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Similar signals to traditional search — consistent, structured information about credentials, specialties, location, and contact details — but AI systems particularly favor sources that clearly and directly answer the specific question being asked, which rewards clear, well-structured website content over vague or promotional language.
When someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation — "find a family lawyer in [city] who handles [specific situation]" — the assistant is trying to match specific stated needs to specific stated capabilities. A professional services website that clearly states practice areas, specializations, and location in straightforward language is more matchable than one that uses general or promotional language without specifics.
This creates an interesting dynamic: professional services websites are often written cautiously and generally, partly for compliance reasons and partly out of a sense that being too specific might seem unprofessional. But AI systems reward specificity — a page that clearly states "we handle [specific service] for clients in [specific area]" is more likely to be matched to a query asking for exactly that, than a page that says "comprehensive legal services tailored to your needs."
This doesn't require abandoning appropriate professional tone — it requires ensuring that, somewhere on the site, the specific services, specializations, and service area are stated clearly and directly, not just implied through general language. Combined with consistent information across the web and appropriate schema markup, this gives AI systems what they need to confidently include a practice in a recommendation.
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See a sample evaluation report →Specificity helps AI systems match the right queries to the right practice — a practice that's vague about what it does risks not being matched to anything specific, rather than being matched to everything.
Specificity about services and areas of practice is generally different from making claims about outcomes or results, which may have compliance considerations — clarity about what you do is usually fine; promising specific results may not be.
Asking AI assistants directly ("recommend a [your field] in [your city]") and seeing whether and how your practice appears is a simple, direct test — though results can vary by system and by query phrasing.