A family collects the keys to a villa in Dubai Hills and asks an assistant who should design it. The assistant writes a short answer and names a few studios. This page is about what that answer is built from and what a studio can change.
What assistants lean on
For local service questions, assistants draw on what they can read and trust: studio websites, Google Business Profiles and reviews, design press and award lists, directories and sometimes Instagram captions. US designers have reported clients who found them through ChatGPT, with the assistant citing the designer’s Instagram.
Broad questions rarely name small studios. One July 2026 test of 45 generic interior designer questions by an SEO agency found ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini named a specific studio in under one answer in ten. Questions with a place or a need named firms far more often. That is where a studio has a fair chance.
Four things a studio can change
1. Be readable. In our scan of five Dubai villa interior studio sites on 5 October 2026, one refused AI crawlers at the server even though its robots.txt allowed them. Check your hosting and security settings. A site an assistant cannot read cannot be quoted.
2. Say it plainly. Your homepage and project pages should state in text what you design and where: “villa interiors in Dubai Hills and Arabian Ranches, design to handover”. Words inside images do not count.
3. One page per project, with the place. “A four bedroom villa on the Palm for a family who cook every night” gives a question with a place something to match. Add the brief and one decision you made.
4. Match your facts everywhere. The same studio name as on your trade licence, on your website, Google profile, Instagram and LinkedIn. Real reviews that mention the area and the type of project.
What not to do
Do not buy a place on “top 10 interior designers in Dubai” lists written by the firms in them. Do not let a plugin write an llms.txt you never read. In one of our scans of Dubai architecture sites, an llms.txt listed 108 posts and 79 of them were gambling pages. And do not trust a single screenshot. Answers vary by wording and by week.
How to know whether it moved
Pick eight to twelve questions your clients really ask, with places and needs. Ask them to ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude every month in a clean session and save each answer with the date and the exact wording. That record is the only honest measure. It is what our monthly check does for every client. What our free audit does once for you.