Key Takeaways
- Know which opponent you are actually losing to. Fitness questions get answered with apps and platforms. Consulting questions get answered with firms and frameworks. The fix is different in each case, so generic advice helps neither.
- Directories beat everybody in both niches. A page that lists many providers gets reached for more than any single provider site does, whichever field the question comes from. That is the most consistent pattern we see.
- Individuals are rare in both, and rarer in fitness. A named human being is the least common thing in either niche answer. If your plan depends on being named personally, the plan needs a much narrower question than you think.
- Fitness questions carry a place, consulting questions carry a situation. A buyer looking for a trainer names a city. A buyer looking for a consultant describes a problem. Write for whichever of those your own buyers actually type.
- Read your own run before you copy anyone. These are shapes across many runs, not a measurement of your niche. The only numbers worth planning against are the ones from questions asked in your own words.
We run the same shape of test over and over: twenty-five buyer questions from one niche, asked across several assistants, several times each, with a note of what came back. Two of the fields we have run most are fitness coaching and independent consulting.
They fail differently. Not by a little, and not in the way most people expect. Both niches struggle to get an individual named, but the thing standing in the way is a different thing in each case.
This post is what those runs keep showing. Every proportion below is illustrative, describing the shape of what we see rather than a measurement of any client's results.
How do AI answers differ between the fitness niche and the consulting niche?
Mostly in what gets named instead of a business. Fitness questions tend to come back with apps, gyms and directories. Consulting questions tend to come back with firms, frameworks and methods. Directories are common to both.
The practical consequence is that the two fields need different work. A fitness coach is competing for attention against a subscription product that publishes constantly. A consultant is competing against a firm with a long publishing record and a communications team.
Neither is mainly losing to another individual. That is the finding that surprises people most, and it is stable across everything we have run.
What each niche answer names instead of you
Five kinds of thing account for nearly everything we see: a directory or roundup, a company, a product, a method, and occasionally a person. The mix is what differs.
In fitness runs, products are close behind directories, and methods barely feature. In consulting runs, firms lead, methods are substantial, and products are a minor presence. In both, an individual practitioner is the least common thing in the answer by a wide margin.
That last point is worth stating plainly because it is the honest version of what this blog sells. Being named personally is achievable, and it is the exception rather than the rule, and any service promising otherwise is describing a different internet than the one we measure.
Both niches lose to lists. After that they lose to different things: a product on the left, a firm on the right. The bottom row is the one everybody assumes is the top row.
A place versus a situation
The other consistent difference is in the questions themselves. Fitness buyers put a place in the question. Consulting buyers put a situation in it. That single difference changes what an assistant can do with either.
A question with a city in it can be matched against pages that mention the city, which is why directories and gym rosters dominate. A question describing a problem has no place to match against, so the assistant reaches for whatever explains the problem, which is a method or a firm that published one.
Google's description of its AI features is a reminder that these answers still rest on ordinary web retrieval, and Pew's research on Americans and AI documents how widely the habit of asking has spread. The mechanism is not exotic. It is retrieval plus whatever the question gave it to work with.
| What the answer names | In fitness runs | In consulting runs | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A directory or roundup page | Very often | Very often | Get listed, in both niches, before anything else |
| A company or firm | Often | Very often | Consultants: publish the thinking a firm would publish |
| A product, app or platform | Very often | Rarely | Coaches: compete where a product cannot go, on the specific person |
| A method, framework or book | Sometimes | Often | Consultants: name your method so it can be attributed to you |
| An individual practitioner | Rarely | Rarely | Both: pick the narrow question where a person is the honest answer |
What each niche should do differently
If you coach, stop competing on the general question. An app wins it, and it deserves to, because an app really is a reasonable answer to somebody who just wants a program. Go where a product cannot follow: a population, a condition, a city, a constraint. The narrow-question pattern is set out in how specialty fitness coaches own a narrow question.
If you consult, the opponent is a firm with a publishing habit. You will not outpublish it and you do not need to. What you need is one method described clearly enough to be attributed to you, plus outside pages that say you use it. The general case is in how independent consultants get recommended by ChatGPT.
The Princeton study on generative engine optimization found that adding cited statistics, quotations and named sources lifted content into generated answers considerably more than keyword work did. That finding cuts the same way in both niches, and it is the one piece of advice that genuinely transfers.
What these runs cannot tell you
They cannot tell you your own numbers. A niche is not one thing: postpartum coaching and powerlifting behave differently, and so do operations consulting and brand consulting. The shapes above are averages over something lumpy.
They also cannot tell you what will happen next. Answers move when models update, when a tool changes whether it searches live, and when a big publisher ships a new roundup. A picture from this year is a picture from this year. The recurring patterns we do trust are collected in what our 25-question test runs keep showing us.
And they cannot tell you whether it is worth your effort. For some businesses the honest answer is that the questions are not being asked in enough volume yet, and the right move is to do nothing for six months. We would rather say that than sell a plan against it.
If you want the version of this for your own field rather than for a niche average, the free check asks ChatGPT 25 real buyer questions from your niche at $0 and emails a plain-English readout. It runs as soon as you ask for it, and the report lands within the hour between 7am and 5pm Central, or by 10am the next morning outside those hours.
Questions we hear the most
How do AI answers differ by industry?
Mostly in what gets named instead of a business. Fitness questions tend to come back with apps, gyms and directories. Consulting questions tend to come back with firms, frameworks and methods. Directories are common to both.
Is it harder to get recommended by AI as a fitness coach or as a consultant?
Both are hard for different reasons. Fitness coaches compete against products that scale infinitely. Consultants compete against firms with far larger published footprints. Neither loses mainly to other individuals.
Why do apps show up so often in fitness answers?
Because a general fitness question has no place or person in it, and an app is a defensible general answer. Products also publish enormous amounts of readable material, which gives assistants plenty to quote.
Are the numbers in this post from real client audits?
No. Everything here describes patterns across our own test runs in illustrative terms. We do not publish client figures, and the proportions shown are examples of shape rather than measurements you should plan against.
Does this mean fitness coaches should give up on AI visibility?
No, it means competing on the general question is a waste. The winnable questions in fitness are narrow ones that carry a place, a population or a specific problem, where an app is a poor answer and a person is a good one.
How do I find out what my own niche answers look like?
Ask twenty-five real buyer questions from your field across two or three assistants, three times each, and record what kind of thing each answer named. That takes a few hours by hand and it is exactly what our free check automates.
What does the AnswerHalo free check include?
It asks ChatGPT 25 real buyer questions from your niche and emails you a plain-English report: your score, who got named in your place, and the one fix to start with. It costs $0 and it runs as soon as you ask for it.
How does AnswerHalo build the questions for a niche it has not seen?
It drafts a question set from how buyers in that field actually ask, and the set is reviewed and frozen before the run. Questions are never borrowed from another niche, because a borrowed set measures the wrong thing.
Your buyers are already asking. Find out what AI tells them.
The free check asks ChatGPT 25 real buyer questions about your niche and sends you the report within the hour, at $0. If it shows you are already getting named everywhere, we will say so in plain words.
Get my free check →