Let’s start with something that genuinely surprised us.
We tested a few AI search engines on our own company, and one of them gave an answer containing this line: “No information about this company’s qualification certificates was found.”
Yet on our own website’s “About Us” page, ISO 9001, ISO 20000, and 21 software copyright registrations are all there — not one missing — in black and white, and have been for years.
This isn’t a case of it not looking carefully enough. The previous article covered how AI doesn’t consult official websites for questions like “which one is better.” Today’s point goes one layer finer: even if it does read your website, the qualifications you list there may not count for anything.
The first thing to understand: retrieval works by “page,” not by “company”
Our habitual way of thinking runs like this: a qualification is a property of the company, and writing it on the official website means the information “this company holds this qualification” already exists.
But machines don’t organize information that way. They read page by page, deciding “what question is this page answering.”
Your qualifications sit inside “About Us.” That page’s title is “About Us,” and it talks throughout about the company profile, its history, the team, and contact details — the qualifications are just one small line within it.
So the page gets judged as: a page that talks about a company profile. When someone asks “which IT services companies in Beijing are ISO 20000 certified,” this page doesn’t match the topic, so it never gets its turn.
In other words: it’s not that it can’t see your qualifications — it’s that it doesn’t consider that page to be answering the question “who holds this qualification.”
So what gets the companies that do get found, found?
We ran a search using a phrase very close to what a real customer would type: “Beijing IT operations services companies with ISO 20000 certification”, then sorted the top 20 results by type:
| Page Type | Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A standalone article titled “Company X achieves XX certification” | 7 | The title is exactly that sentence; the article covers only this one thing |
| Marketing pages from certification agencies | 6 | “Which Beijing firm is best for ISO 20000” and the like |
| Explainer articles on what this certification is | 4 | About the standard itself, with no specific company involved |
| B2B directories | 1 | — |
| Company websites | 0 | Not a single one |
The conclusion is very clear: those 7 companies found because they “have a certification” all, without exception, rely on a standalone article whose title is “Company X achieves Y certification.” Not one of them was found through the line of qualifications listed in its own website’s “About Us.”
The difference in this column isn’t about whose qualification is stronger, but about what kind of page the information is placed on.
We verified this ourselves. When we obtained ISO 9001 in 2024, we published a short standalone announcement about the certification — search our brand name plus “certification” and it turns up. But ISO 20000 and those 21 software copyright registrations we never wrote about separately, only listing them on one line under “About Us.” The result: in the query above, we didn’t appear at all.
How to fix it: one qualification, one article
The approach is plain, but a few points have to be written correctly, or the effort is wasted.
| Element | Why it can’t be omitted |
|---|---|
| Title = full company name + full qualification name | This is the key to topic matching. If it isn’t in the title, the page doesn’t count as answering the question |
| Name of the issuing body | Gives the claim a source that can be traced back |
| Certificate number | ? The most important item — see below |
| Scope of certification | Two certificates both called ISO 20000 can cover very different business areas |
| Date obtained, validity period | Determines whether this information still counts today |
Why are the certificate number and the issuing body so critical?
Because a verifiable fact and an unverifiable claim are two different things. For most certifications, the issuing body’s website lets you look the certificate up by number. Write the number and the body clearly, and the information shifts from “the company says so” to “this can be verified.” Write only “our company is ISO certified,” with no full name, no issuing body, no number — and it can only be treated as a self-introduction, on the same level as “we provide great service.”
Before you start, spend 3 minutes checking yourself
Before writing, figure out exactly which step you’re stuck on. Take an AI with web search, run three searches, and just check whether you show up:
| What to search | What it means if you can’t find it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| ① Company name + full qualification title “Company X ISO 20000” |
Even the exact phrase you keep saying isn’t being picked up | The most basic step is missing: publish a standalone article on your own website first |
| ② Full qualification title + industry + city “Beijing ISO 20000 certified IT services company” |
You’re not in that candidate pool | Your article titles are worded wrong, or you only published on your own website and never on content platforms |
| ③ Search the certificate number directly | This information cannot be verified | Add the number and the issuing body to the body text, so it turns from a claim into a fact |
Most companies get stuck between steps ① and ②: it’s written somewhere on their website, so they feel they’ve covered it, yet no single page is ever dedicated to it. Even fewer clear step ③, because the vast majority of companies never put the certificate number in their qualifications write-up at all.
By the way, these three searches are also a good way to size up your competitors. Run the second search and you’ll see exactly who is present in your category. That list is, to some extent, the candidate list AI draws on when it makes recommendations.
A small trap many people fall into: always write qualification names in full
We’ve stepped into this trap ourselves. Writing “ISO certified,” “system certification,” or “21 software copyrights” on your website: readers understand it, but nobody searches that way.
- ? “ISO certified” → ? “ISO/IEC 20000-1 Information Technology Service Management System Certification”
- ? “21 software copyrights” → ? “Computer Software Copyright Registration Certificate, 21 in total”
- ? “telecom license” → ? “Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Class I Value-Added Telecommunications Business Operating License”
Abbreviations are for people who already know. To be found, you have to use the words other people actually search with. Put both forms in the body text; they don’t conflict.
One more observation: where these articles get published
Quite a few of those seven announcements weren’t published on company websites at all, but in columns on content platforms.
The reason isn’t hard to see: if you post it on your own website, that page is the only entry point for the information; if you post it on a content platform, the platform carries its own search weight, so a new article is naturally easier to pick up. The sensible approach, then, is to publish in both places: keep one copy on your website as the official source, and post one on a content platform to be found.
But there is one thing you must never do: fabricate or exaggerate your qualifications.
Qualifications are precisely the kind of information most easily cross-checked: you can verify them on the issuing body’s website, in the business registration public disclosure system, and in industry directories. Once one item doesn’t match, what you lose isn’t that one item but the credibility of your entire profile. Better to write less than to write something hollow.
Wrapping up
The previous article laid out a three-layer sequence: get found → get understood → get chosen. Qualifications are ammunition for the third layer: one of the hardest forms of evidence customers trust most.
But what we’ve covered today shows this: however good the ammunition, it won’t fire if it’s loaded in the wrong place. A one-line listing written into “About Us” and a standalone article titled “Company X Has Passed Y Certification,” with the issuing body and certificate number in the body text, carry completely different weight in the eyes of a machine.
The good news is that you can finish this one yourself, with no favors to ask and no money to spend. Take every qualification you already hold and write one article per item, following the five elements above. We’ll be catching up on the ones we owe, too. The ISO 20000 and those 21 software copyrights have been dragging for far too long.
We are Beijing Siwenlide, with 14 years focused on enterprise IT services and more than 1,000 business clients served to date. This series is all about the pitfalls we’ve hit while doing the work ourselves, and you can copy our approach directly. If you’d like to talk about your company’s situation, take a look at About Us, or call us directly at 400-686-2011.
