Clients Stopped Googling and Ask AI Instead — and the AI Recommends a Different Law Firm
felitram · reddit · 2026-10-07
A lawyer who has run a small family-law firm for 12 years reports that potential clients increasingly say "I asked ChatGPT and your firm didn't come up" or "Perplexity recommended someone else." People don't Google anymore — they ask AI, and the AI names someone else.
He doesn't understand how ChatGPT decides which firm to name: reviews, website content, something else? He found an Intercore Technologies article on AI retrieval mechanisms, whose gist is "if you're not visible in the right places, you don't exist." His closing question: can a small firm even compete with big names for AI visibility? The post is a real-market signal of the shift from SEO to AEO (AI engine optimization).
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