office" — a query you can't win if the field is empty.
Shipping (for products) — countries you ship to, rates, delivery time. "Who ships X to Y" queries are won and lost entirely on this data.
Impact note: quick to fill, pure filter value. Five minutes here and AI stops sending you enquiries you can't serve — and starts sending the ones you can.
SECTION 10: Authority & Network — Give AI Reasons to Trust You 🔒 Verified
What this does for AI
When several profiles match a query equally well, AI ranks by trust. Trust, for an AI, is verifiability: how many independent places on the web confirm you exist, do what you claim, and are well-regarded. Every link in this section is a confirmation source.
Where to focus
If you're a solo specialist: prioritise Social Profiles and Certifications. If you're a company: add Team and Partners as well. Don't force empty categories — three real links beat ten padded ones.
Fields
Social Profiles (up to 10). Link only profiles that are alive and consistent with this one — same name, same line of work. These links power entity resolution: they're how AI confirms that the LinkedIn company, the GitHub org, and this profile are the same entity. A dead Twitter account from 2019 is a negative signal, not a neutral one. LinkedIn and GitHub (for tech) carry the most weight.
External Reviews. Link your review pages — Google Reviews, Trustpilot, Clutch, industry platforms. Independent reviews are the trust signal AI weighs most heavily, because you don't control them.
Certifications & Awards. Only list what you could prove if asked: ISO 27001, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Top Developer 2025 — Clutch.
❌ Bad: Best agency in London — awarded by whom? Unverifiable claims lower your trust score rather than raising it. An AI that can't confirm one claim discounts all the others.
Team Members (companies, up to 20). Key people with their LinkedIn profiles. A company whose team is visible and real is harder to fake — AI knows this.
Partners & Suppliers. Formal partnerships only — AWS Partner Network, a manufacturer you're an authorised dealer for. "We once worked with" is not a partnership.
Business Policies. Links to your Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy. Mundane, but their presence marks you as a real operating business — and the links must be publicly accessible, no login walls.
Impact note: this section rarely gets you found — Sections 4 and 7 do that. It gets you chosen when AI is deciding between you and three competitors who matched the same query.
SECTION 11: FAQ — Answer the Questions Before They're Asked 🔒 Verified
What this does for AI
FAQ content is among the most heavily extracted and cited content on the web: AI systems lift question-and-answer pairs directly into their responses. Each FAQ entry is a chance for your profile to be the literal answer to a literal question someone asks an AI. Unlike a website FAQ squeezed by design constraints, here your answers can be as long and thorough as the question deserves.
How to write questions
Write them exactly as a client would type or say them — because that's what AI matches against.
✅ Good: How much does a kitchen renovation cost?, Do you work with startups?, What happens if I'm not happy with the result?
❌ Bad: Our Pricing Philosophy, Why Choose Us — these are headings, not questions. Nobody asks an AI "what is your pricing philosophy".
Cover four kinds of questions:
- The obvious ones — price, timeline, process, what's included.
- The objections — "what if it doesn't work", "do you require prepayment", "what's your refund policy".
- The qualifiers — "do you work with small businesses", "do you take international clients".
- The ones you answer in every first call. If you find yourself explaining the same thing to every new client, that explanation belongs here.
How to write answers
First sentence answers the question directly — no warm-up, no "great question". Then add the detail. Use numbers and specifics wherever they exist.
✅ Good: Most kitchen renovations cost £8,000–£20,000 depending on size and finishes. A typical mid-range project for a 12m² kitchen runs around £12,000 including labour and materials. We provide a fixed quote after a free site visit.
❌ Bad: Every project is unique, so it's hard to say! Contact us for a personalised quote. — this answer contains no answer. AI won't cite it because there's nothing to cite.
Impact note: there's no limit on the number of questions. Ten thorough Q&As make your profile dramatically more quotable than two vague ones — every detailed answer is another query you can win.
CLOSING ARTICLE: The Pre-Publish Checklist
Before you hit publish, run through this:
- Name consistency — your name here matches your website, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile character for character.
- The thousand-companies test — read your Short Description. Could it describe a thousand other businesses? If yes, it describes none, including yours. Rewrite.
- Nouns over adjectives — scan your Full Overview. Circle every "leading", "innovative", "passionate", "trusted". Replace each with a fact, a number, or a named technology — or delete it.
- Every link works — click each URL you entered. Each opens, loads, requires no login, and shows the same name as this profile.
- Numbers are honest — prices, response times, working hours reflect reality. AI sets your clients' expectations with these numbers; you'll meet those clients afterwards.
- Nothing private leaked — no personal tax IDs, no home address you meant to hide, no private phone you don't want public.
- The final test — read your profile as an AI would. Open your profile's Markdown version (
aiprobase.com/p/your-slug.md) — this is close to what AI agents actually consume. Read it as a stranger. Can you tell within ten seconds what this person or business does, for whom, where, and how to reach them? If a stranger can, so can every AI agent on the web.
Your profile isn't a set-and-forget asset. When your services, prices, or availability change, update it — AI agents re-read profiles, and stale data costs trust on both ends. Fifteen minutes a quarter keeps you accurate.
