How to get your accounting firm recommended by ChatGPT
A business owner who needs an accountant used to ask a friend or search Google. Now a lot of them ask ChatGPT, and it names two or three firms. This page shows you the questions they ask, where those answers come from, and the ten things that decide whether your firm is one of the names.
This is what gets typed: whole sentences, with the problem in them, rather than keywords.
These are the shapes of question owners type. The business, the problem and the budget, usually all in one sentence.
Of US Google searches now end without anyone clicking through to a website. The answer happened on the results page.
SparkToro, 2026
Of Google searches now show an AI answer at the top. Your listing sits below it, and most people never scroll that far.
TechCrunch, July 2026
Of the links in Google's AI answers go to YouTube. Reddit gets another 19%. Most of what the AI reads is not your website.
Ahrefs, across all topics
The AI reads other sites far more than yours.
AI tools do not guess which accountant to suggest. They read pages and name the firms they read about. For accounting questions, the same few places keep coming up.
Professional body and tax agent registers
The register of chartered accountants, CPAs or registered tax agents in your country. It settles whether your firm is real and qualified. If your entry does not match your website, the AI is less sure about you and names someone else.
Software adviser directories
Xero and QuickBooks both list the accountants who work with their software, with location, industries and services in the same place every time. Owners search these, and the AI reads them.
Google reviews
The AI reads what reviews say. "Sorted out three years of late returns for my cafe" tells it what you do and who for. A five-star review with no words tells it nothing.
Reddit and small business groups
"Can anyone recommend an accountant for a small company" gets asked every week, in public. Ahrefs found Reddit is behind around 19% of the links in Google's AI answers, across all topics.
YouTube
The largest single source in the same Ahrefs data, at about 23%. Two minutes on what changes at the end of the tax year, or what to bring to a first meeting, is exactly what gets pulled into an answer.
Local business press and associations
A quote in a story about a tax change, a talk at the chamber of commerce, a listing with your industry association. These put your name on pages the AI already trusts.
Your own website
It backs up what the other sources say: services, fees, who you work with and who does the work. It matters, but on its own it rarely gets you named.
The 23% and 19% figures are Ahrefs numbers across all topics, not accounting specifically. We have not seen a public breakdown for accounting questions and we are not going to make one up.
Ten fixes that change what the AI says about you.
Ten fixes, in the order we would do them. Most are an afternoon for your practice manager, not a project.
Name your services the way owners ask for them
Nobody types "compliance services". They type "annual filing and tax for a small company" or "catch up on late tax returns". Rename the page and keep the formal term in the text.
Say who you work for
The industries and the size: cafes, clinics, online shops, sole traders, companies with 1 to 20 staff. Owners put their own business into the question, and a firm that says it works with cafes gets matched to "accountant for my cafe".
Publish fixed fees or price ranges
Cost is in a big share of the questions. A page that lists a monthly bookkeeping fee or a year-end package price gets picked over one that says "contact us for a quote".
Name the accountants and their qualifications
Name, photo, CA, CPA or tax agent number, and the kind of clients each person looks after. The AI can recognise a named, qualified accountant. It cannot do much with "our experienced team".
Fill in your Xero and QuickBooks adviser profiles
Industries, services, location and a short description, with the same firm name, address and phone as your website. These profiles cost nothing and most firms leave them half done.
Make your name, address and phone match everywhere
Google Business Profile, your professional body listing, directories, and the old office address still sitting on a listing from years ago. Pick one version and make everything match it.
Answer the questions owners ask before they ring
When is my tax due, what happens if I am late, do I need to register for GST, can I switch accountants mid year. Use the question as the heading and answer it in plain words.
Ask for reviews that name the job and the business
Give clients the sentence: what you did and what kind of business they run. "Set up payroll for my clinic" is the kind of line the AI repeats.
Turn up in small business groups as a person
Answer tax and bookkeeping questions in local business groups and on Reddit under your own name, with no pitch. It is slow, it builds over time, and forums are the kind of site the AI reads most.
Keep your deadline pages up to date and dated
Tax dates and rules change every year, which gives you a reason to update a page every year. Add a visible "last updated" line, and ask your web person to add a small piece of code, called FAQ schema, to each page of questions. Five minutes a page.
How likely is ChatGPT to recommend your firm? Score it in two minutes.
Answer ten quick questions about your business and get a score out of 100 straight away for how ready your business is to be recommended by AI. Within 24 hours, I ask ChatGPT three questions your clients would type, and email you whether it named you and who it named instead. It is free, and nobody rings you.
If you are not sure of an answer, that is an answer too.
Start free, then pay only for what earns its keep.
The free audit shows you what ChatGPT says today. The monthly plan starts with a full audit and a 90-day plan to change it, then tells you every month whether it worked.
1. The free basic audit
FreeTen quick questions about your accounting firm, scored out of 100. Within 24 hours, I ask ChatGPT three questions your clients would type, and email you whether it named you and who it named instead.
2. The monthly plan
US$149/moSetup, US$100 once: we ask 20 to 30 real client questions on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, several times each. You see who gets recommended and which sites the AI read. Then you get a 90-day plan: what to fix, in order, and who does it, written so your practice manager can run it.
Every month after that, we ask the same questions again and email you one report: how often you were recommended, which competitor moved, and what to do next. You pay US$249 to start, then US$149 a month. The minimum is 3 months, which comes to US$547, about US$6 a day, and it is month to month after that. These are pilot prices for our first clients.
Start with the free basic audit. It takes two minutes and you pay nothing. I do not build or maintain websites, and I do not sell guaranteed rankings.
Mark Ashworth
Co-founder, Growth Pigeon, Singapore
I have spent 25 years doing marketing in Asia, most of it for businesses that needed customers this quarter. I am not a tool and there is no agency behind me. When you buy an audit for your accounting firm, I am the one reading the answers.
The promise: no jargon. If I send you something you need me to translate, I have done it wrong. And I will never tell you a ranking is guaranteed, because AI answers change run to run and anyone claiming otherwise has not checked twice.
Stephanie Simmonds
Co-founder, Growth Pigeon, Singapore
Stephanie spent 15 years in sales and advertising, most recently at LinkedIn. She is the one to ask whether the plan is worth the money for a business your size, and she will tell you straight.
The honest answers.
Will this get my firm to the top of ChatGPT?
There is no top spot. ChatGPT names a few firms, and the list changes each time someone asks. What we do is measure how often you get named across a set of real client questions, change what feeds those answers, and measure again. Anyone promising you the number one spot in an AI answer is selling something that does not exist.
Is this just SEO with a new name?
It overlaps, but the effort goes somewhere different. How many links you have from other websites tells you very little about whether an AI names you. What helps is showing up, with the same details, in the places the AI reads. For accountants that means registers, software directories, reviews and forums more than your homepage.
How long before anything changes?
It depends on the tool and on what changes. Tools that search the web as they answer, such as Perplexity and ChatGPT with search on, can reflect a change sooner. What the AI learned before that, from its last big update, takes longer to change, and we cannot promise a date for any of them. That is why we measure where you stand first, then check again, instead of guessing.
Do we have to do anything technical?
Almost nothing technical is needed. Most of the ten fixes are writing and admin your practice manager can do: fees on the website, a complete Xero profile, matching addresses, asking for better reviews. The one technical item is the FAQ code, which is a few minutes for whoever looks after your website. The audit tells you which fixes matter most for your firm, so nobody wastes a week on the rest.
Does this fit the marketing rules for accountants?
Yes. Professional body codes of ethics generally say your marketing must be honest, must not exaggerate what you can do, and must not run down other accountants. Nothing here asks you to do any of that. The fixes are about facts: your services, your fees, your people and plain answers to client questions. Check your own professional body's rules if you are unsure.
What does the scorecard give me?
Ten questions about your own firm, two minutes, a score out of 100 and the three things to fix first. It costs nothing and nobody calls you. If it puts you in the running, it will say so. If not, the audit is the next step, because it asks the AI tools about you instead of asking you.
Growth Pigeon helps accounting firms, bookkeepers and tax agents get named when business owners ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for an accountant. We are based in Singapore. We ask the questions real clients ask, show you which firms the AI names today, and give you the fixes that change it.