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How Saudis use AI search to find businesses

How people in Saudi Arabia use ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews to pick businesses, and what a Saudi company must fix to be the name they get back.

By Ibrahem HelalAI-assisted, reviewed by Jeremy ZavaPublished 23 September 202615 min read

Saudis use AI search as a shortlist builder. They ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews a full question in Arabic or English, get three to five named businesses back, then check those names on Google Maps, Instagram or WhatsApp before they call. If your business is not in that first answer, most buyers never see it.

This guide explains who is asking, what they ask, which tools they use, and what a Saudi business has to fix to be named. If you want someone to check where you stand today, our AI visibility audit does exactly that, and our pricing page shows what ongoing work costs.

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What does AI search look like in Saudi Arabia today?

AI search in Saudi Arabia is a mix of three habits. People ask chat assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini for advice. They see Google's AI Overviews on top of normal search results. And they use AI features inside apps they already have, such as the assistant built into their phone or messaging apps.

The common thread is the question. Buyers no longer type "dentist Riyadh". They type or say "which dental clinic in north Riyadh is good for kids and takes Bupa?" That longer question gets a written answer with names in it, not ten blue links. The buyer reads the answer, picks two or three names, and goes to check them.

This matters because the country is young, online and mobile-first. Smartphone use is close to universal, and new tools spread quickly through family groups and social media. We cover the adoption side in detail in what AI adoption in Saudi Arabia actually looks like, including where the public numbers come from and which ones to distrust.

For a business owner, the practical point is simple. A growing part of your buyer's research now happens inside an answer you did not write. You cannot buy a slot in it. You can only make it easy for the assistant to find you, understand you and trust you.

Google itself describes AI Overviews and AI Mode as features that show links to pages that support the answer, and says the same SEO basics apply to them as to normal search [1]. That is the good news. The work is not magic. It is ordinary search work, done with more care about facts, listings and language.

Which AI tools do Saudis actually use to find businesses?

Four tools matter most for business discovery: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Perplexity. Each one finds information in a slightly different way, so each one rewards slightly different work.

ChatGPT is the name most people mean when they say "AI". OpenAI runs separate crawlers for training and for search, and a site owner can allow one and block the other [3]. That detail matters: many Saudi sites block every bot they do not recognise, and in doing so they drop out of ChatGPT's search answers without knowing it.

Gemini is closer to Google than people expect. It draws on the same world of Google Search and Google Maps, so the state of your Google Business Profile has a direct effect on it. We look at how Gemini behaves for Saudi users, and where it differs from ChatGPT, in Gemini in Saudi Arabia.

AI Overviews are different again because they are not a separate app. They appear on the Google results page that people already use. Google launched them widely in 2024 and has kept extending them [2]. How they behave on Arabic results pages is its own topic, covered in AI Overviews in Arabic.

Perplexity has a smaller audience but a loyal one among professionals and students. It cites its sources openly and uses its own crawler, which you can allow or block in robots.txt [4].

What do Saudi buyers ask an AI before they choose a business?

Saudi buyers ask for recommendations, comparisons and reassurance. The questions are longer and more personal than old search queries, and they usually include a place, a budget or a condition.

Three kinds of questions come up again and again:

• "Who is best for…?" — "Best orthodontist in Jeddah for adults", "best interior design company in Riyadh for villas". These produce a named shortlist.
• "Is X good?" — "Is this clinic good?", "Is this store legit?". These check a name the buyer already has.
• "X or Y?" — "Salla store or Instagram shop?", "Hotel near the Boulevard or near the airport?". These compare options.

The first kind is where new business is won or lost. The second is where reviews and complaints hurt you. The third is where clear, factual pages about your offer make the difference.

Clinics show the pattern clearly. Ask ChatGPT a few plain questions about Riyadh clinics and the same small group of names tends to come back, and those clinics usually share a few traits: complete listings, many recent reviews, and pages that say plainly what they treat and where they are. A step-by-step method for running that test yourself is in what ChatGPT recommends for Riyadh clinics.

Do Arabic and English prompts return different businesses?

Often, yes. The same question asked in Arabic and in English can return a different list of businesses, because the assistant is drawing on different pages, reviews and listings in each language.

Many Saudi buyers move between the two without thinking about it. A professional might ask in English at work and in Arabic at home. A younger buyer might mix the two in one sentence. If your site is strong in English and thin in Arabic, you may be recommended to one group and invisible to the other.

The fix is not a translation plugin. Machine-translated pages read badly, and assistants seem to treat them as weak sources. What works is real Arabic content written for Arabic questions, with the same facts as the English version: the same name, address, phone number, prices and services.

Keep your business name consistent too. If your English listing says "Al Noor Dental" and your Arabic listing uses a different spelling or a different name altogether, an assistant may treat them as two businesses and trust neither. Pick one Arabic name and one English name and use them everywhere.

We tested this side by side, prompt by prompt, in Arabic vs English prompts. The short version: plan for both languages from day one, and measure both, because a win in one tells you nothing about the other.

Is AI search replacing Google for Saudi buyers?

No. It is sitting in front of Google and on top of it. Buyers use AI for the thinking step and Google, Maps and social apps for the checking step.

This split tells you where to spend. Classic SEO and a clean Google Business Profile still pay for themselves, because the final click, call or WhatsApp message still happens there. AI visibility decides whether you reach that final step at all.

Google's own move makes the line blurry. AI Overviews and AI Mode are part of Google Search, and Google says pages need to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear as a supporting link [1]. So good SEO is the entry ticket for Google's AI features too. The detailed comparison, including where each channel sends buyers in Saudi Arabia, is in AI search vs Google in Saudi Arabia.

The honest answer for a business owner is to stop treating them as rivals. You need one set of facts, published cleanly, that both kinds of search can read.

Why do AI assistants recommend some Saudi businesses and not others?

Assistants recommend businesses they can find, understand and trust. Finding depends on crawler access. Understanding depends on clear pages and structured facts. Trust depends on what other sites say about you.

Start with access. OpenAI documents its crawlers and the robots.txt names they use, including the one used for search results [3]. Perplexity does the same [4]. Many Saudi sites are built by agencies that add strict security rules or bot blockers, and those rules sometimes block these crawlers by default. If a crawler cannot read your pages, you will not be quoted from them.

Next, understanding. An assistant needs to know, in plain words, what you do, for whom, where and at what price. Most Saudi service sites hide this behind slogans and image sliders. A page that says "We treat braces and clear aligners for adults and teens at our clinic in Al Olaya, Riyadh, open until 11 pm" is far easier to use than one that says "Your smile, our passion". Structured data helps as well: Google documents a LocalBusiness format for names, addresses, hours and contact details [5].

Then trust. Assistants lean hard on third-party sources: directories, review sites, news, maps and forums. Your own site says you are good; other sites confirm it. That is why listings matter so much in AI answers, and why we wrote a separate guide on local citations in AI answers covering which directories matter in Saudi Arabia and how to keep them consistent.

Finally, recency and volume of reviews. A clinic with a steady flow of recent reviews looks alive. One with forty reviews from 2021 looks closed, even if it is busy.

Google's guidance on helpful, reliable content applies here too. Pages written for people, with clear authorship and real experience, are the pages both search engines and assistants prefer to use.

Which Saudi brands already get cited by AI, and what do they share?

The brands that get named most often are not always the biggest. They are the ones with the clearest public footprint: consistent names, complete listings, lots of reviews, and plenty of other sites talking about them.

Large retailers, banks, telecom companies and airlines are named often because they are covered constantly by news sites and forums. That is hard to copy. But smaller brands also get named, and they usually share three habits. They answer common questions on their own site in plain words. They keep their listings complete in both languages. And they are mentioned by trusted local sources, such as guides, lists and local news.

We collected examples of brands that show up again and again, sector by sector, in Saudi brands cited by AI. The pattern is more useful than the list: none of them did anything secret. They simply left a clear, consistent trail across the web.

A useful exercise is to ask an assistant about your own competitors. Ask "who are the best [your service] companies in [your city]?" in both languages, then look at what sources the assistant cites or seems to draw from. That list is your to-do list: those are the sites where you need to appear.

How does AI search change for clinics, real estate and hotels?

The basics are the same across sectors, but each sector has its own questions, its own directories and its own trust signals. Three sectors feel the change most in Saudi Arabia: healthcare, real estate and hospitality.

Clinics and healthcare. Health questions are high stakes, so assistants are careful. They tend to name clinics with clear doctor profiles, stated specialties, insurance details and strong reviews. They also tend to avoid clinics whose pages make bold medical claims. Our guide to GEO for clinics in Saudi Arabia covers doctor pages, insurance lists and how to talk about treatments without overpromising.

Real estate. Property buyers ask long, specific questions about districts, prices, payment plans and developers. Assistants answer best when a developer or broker publishes clear, factual pages for each project and each district. Listing portals dominate here, so your own pages need to add facts the portals do not have. See GEO for real estate in Saudi Arabia for the page types that work.

Hotels and hospitality. Travellers, pilgrims and local families all use assistants to plan. They ask about location, family rooms, prayer facilities, distance to events and price. Booking sites and review platforms carry a lot of weight, so the hotel's own site has to match them exactly. The full playbook is in GEO for hospitality in Saudi Arabia.

For online stores, the question is different again. A buyer asks "where can I buy X in Saudi Arabia with fast delivery?" and the assistant looks for stores it can verify. If you sell on Salla, there are specific steps to make your store readable: see getting a Salla store into ChatGPT.

How do you get your Saudi business named in AI answers?

Work in this order: open the door, state the facts, match the listings, earn the mentions, then measure. Skipping the early steps wastes money on the later ones.

Step one is the fastest win. It is common for a site to block AI search crawlers through a hosting default or a security plugin that nobody chose on purpose. Fixing that costs almost nothing, and for assistants that search the live web the change can show within weeks.

Steps two to four are the core work and take a few weeks to a few months, depending on the size of the site and how messy the listings are. Step five is slow and never finished, like any reputation work. Step six is how you know whether any of it is working.

If you want the global version of this method, not tied to Saudi Arabia, our playbook on generative engine optimization goes deeper on each step.

How do you know if AI search is sending you customers?

Measure two things: how often you are named, and how many visits and leads come from AI tools. The first tells you about visibility. The second tells you about money.

Naming is measured with a fixed prompt set, as in the last step above. Keep the questions the same each month so the numbers are comparable. Record which assistant, which language, whether you were named, where in the answer, and which competitors appeared. A simple spreadsheet is enough to start.

Visits are harder. Some AI tools pass a referrer, so visits from them show up in analytics under their own names. Others do not, and those visits land as "direct". Many buyers also never click at all: they read the answer, then search your name on Google Maps or open WhatsApp. So AI referral traffic always undercounts the real effect.

Two practical fixes help. Add "How did you hear about us?" to your booking and contact forms, with "ChatGPT or another AI tool" as an option. And watch branded searches on Google: if more people search your exact name after you start appearing in AI answers, that is the effect showing up somewhere you can measure it.

We explain how to set up analytics for this, and what numbers to expect, in AI referral traffic in Saudi Arabia.

What mistakes keep Saudi businesses out of AI answers?

Most businesses that are never named are not doing anything wrong on purpose. They are making a few quiet mistakes that add up.

The first is blocking crawlers without knowing it, which we covered above. The second is having two or three versions of the business name floating around the web: an old trading name on one directory, a new brand name on the site, and a transliterated Arabic name on Google Maps. To a person these are obviously the same business. To an assistant they can look like three weak businesses instead of one strong one.

The third mistake is putting the important facts inside images. Prices on a poster, opening hours in an Instagram story, a service list inside a PDF menu. People can read these, but crawlers often cannot, so the assistant simply does not know the fact exists.

The fourth is chasing volume instead of clarity. Publishing fifty thin blog posts in a month does less than rewriting five key pages so they answer real questions in both languages. Google warns against content made mainly to rank rather than to help people, and assistants tend to reward the same pages Google does.

The last mistake is giving up too early. AI answers change from week to week, and one bad result means little. Judge the work on a monthly prompt set over a quarter, not on a single screenshot someone sent you on WhatsApp.

What does AI visibility work cost, and is it worth it?

It costs less than most people expect to start and more than most people expect to keep up. The first fixes are cheap. The ongoing work of listings, content in two languages and mentions is where the real cost sits.

A one-off audit and fix of crawler access, key pages and structured data is a small project. Ongoing work usually sits inside an SEO retainer, because the same pages, listings and mentions serve Google and the assistants at once. That is also why you should be wary of anyone selling AI visibility as a separate product with its own large fee and no SEO underneath.

Is it worth it? For businesses where buyers compare options before they choose — clinics, property, schools, hotels, professional services, higher-priced online stores — yes. For businesses where buyers simply walk to the nearest option, a clean Google Business Profile does most of the work, and deeper AI work can wait.

Be sceptical of promises. Nobody can guarantee that an assistant will name you. What a good partner can promise is to fix the things that stop you being named, to measure your naming rate every month, and to tell you honestly when a tactic is not working. Our own prices are on the pricing page; we are an agency, so weigh our view with that in mind.

What this guide covers next

Each part of this guide has its own deeper article. Here is where to go next, depending on your question.

• For the numbers behind adoption and who uses what, read AI adoption in Saudi Arabia explained.
• For how Google's AI answers behave on Arabic results pages, read AI Overviews in Arabic.
• For a worked look at which clinics get recommended and why, read what ChatGPT recommends for Riyadh clinics.
• For how the language of the question changes the answer, read Arabic vs English prompts.
• For online stores on Salla, read getting a Salla store into ChatGPT.
• For which directories and listings feed AI answers, read local citations in AI answers.
• For sector playbooks, read GEO for real estate in Saudi Arabia, GEO for clinics in Saudi Arabia and GEO for hospitality in Saudi Arabia.
• For how AI and Google split the buyer's journey, read AI search vs Google in Saudi Arabia.
• For the brands that already win and what they share, read Saudi brands cited by AI.
• For Google's own assistant, read Gemini in Saudi Arabia.
• For measuring visits and leads, read AI referral traffic in Saudi Arabia.

One source worth adding to that list: press coverage. An assistant weighing which business to name leans on the same third-party mentions a search engine does, and pitching regional publications for coverage is a direct way to add more of them.

Questions people also ask

• Do people in Saudi Arabia really use ChatGPT to choose a business?

  Yes, for a growing share of decisions, especially ones with a shortlist: clinics, schools, property, restaurants, hotels and online stores. Most still check Google Maps or Instagram before they act, so the assistant shapes the shortlist and the old channels confirm it.

• Should I optimise for Arabic prompts or English prompts?

  Both. Many Saudi buyers switch between the two in the same week, and assistants often return different businesses for each language. Publish real Arabic pages, not machine-translated copies, and keep names, addresses and phone numbers identical in both.

• Is AI search replacing Google in Saudi Arabia?

  No. It is changing what happens before and on Google. AI Overviews now sit on top of many Google results, and assistants handle the research step. Google Maps and direct brand searches still carry most of the final clicks and calls.

• How long does it take to start appearing in AI answers?

  Fixes to crawler access and listings can show up in weeks for assistants that search the live web. Being named for competitive questions, such as the best clinic in a district, usually takes three to six months of consistent pages, listings and mentions.

• Can an agency guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend my business?

  No. Nobody controls what an assistant says. An honest agency can fix what stops assistants reading and trusting you, measure how often you are named for a fixed set of prompts, and report that number every month.

Sources

1. AI features and your website — Google Search Central (checked 23 September 2026)
2. Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you — Google (checked 23 September 2026)
3. Overview of OpenAI crawlers — OpenAI (checked 23 September 2026)
4. Perplexity crawlers — Perplexity (checked 23 September 2026)
5. Local business structured data — Google Search Central (checked 23 September 2026)

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Who wrote this

Ibrahem HelalCo-founder

Leads strategy and delivery.

Works on: SEO, GEO

Reviewed before publishing by Jeremy Zava, Co-founder.

Posts by Ibrahem Helal

More on this

• AI adoption in Saudi Arabia explainedHow many people in Saudi Arabia are online, and how that connectivity turns into ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews use for everyday buying decisions.
• AI search vs Google in Saudi ArabiaHow asking ChatGPT or Gemini differs from Googling in Saudi Arabia today, how much search still goes to Google, and what each means for getting found.
• Arabic vs English AI prompts: what changesWe compared how ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews answer the same buying question in Arabic and in English, and what the gap means for your content.
• Local citations in AI answersWhich directories, listings and profiles feed AI answers in Saudi Arabia, and the exact steps to keep them consistent enough for an assistant to trust.