AI assistants recommend the firms they can read clearly and check somewhere else. You can’t pay for a place in the answer, but you can control the inputs. Publish your fees and specialties in plain text. Keep your facts identical everywhere. Let the AI crawlers in. Get onto the independent sources assistants trust. Each step below is something an assistant measurably reads.
If you want the background first, start with How AI assistants choose which financial advisors to recommend.
What’s measurably happening
AI assistants are already reading advisor pages. In the 28 days to October 30, 2026, AI assistants and AI search requested Wellspent’s advisor pages and data 38,670 times, counting only verified requests from the AI companies. Most of that came in the last few days, as AI search engines indexed the full public graph.
Some of those visits build the search indexes assistants draw on later. Others are an assistant opening a page in the moment, because someone asked it a question that page might answer.
They also recommend by name. In our study of 600 AI answers, every answer named specific firms, and 77% cited at least one fee-only firm’s own website as a source.
One firm’s experience shows where this leads. On a March 2026 Kitces podcast, Helen Stephens described growing her firm to $660 million in assets through search, then seeing rising traffic and inquiries from ChatGPT. She tracks AI referrals alongside web traffic, and her content shifted toward detailed answers to tax questions.
1. Publish your fees in plain text
Clients ask AI what advice costs, and assistants quote numbers they can find. Put your fees on a page as text, not in a PDF or an image:
- Your ongoing fee or retainer, with a starting point (“from $3,600 a year”).
- Your one-time plan or project fee.
- Your hourly rate, if you have one.
- Your AUM schedule, if you use one, with the breakpoints.
- Your minimum, or a clear “no minimum”.
For context, the median fee-only firm that publishes prices charges $4,500 a year for ongoing planning, $2,000 for a one-time plan, $300 an hour, or 1% of assets (Wellspent fee report). About half of fee-only firm websites list any price we could verify, so publishing yours puts you in the half that can be quoted.
Compliance teams sometimes worry about published fees. A plain fee schedule that matches your Form ADV Part 2A is the same information you already file publicly.
2. Say who you serve, specifically
“Comprehensive wealth management for families” matches nothing in particular. “Fee-only planning for tech employees with RSUs and ISOs in the Bay Area” matches a real question. On your site, name:
- The two or three kinds of clients you serve most.
- The planning problems you solve for them, in their words (“should I sell my vested shares?”).
- Where you work, and whether you work virtually.
- Your credentials, written out once (“Certified Financial Planner, CFP”).
About 4 in 10 fee-only firm websites name no specialty beyond retirement, tax or estate planning. Naming one is the cheapest way to stand out in AI answers.
3. Write one clear page per real question
AI assistants look for passages that answer the question asked. A page titled “How we help executives decide when to exercise stock options,” with a direct first paragraph, gets matched more often than a general services page. Start each page with the answer, then the detail. Date it, and update it when the numbers change.
You don’t need volume. A dozen pages that answer the questions your best clients actually asked you beat a hundred generic posts.
4. Keep your facts identical everywhere
Assistants check what they read against other sources. If your website, SEC record, directory listings, LinkedIn and Google Business Profile disagree on your firm name, city, fees or specialties, the assistant has to guess, and it may skip you.
Once a year, check:
- Your firm and advisor names, spelled the same way.
- Your address and the areas you serve.
- Your fees and minimum.
- Your credentials.
- Old profiles from a former firm. Update or remove them.
5. Let the AI crawlers in
Check your robots.txt file (yoursite.com/robots.txt) and any security or firewall settings for rules that block AI bots. Hosting plugins sometimes block them by default.
There are three kinds of AI crawlers, and you can treat them differently:
| Kind | Examples | What blocking it does |
|---|---|---|
| Answer fetchers | ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, DuckAssistBot | The assistant can’t open your page while answering a client |
| Search indexers | OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot | Your pages drop out of the assistant’s search results |
| Training crawlers | GPTBot, ClaudeBot | Your pages aren’t used to train future models |
If you want to be recommended, allow the answer fetchers and search indexers at the least. Whether you allow training crawlers is a separate decision.
Also make sure key facts are in the page’s text. Crawlers often don’t run scripts, read images or open PDFs.
6. Get onto sources AI assistants trust
Assistants lean on independent sources to confirm what your site says. The most useful kinds:
- Directories that verify you. A listing that checks your registration and fee-only status carries more weight than a page anyone can create. Kitces’ 2026 study also found online directories had the lowest cost per $1 of new revenue of any channel ($0.28). See Best financial advisor directories, compared honestly.
- Structured profiles. Pages that state fees, specialties, credentials and location as clear facts, ideally with sources, are easy for an assistant to quote.
- Your SEC record. Make sure your Form ADV describes your services and fees the way your website does.
7. Get quoted in the press
A quote in Kiplinger, CNBC or Yahoo Finance on the topic of your niche is the kind of independent mention assistants rely on. It also tells the assistant which topic you’re an expert on. Reporters need a clear one-paragraph description of your expertise, fast replies, and a specific point of view backed by experience.
Mistakes that keep firms out of AI answers
- Fees only in a PDF. Many firms publish their fee schedule as a downloadable PDF or inside Form ADV Part 2A. Assistants often don’t open them. Put the same numbers on a web page.
- A specialty only in a headline image. If “We specialize in physicians” is part of a banner graphic, a crawler sees nothing. Put it in the page text.
- A security plugin that blocks bots. Firewall and plugin settings that block “bad bots” sometimes block the AI crawlers too. Check after every website change.
- An old site still online. A previous website, a former firm’s profile page or a stale directory listing can outweigh your current site if it has been around longer. Redirect or remove it.
- Vague language everywhere. “Holistic”, “comprehensive” and “tailored” describe every firm. Swap at least one of them on each page for a specific fact.
- Chasing every assistant separately. You don’t need a strategy per assistant. The same clear, consistent, sourced facts serve ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and search engines alike.
How to check if it’s working
Ask an AI assistant the questions your ideal client would ask, the way they’d ask them, with your city and their situation. Do it in a fresh chat with web search on. Write down who gets named and which sources are cited. Repeat it monthly, because answers change as the web changes.
Wellspent members get this done for them in a monthly AI visibility report: questions built from the member’s own published record, put to an AI assistant with web search, with every named advisor and cited source pulled out. We’re also running the same method across 100 US and Canadian cities for a public study.
Where Wellspent fits
Wellspent gives fee-only advisors a verified record in the public graph at find.wellspent.co. The record states fees, specialties, credentials and the clients you serve, checked against SEC data, in a format search engines and AI assistants read directly. Membership is $89 a month and includes the monthly AI visibility report, introductions from prospects with no lead fees, and quarterly press placement with partners such as Forbes, CNBC and Kiplinger. Ranking is by fit to the question, never by payment. See How it works.