Danny van der Ham
Quoted by ChatGPTIn short
- AI engines read web pages well and attachments badly. A price list in a PDF is often skipped.
- When a buyer asks what something costs, the engine quotes whoever gives a clear number on a page.
- Put a "from" price in a sentence, explain what changes it, and mention your town.
The problem with a PDF
Most small businesses have their prices somewhere online. A builder has a price list, an accountant has a rate card, a cleaning company has a brochure. The trouble is where those prices live: in a PDF, a scanned flyer, or an image of a table.
AI engines are good at reading pages. They're much worse at attachments, and images of text are often ignored. So when a buyer asks "What does a dormer cost in Haarlem?", the engine looks for a page that answers it in plain text. If yours isn't there, it quotes the comparison site that is.
What we see in measurements
Take a dormer builder whose prices sit in a two-page PDF linked from the footer. For the question above, two engines name competitors who show a price on a normal page, and one quotes a large comparison site. His own business doesn't come up, even though his prices are competitive.
"Prefab dormers in Haarlem start at around €8,000 to €9,000 including placement. Dakkapel Direct and Van Wijk Bouw both list prices on their websites."
A typical answer to a cost question (example)
Nothing is wrong with his prices. They're just in a place the engines don't read.
PDF versus page
PDFPrice list in an attachment
- Often skipped by AI engines
- No heading that matches the question
- Hard to update, so it goes stale
- Can't hold FAQ markup
PagePrice on a normal web page
- Read and quoted by every engine
- Heading can match the buying question
- Easy to keep current
- Room for short answers with markup
Four things to put on the page
- 1A "from" price in a sentence, not only in a table. "A prefab dormer starts at €8,950 including placement."
- 2What changes the price: width, materials, permit, scaffolding. Engines quote ranges when the page explains them.
- 3Your town in the text. "We build dormers in Haarlem, Heemstede and Bloemendaal." Local questions need local words.
- 4Three short answers to cost questions, with FAQ markup. They're the easiest thing for an engine to quote word for word.
Keep the PDF if you like it
You don't have to delete anything. Keep the PDF for people who like to print it. Just make sure the same facts also live on a normal page, in plain sentences, under a heading that matches the question.
Afraid competitors will see your prices? They already can, they just open the PDF. The only one who can't read it is the AI engine your next customer is asking.
Questions we get
My prices depend on the job. What should I show?
Show a "from" price or a typical range, and explain what moves it up or down. A range with an explanation is quoted far more often than "price on request".
Does this also work for services, not products?
Yes. An hourly rate, a package price or "most clients pay between X and Y a month" all work. The point is a number in a sentence.
Will showing prices scare customers away?
In our experience it filters more than it scares. People who still call after seeing a price are usually closer to buying.
Written by
Danny van der HamCo-founder of Mentiofy. Runs several small businesses himself and built Mentiofy because he wanted to know what AI says about them.
Perplexity
Oleksii