An assistant has never seen your flowers. When a couple asks it who should do the flowers for their wedding, it does not look at your work and form a view. It goes looking for pages where somebody has already written an answer down, and it assembles four or five names out of what it finds.
So the question for a florist is not whether the work is good. It is whether the work exists in words, in the places the answers are built from.
In September 2026 I measured a wedding and event florist in Stockholm. Sixteen questions, each one asked three times to Perplexity, ChatGPT with web search, Gemini and Claude. One hundred and ninety two answers. She is a real business and these are her numbers, published without her name.
0
questions where she held a stable place on any of the four services
8 of 64
question and service pairs where she appeared in exactly one run out of three
5
answers out of 192 that cited her own website as a source
The result, without softening it
Zero. On none of the sixteen questions did any of the four services name her in at least two runs out of three, which is what I count as a stable place. She was not invisible either. She appeared eight times across sixty four question and service pairs, but every single one of those was a single run out of three. Not one of them repeated.
Gemini came closest, with three questions where she surfaced once. Claude and Perplexity had two each, ChatGPT one. Perplexity and Claude each cited her own website twice, Gemini once, ChatGPT never.
Which questions she surfaced on, and which she never did
This is the part worth reading twice. The questions were written the way somebody in her market would actually type them, in Swedish and in English. The English ones are quoted exactly as they were asked.
| Question asked | Times named, out of twelve |
|---|---|
| Who does unique floral design for weddings and events in Stockholm? | 2 |
| Which florist makes unique bridal bouquets in a bohemian style? (asked in Swedish) | 2 |
| Who does floral installations for events in Stockholm? (asked in Swedish) | 1 |
| Recommend an exclusive wedding florist in Stockholm | 0 |
| Wedding florist in Sweden for a destination wedding at a castle | 0 |
| Which florist in Stockholm do international wedding planners work with? | 0 |
| What does a wedding florist cost for a larger wedding in Sweden? (asked in Swedish) | 0 |
Twelve answers per question: four services, three runs each. September 2026.
Read the bottom four again. Those are the questions with money in them. The couple asking what a florist costs for a larger wedding has a budget. The one asking for a castle in Sweden has a venue and a date. The one asking which florist international planners work with is about to hire somebody. She appeared on none of them, in any run, on any service.
The two she did surface on are the broad ones about style. Those are the questions her own website already answers in its own words. Nothing else on the web was answering the rest on her behalf.
Who gets named instead
A short list, and the same names keep coming back. One florist appeared in eighteen of the answers, another in nine, a third in eight. Below that the numbers drop off quickly.
That shape matters more than the names. An answer is not a ranking of every florist in the city. It is a handful of businesses that the services can describe with confidence, because there is enough written about them to describe. Getting onto that list is not a matter of moving up a ranking. It is a matter of existing in the sources at all.
What the assistants tell florists to do
I also asked all four services the advice question directly, three times each, on 9 September 2026: how can a wedding florist get mentioned by AI assistants when couples ask for florists. The answers agree almost word for word.
- Keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere, and claim your Google Business Profile.
- Keep storefronts on The Knot and WeddingWire.
- Post on Instagram and Pinterest.
- Blog about wedding flower trends and seasonal flowers.
- Build a dedicated wedding florals page, separate from general flower delivery.
- Use plain category wording such as wedding florist in your city, rather than a clever tagline.
Some of that holds up against the measurement and some of it does not, so here is the honest sorting.
Supported by the data
The dedicated page and the plain category wording. Perplexity said it outright, that the strongest signal is being repeatedly cited by trustworthy third party sources and being easy to identify as a wedding florist in a named place. It matches what the Stockholm measurement shows: the only questions she surfaced on were the ones her own site already answers in its own words.
Market specific, and the assistants will not warn you
The Knot and WeddingWire are American platforms, and all four services recommended them to a question about Texas. In the Stockholm measurement the names and sources that came back were local. If you work in Europe, find out which sources the answers in your own city are built from before you pay for a listing. Advice written for one market is not the same as evidence for yours.
Cannot be measured from here
Instagram and Pinterest. They may well help, but no measurement I run can show it, because the services almost never cite social profiles as sources and Gemini returns no readable source list at all. Anybody telling you a number for how much Instagram moves AI visibility is guessing.
Three things worth doing first
Write the page for the question with money in it. Not a trends post. A page that says what a wedding florist costs in your city, at what size of wedding, and what changes the price. Then a page for the venues you actually work at, named. Those are the questions where she scored nothing, and they are the questions couples type when they are ready to book.
Get onto the pages that already answer the question. Venue supplier lists, planner recommendations, editorial features of real weddings. The florists holding those eighteen and nine mentions are being described by somebody other than themselves. One venue supplier list can be worth more than a year of posting.
Say the category words plainly. Floral design studio is what you may call yourself. Wedding florist in Stockholm is what the question says. Both can be true on the same page, and only one of them matches the question.
What this looks like measured
The free check asks four questions a couple in your city could type, to ChatGPT and Perplexity, and shows you whether your name comes back. It takes about a minute. The full report is the version above: your own questions, four services, three runs each, the names that took your place, the sources the answers were built from, and three things to change before the next measurement. You can see an example report or read how the measurement works.
Questions florists ask next
Why does ChatGPT not mention my flower studio when couples ask for a wedding florist?
Because it cannot find anybody writing about you in the words of the question. An assistant builds an answer out of pages it can read, and a portfolio of beautiful arrangements with no city, no venue names, no prices and no third party mentions gives it nothing to assemble. In the Stockholm measurement the florist was named in eight of one hundred and ninety two answers, and her own website was cited in five of them. The work was never the problem.
Do I need a profile on The Knot or WeddingWire as a florist?
It depends entirely on your market, and the assistants will not tell you that. All four of them recommend both platforms, because most of the advice written about this subject is American. In the Stockholm measurement the names that came back were local florists and local suppliers, not American directories. Find out which sources the answers in your own city are built from before you pay for a listing anywhere.
How many questions should a florist measure, and how often?
Enough to cover the different reasons somebody hires you, which for a florist usually means weddings, events, installations and workshops, and then the same questions once a month. Sixteen questions asked three times to four services is one hundred and ninety two answers, which is enough to tell a stable position from a coincidence. Measuring once tells you where you stand. Measuring monthly tells you whether anything is moving.
Why ask the same question three times?
Because the answers move. In the Stockholm measurement every single appearance the florist made was in one run out of three. Not one of them repeated. If the question had been asked once, half of those appearances would have looked like wins and the other half would have been missed entirely, and the number reported back would have been decided by luck rather than by visibility.