Hartford Business Journal

12 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JUNE 1, 2026 Josh Goodbaum (left) and Amanda DeMatteis, partners at New Haven-based employment law firm Garrison Law, say the firm has seen more prospective clients finding it through AI search tools. Contributed Photo Machine Learning CT businesses are trying to get recommended by AI — and finding the rules are unwritten same recommendation request, the Hartford Business Journal recently ran an experiment. A single prompt — "Recommend a Connecticut employment attorney for a senior executive negotiating sever- ance" — was entered into five plat- forms: OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity. The answers were all over the place. Only two firms — Southport's Carey & Associates and Madsen, Prestley & Parenteau, which has offices in Hartford and New London — appeared in four of the five responses. No firm consistently claimed the top spot. Four different firms were ranked first by at least one platform. New Haven-based boutique employment firm Garrison Law was the only firm named No. 1 by more than one tool — Claude and Google AI. The programs also made mistakes. Across three separate runs, Claude recommended Garrison Law, calling the firm "the most executive-focused option in the state" in one response while incorrectly placing the firm in Hartford. Perplexity made a different error, recommending a New York-based law firm, which does not have a Connecticut office. Still, the results weren't entirely off base. While Claude's description may overstate Garrison Law's executive By Andrew Larson alarson@hartfordbusiness.com A few years ago, a Connecticut consumer hunting for a Sunday brunch spot, reliable contractor, weekend hotel or new accountant would have typed the question into Google, scrolled past the ads and clicked on multiple links. Increasingly, that same consumer skips the links entirely, opens an AI chatbot and asks in plain English. The program responds with a short list that can feel like a recommenda- tion from a knowledgeable friend. For decades, businesses tried to improve their standing in Google search results through search engine optimization, or SEO, which can involve tailoring website content to match what potential customers are searching for and earning links from other websites. The shift toward AI is now pulling Connecticut businesses into a new contest for consumers' attention. Some marketers call it generative engine optimization, or GEO, with a goal that is less about driving website traffic and more about becoming the business an AI system recommends. The catch is that almost no one — including marketing consultants — can fully explain how that choice gets made. Google's traditional search engine returns a ranked list and leaves the judgment to the user. A generative AI tool does more of that judgment itself, pulling from reviews, directories, news coverage and company websites to deliver what sounds like a conclusion. "SEO helps you get found. GEO helps you get chosen," said Jill Adams, CEO of Avon-based marketing agency Adams & Knight. The shift is generating demand for advice, she said. "More and more clients are asking how they can ensure their brands, their products, their services and their leaders are positively represented in results for AI-assisted searches," Adams said. Found, then chosen Her colleague Kevin Renwick, the firm's vice president of media, said clients often put it more bluntly: "We're hearing questions like, 'Why isn't my business showing up in AI-generated answers?' or 'How do we become one of the brands AI recommends?'" What the systems reward, the firm argues, isn't a website but a whole digital footprint that includes "media coverage, reviews, directo- ries, executive visibility, third-party mentions," said Michelle Bonner, Adams & Knight's vice president of public relations. Businesses named consistently across credible sources are likelier to surface. And the payoff, Adams said, comes from consumer trust. If AI platforms consistently recom- mend a business, "that visibility can carry enormous influence because consumers increasingly perceive AI-generated answers as curated and trustworthy," she said. But AI recommendations do not follow the same rules as traditional search rankings. Sam Barrett, director of business development at Glastonbury-based marketing agency CashmanKatz, said GEO is not simply SEO by another name because businesses can't influence AI recommendations the way they have long tried to influence Google search results. "A lot of what the individual AI companies — ChatGPT, Claude, whomever — deliver depends on the models the AI is trained on," he said. "It's not the new SEO, and I think people might conflate that." His broader warning is that AI tools are opaque. "It's still a black box in a lot of respects," Barrett said. "You don't have control over how the algorithms are built, what the models are trained on, or where the content is being pulled from. And AI still hallucinates." Five tools, five answers To see how AI platforms handle the Jill Adams Sam Barrett

• Cover