Be the firm people find when they ask Google and AI who to trust.

Yes. Checking where your own pages appear on Google, and whether ChatGPT or Gemini names your firm, is research about your own visibility. It is not an advertisement, a solicitation or a communication to investors, policyholders or clients, so it sits outside the advertising codes.

What those codes do govern is what you publish. That is where care is needed:

• SEBI-registered firms follow SEBI's advertisement rules, and from early April 2027 the new Common Advertisement Code. (NSE circular on the SEBI Common Advertisement Code, 2026)
• Insurers and their distribution channels follow IRDAI's 2024 framework, which replaced the 2021 advertisement regulations. (Mondaq, 2024)
• CA firms follow ICAI's 2020 website guidelines, and practising company secretaries follow ICSI's 2020 advertisement guidelines, which count a website as an advertisement. (ICSI FAQ on advertisement guidelines, 2020)

So the tracking is fine, and the content decisions stay with you and your compliance officer. Our suggestions lean towards factual, educational pages: how a process works, which documents are needed, what a registration means. Those fit every code we know of, and they are also the pages people search for.

A sensible routine is to run any new page past your compliance officer before it goes live, keep a dated copy, and use Google Visibility only to see whether it is being found. This is general information, not legal advice.

Because Rule 36 of the Bar Council of India Rules says an advocate shall not solicit work or advertise, directly or indirectly. (MediaNama, 2025) A service designed to win more clients through search would pull against that rule, so we do not offer it to advocates or law firms.

In March 2025 the Bar Council warned against legal advertising through social media and digital platforms, banned the use of celebrities and influencers to promote legal practices, and sent notices to listing platforms such as Just Dial and Sulekha to remove violating content. (MediaNama, 2025) Advocates may still keep a website with factual information as the Bar Council permits, but the purpose of our tool is to help a firm get chosen, which is a different thing.

We apply the same thinking elsewhere on this page. Doctors and hospitals are not offered here because consumer healthcare has its own advertising rules, and immigration consultants are not offered because the risk of misleading claims is high.

If you run a CA, CS or tax practice that also has lawyers on the team, the ICAI and ICSI rules apply to the accounting and secretarial side, and the advocate members remain bound by the Bar Council's rules. Ask your institute or Bar Council before publishing anything that describes legal services. For the professions we do cover, see the field list.

Yes, because rankings and AI mentions only matter if they turn into clients, and the enquiry log is how you prove that link. Each time someone calls, emails or fills a form, you record how they found you (Google search, an AI tool, a referral, a directory) and later whether they became a client and what the work was worth.

For a services firm this is more useful than for a shop, because the value per client is large and the path is long. A single new PMS investor, group health account or audit client can be worth more than a month of marketing spend, and it may take weeks between the first call and the signed engagement letter.

What good looks like:

1. Ask every new enquirer one question: how did you hear about us?
2. Log the answer the same day, with the service they asked about.
3. Update the record when the enquiry becomes an account, policy, mandate or engagement, with the value.
4. Read the monthly report next to your rankings, so you can see which searches bring paying clients.

Keep personal and financial details out of the log; the service, source and value are enough. The enquiries and revenue report is built for exactly this.

More and more, yes, although no reliable survey yet measures how many Indian clients pick a financial or professional firm this way. What is clear is the scale of the tools. Sundar Pichai said in July 2025 that Google's AI Overviews had over 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories. (Alphabet, 2025) TechCrunch reported the same call, noting AI Mode had over 100 million monthly active users in the US and India. (TechCrunch, 2025) OpenAI says ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users. (OpenAI, 2026)

So when someone in Pune types "fee only financial planner" or asks Gemini "which CA firm in Noida handles startup compliance", an AI answer often appears before any website. That answer may name a large platform, a directory or a rival firm.

The best evidence for business buyers comes from the US. In a 2026 Semrush survey of US B2B professionals who use AI at work, 92% said AI had shaped their vendor shortlist. (Semrush, 2026) That sample is not Indian retail investors, so treat it as a direction, not a local number.

The practical answer is to measure your own field. Ask the questions your clients ask, in the AI tools they use, every week, and record what comes back. That is what Live AI Monitoring does.

SEBI notified a Common Advertisement Code on 8 October 2026, and it comes into force on the 180th day after publication, which falls in early April 2027. (NSE circular on the SEBI Common Advertisement Code, 2026) Until then the current codes apply: the 2023 code for investment advisers and research analysts, and the exchanges' codes for brokers, including NSE's requirement of prior approval for every advertisement. (NSE Members Code of Advertisement)

The new code covers stock brokers, depository participants, investment advisers, research analysts, portfolio managers, mutual funds and asset management companies, and online bond platform providers. (NSE circular on the SEBI Common Advertisement Code, 2026) SEBI said it replaces the separate advertisement frameworks set by each regulation and by exchange and supervisory body circulars. (SEBI Board decisions, September 2026)

The main changes:

• Prior approval goes, except for advertisements featuring a celebrity, and advertisements must be reported within three working days of issue. (SEBI Board decisions, September 2026)
• Testimonials are banned outright. The 2023 code banned misleading or deceptive testimonials; the new code bans any testimonials. (NSE circular on the SEBI Common Advertisement Code, 2026)
• Celebrities are allowed for brand-level or entity-level promotion only, with prior approval. The definition includes influencers above a follower threshold.
• Still banned: guaranteed, risk-free or indicative returns, and the logos or symbols of SEBI and market infrastructure institutions.
• Every advertisement must show your name and SEBI registration number.

Educational material is not treated as an advertisement if branding is minimal and there is no promotional call to action. Ask your compliance officer and supervisory body how each point applies to you. This is not legal advice.

Factual, educational content is the safest ground in every regulated field, and it is also what people search for. The exact line differs by profession, so check your own code before publishing.

• SEBI-registered firms: under the Common Advertisement Code coming in early April 2027, educational or informational communication is not treated as an advertisement if branding is minimal and incidental and there is no promotional call to action. Anything that promotes a product or solicits interest is an advertisement. (NSE circular on the SEBI Common Advertisement Code, 2026)
• Insurance: IRDAI's 2024 framework expects all advertisements from insurers and distribution channels to be internally approved, and the rules apply on social media too. (Mondaq, 2024)
• Chartered accountants: ICAI allows educational videos and professional updates but bars items such as fees, client names, awards and "why choose us" sections. (ICAI website guidelines, 2020)
• Company secretaries: ICSI counts a website as an advertisement, so the guidelines apply to every page. (ICSI FAQ on advertisement guidelines, 2020)

Good educational pages answer one real question well: how to open an NRI demat account, what a Key Fact Statement shows, how a GST notice reply works, how a claim is filed. They avoid promises, rankings and outcomes.

A useful habit is to keep a short compliance checklist for your field and run every new page against it before it goes live. Our glossary explains the search terms used in these pages.

Use both, but treat your own website as the asset you control and the listings as rented space. Aggregators and directories fill the first page for broad searches such as "health insurance" or "home loan", and they may bring enquiries. They also set the terms, show your rivals beside you and can change their rules or fees.

Your own site wins the searches the platforms answer badly: a specific need, a city, a client type or a hard question. "Fire insurance for a plastics factory", "NRI trading account help in Kochi" and "GST notice reply for a trader" are examples. AI tools also draw on your site when they describe your firm, so thin pages leave them guessing.

There is evidence that ranking alone is no longer enough. Ahrefs found that only 38% of AI Overview citations came from top-10 pages in a 2026 study of 863,000 results pages, down from 76% a year earlier. (Ahrefs, 2026) Clear, specific pages can be cited even when a platform outranks you.

Check your profession's rules before joining any platform. ICAI bars CA firms from mentioning gradings given by any organisation (ICAI website guidelines, 2020), and SEBI-regulated firms must not associate with unregistered persons who give securities advice. (Business Today, 2024) Then log where each enquiry came from, so you can compare cost per client across platforms and your site.

Expect months, not weeks, and expect the stages to arrive in order. Nobody can honestly promise a date, because Google, ChatGPT and Gemini decide what to show, and your competitors are publishing too.

The usual order is:

1. Pages get found. New or rewritten pages must be crawled and indexed before they can rank. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews. (Google Search Central)
2. Specific searches move first. City, client-type and problem searches ("loan against property advisor in Surat") usually respond before broad ones.
3. AI answers shift slowly and unevenly. SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai found the odds of an AI tool giving the same brand list twice were under 1 in 100. (Search Engine Land, 2026) One good week means little; a trend over several weeks means more.
4. Enquiries follow, and in services, signed clients follow those after a sales cycle.

Common mistakes are changing everything at once, judging after a fortnight, and tracking only vanity searches. Pick the searches your best clients actually type, publish one strong page at a time, and read the weekly view alongside your enquiry log. How we measure explains why we repeat each AI question rather than trusting a single answer.

Neither is needed, and neither earns a special place. Google says there are no additional requirements or special optimisations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema. (Google Search Central)

On FAQ schema specifically, Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search from 7 May 2026 and later confirmed the feature was removed. (Google Search Central) Any agency selling FAQ markup as a way to win extra space in results is out of date. Structured data can still help Google understand a page, but it does not guarantee any feature.

llms.txt is a 2024 proposal for a markdown file aimed at language models. Google's John Mueller said that, as far as he knew, none of the AI services had said they use it, and compared it to the keywords meta tag. (Search Engine Journal, 2025)

What does matter for a CA firm, insurer or adviser:

• Pages that Google can crawl and index, with a clear heading and a direct first sentence.
• Facts stated plainly: registration, services, cities, who you help.
• Not blocking the search crawlers of AI tools by mistake. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. (OpenAI)

Our article on schema markup for AI search goes into the detail.

Live AI Monitoring costs $79 a month and Radar mode costs $199 a month, and Indian customers can pay in rupees by UPI, card or net banking. There is a 14-day free trial with no card needed.

What each plan covers:

• Free check: a one-off look at whether AI tools mention your firm.
• Deep report: a fuller one-time audit.
• Live AI Monitoring: 25 client questions tracked in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, plus 25 Google searches tracked weekly, with the enquiry log and monthly report.
• Radar mode: 100 questions and 50 Google searches, for firms with many branches, cities or service lines.
• Free trial: 5 questions and 10 searches for 14 days.

For most single-office practices, such as a CA firm, a mutual fund distributor or a loan advisor, 25 searches cover the main services in one or two cities. A lender with branches across a state, or a broker with authorised persons in many towns, usually needs more searches than questions, which is where Radar mode fits.

Ready-made setups exist for 54 industries, including each field on this page, so the first list of searches and questions is drafted for you and you edit it. Full details are on the pricing page.