AI For SEO: How One Interior Designer Got Hired Via Chat GPT
Is Open AI’s Chat GPT replacing Google for search? Not yet, but potential customers and clients are increasingly using Chat GPT for search vs. Google.
This post is the story of how one designer, San Diego based Rachel Moriarty, signed a lucrative client because her client used Chat GPT to search for and find exactly the designer he needed for a very special project.
On Monday, May 19th, 2025, I received the below text from Rachel. Rachel uses Chat GPT a lot in her own business and she knows of my deep interest in AI so she was kind enough to think of me when she landed this project through her client’s Chat GPT search.
As you can see, Rachel didn’t yet realize that her potential clients were even using Chat GPT to search for designers.
Rachel and I exchanged a few more texts about this project and then I also shared about her finding this new client via his Chat GPT search in my Facebook Group community, Design Wealth - a private community for principal interior designers and kitchen and bath designers that I’ve had for 10 years now.
Rachel’s been a long time member there and I asked her if she would put the information we were sharing via text into my community.
The following image shares what she wrote there. I am sharing this with her permission.
The fact that her client’s Chat GPT search led to her being found, and Instagram being cited by Chat GPT as the source {!!}, led Rachel’s last line to read:
”A wild, modern marketing moment that reminded me that the work we do behind the scenes - SEO and social selling works!”
I couldn’t agree more.
After Rachel posted in Design Wealth, several other interior designers in my community started chiming in and one of them, Houston based Pamela Hope, stated that she, too, had recently been hired by a client that found her through their Chat GPT search.
[ A little side note: Pamela, a friend of mine in real life, was just elected to Houston’s ASID board as the finance director ]
Another long time member of Design Wealth, Joshua Jones, stated that he has not yet secured a client from Chat GPT, but he is seeing that it is driving more traffic to his website and boosting his discoverability.
[ Side note 1: Joshua is widely known as one of the USA’s top virtual interior designer and we bonded early on because he is completely deaf and, as many of you know, I am 95% deaf . ] See an example of his virtual interior design work below and find him at https://www.jjonesdesignco.com
[ Side note 2: Rachel sits on High Point Market’s Diversity Advocacy Alliance committee, along with Patti Carpenter and other friends, and Joshua would be a great add to that committee if he has an interest. ]
For fun, here’s an example of Joshua’s virtual design work. He’s been featured in Architectural Digest and many other publications.
Back to Open AI and Chat GPT for search….
INFORMATIONAL LINKS TO HELP YOU
To optimize your own websites for AI search, this excellent and in depth article from SearchEngineLand will be very useful to give to your webmaster if you, yourself, aren’t familiar with how to implement these items:
https://searchengineland.com/ai-optimization-how-to-optimize-your-content-for-ai-search-and-agents-451287
If you’re wondering how you can use Chat GPT for better SEO for your own websites, here’s an excellent article from world renowned site, Semrush:
https://www.semrush.com/blog/chatgpt-seo/
Another question I had from one of my Facebook Group members in relation to this conversation on using Open AI’s Chat GPT to maximize your blog or website for search was around the word SCHEMA and what it means.
Here’s the answer to what schema means and how to utilize it for SEO:
https://neilpatel.com/blog/get-started-using-schema/
What Does The Future Hold For Google Search vs. Open AI’s Chat GPT Search?
As of right now, May 2025, the best data I can find on how many people are using Chat GPT for search vs. using Google for search says that about 37.5 million people are using Open AI’s Chat GPT for search - like queries per day vs. Google which is getting 373 times more search queries per day.
Clearly, Google is not losing its dominance yet, but I expect it will, especially as people are not crazy about Google’s AI Overviews which pushes organic results down to Page 2 [especially from small publishers ] forcing them to pay for sponsored ads if they want to be found on the first page of Google search, organically.
Personally, I’ve seen that many users on Reddit, on LinkedIn and on Threads are now using Chat GPT or other AI search engines like Perplexity or Claude for search vs. Google because they prefer the contextualized experience.
I spoke about just this change in search habits last year at Buy BKBG’s annual summit for the nation’s largest kitchen and bath showrooms, but this is the first time I’ve heard of interior designers getting clients from people using Chat GPT for search.
I hope this post has illuminated a SIGNAL for you: prepare to optimize for Chat GPT and other AI related search engines, sooner vs. later.
And… use Chat GPT to help you to know how to do it!
For instance, when I asked Chat GPT to tell me how I could improve my own website for discoverability by interior designers and manufacturers who are using Open AI’s Chat GPT to find digital marketing and public relations agencies like mine, this is what Chat GPT returned:
Rachel, when you see this, thank you for alerting me to the fact you found your great new client in San Diego via his search on Chat GPT and thank you for your generosity in sharing the information that’s in this post with Design Wealth’s community members, too.
I appreciate it and look forward to seeing how the artistic, Padres themed condo you’re designing for your new client turns out.
Knowing you, it will be a knockout explosion of exuberant color like this kitchen you designed , below.
See more of Rachel’s work here: https://www.rachelminteriors.com/portfolio
If you have a story of how a client found you through a search on Chat GPT, I’d love to hear it.
Please email me at leslie@savourpartnership.com or connect with me through Instagram or LinkedIn here and here.
With gratitude, as always, for taking the time to read my posts and subscribe to this blog. I appreciate each of you and if you feel this post would be helpful for others to see, please share the URL within your own networks or PIN from it.
Thank you so much.
Leslie Carothers
Named One Of The Top 40 Most Inspiring Women In Home
Collaborator with Thompson on the AILA sink, the world’s first AI designed sink, created through my text prompt to Midjourney and handcrafted of solid copper by Thompson’s coppersmithing artisans using the same tools and techniques they’ve used since the 16th century.