AI visibility for architects: the firm, the principal and the building

Which names can an answer about architects carry?

Three, sometimes in the same answer: the firm, a principal by name, and a building known by a name of its own. An AI assistant asked who designed a new library may name the building first and then whoever the pages about it credit.

Each fails in its own way. A firm's name comes in versions: the registered name, the name on the door, an old partnership name on award listings. A principal's name can stay attached to a firm they have left. A building's credit can go to the wrong firm when two firms worked on it and their pages disagree. Whether an answer comes from pages fetched with web search on or from training data, the right credit has to be published somewhere first.

So each name is fixed where it lives. The rest of what a firm's site should state is on the page for architecture firms, and the questions owners ask as a project moves along in what building owners ask about architects.

The firm: one name, written the same way on every page

Pick one form of the firm's name and use it wherever you control the words: header, footer, about page, markup, Business Profile, directory listings, photo credit lines. Google's Business Profile guidelines ask for the name as it appears on the signage, with no services, places or keywords added, so the site and the profile can carry the same string.

Names change when a partner joins or leaves, or when a studio is renamed after its founder retires. Say so once, on the about page: "[Firm] was [former name] until [year]." That sentence links the old credits to the new name. In the markup, the registered name goes in legalName and a former name still in circulation in alternateName.

Principals point at the firm's node with worksFor and project pages name it, which keeps the firm one entity across the site; building an entity explains the @id that ties them. The type is LocalBusiness if clients come to an office and Organization if not, as Architect nearby sets out.

The principal: a page per person, with licenses and projects

When an answer names a person, the page that can back it up is about that person. Give each principal one, at a stable address, stating the name they use professionally, their role and since when, each license as the issuing board words it (linked to the board's public lookup where there is one), and the projects they led, with their role on each.

Two cautions. Letters after a name can mean a license, a membership or a fellowship, so say which, in the granting body's words. Who may use the title architect is set differently in each jurisdiction: describe each person as the body that licensed them allows, and ask it when unsure. Stating licenses for a client far from your office is the subject of the article on being nearby.

Work a principal did at an earlier firm is credited to that firm: "[Name] was project architect for [Building] at [Previous firm], [years]." Listed as your firm's work, it gives an answer a credit that the earlier firm's pages contradict.

In JSON-LD, the principal is a Person node pointing at the firm's Organization or LocalBusiness node. Fill in only what the visible page states.

<!-- the firm, defined once, on the homepage -->
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/#firm",
  "name": "[The one form of the firm's name]",
  "legalName": "[The registered name, if it differs]",
  "alternateName": "[A former name still in circulation]",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/"
}

<!-- a principal, on their own page -->
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/people/[name]#person",
  "name": "[The name the person uses professionally]",
  "jobTitle": "[The role the page states]",
  "worksFor": { "@id": "https://www.example.com/#firm" },
  "url": "https://www.example.com/people/[name]",
  "sameAs": ["[A profile that is unmistakably this person]"]
}

The building: a page titled with its name, place and year

A building with a name of its own can be better known than its architect, and a question about it names the building: "who designed the [name] library in [city]". Give each such project a page titled with its name, place and year of completion, opening with the full credit.

"[Building] is a [type] of [size] in [place], completed in [year]. [Firm] was design architect, with [Partner firm] as architect of record, and [Principal] led the design." Use the name the owner uses. A private house has no public name, so the neighborhood, type and year stand in, and the address stays off the page.

The rest is the project write-up: fields as documenting reference projects lists them, captions as the portfolio article describes. schema.org has no property that says who designed a building, so the credit lives in the text.

Then read the building's other pages: the owner's announcement, the contractor's case study, the coverage. Where one credits the wrong firm, drops yours or uses an old name, ask for a correction; each disagreement is one more version of the credit for an answer to repeat.

Collaborations: state the role that was yours, and name the other firms

A building can have more than one architect: a design architect and a local architect of record, one firm drawing another's construction documents, an interiors practice inside someone else's building. Labels differ by contract and by country, so use your contract's, or the client's published credit line, and name every other firm with its role.

It cuts both ways. An overclaim hands an answer a credit the other firm's pages contradict; an underclaim, a project dropped because a larger partner filled the coverage, loses one you earned.

Measuring it: client and project types, plus who-designed questions

The procedure our methodology publishes is a fixed panel of twelve questions in buyers' words for a paying client, each put to one assistant, Claude, before the fixes, again once they are live and every month with monitoring, with every answer kept verbatim; the visibility score is the share of the twelve in which the firm was named. How to measure AI visibility covers the repeats a firm can add to a panel of its own, and setting up prompt monitoring the record.

What differs for an architect is the panel: cross the kinds of client you want more of with the kinds of project, one prompt per pairing that matters, and add questions that name a building and the firm.

To the usual record (named, recommended, first, who else, the verbatim answer), add three columns:

• The name the answer used: the firm, a principal, or both, and in which form.
• The project it cited, and the role it gave you there, checked against your project page.
• The facts beside your name, meaning scale, budget band and licenses, each marked right or wrong.

A yes-or-no reading holds none of that. The probe in our audit of 9,483 small business websites put one buyer question each for 9,240 businesses to Claude, web retrieval on, and recorded only whether each was named. 14.9% were: one question each, on one day, across all 40 trades, with no architects-only cut.

Google's two AI features also have a count of their own: Search Console's generative AI performance report shows impressions of links to your site in AI Overviews and AI Mode, page by page. It counts links, not names.

What the panel cannot see

It cannot see the commission. A homeowner who hears your name in March may call in May and sign in September, and a developer can take longer, so a month's reading and a month's new work will not line up. Ask at each first meeting how the client found you, note it with the date, and read that record beside the panel's over a year.

Nor can it see public procurement. An RFQ is scored by a committee and a design competition is judged by a jury, and neither is a question typed into an assistant. The firm-name row covers what someone might type about a firm already on a shortlist.

And it covers only its own questions. For a first look, the free visibility check takes a website and an email address, and a person sends a written result within 48 hours.