Does structured data change French business retrieval?
A source-trail reading of whether schema markup appears to help French SMB pages become retrievable in AI search.
Read → Retrieval lab
French businesses become visible when retrieval can find their evidence.
Indexe Clair studies the layer that comes before an AI answer sounds confident: crawling, indexing, ranking and source selection. The lab follows French SMB evidence across owned sites, directories, review pages, regional mentions and official records, then compares how AI search systems retrieve that evidence under controlled prompts. Their work is for people who need to know whether a business can actually be found, before arguing about how well it is described.
How the lab works
How the lab works
Indexe Clair treats a visible retrieval event as something concrete: a page, listing, business name, location signal or source trail that appears when a controlled query is run.
Samples are built around French business categories with public evidence in several places, then rerun with stable wording, language and location framing. The point is repeatability: seeing whether the same business, page or source keeps surfacing, or whether another record cuts in.
1 discovered page2 indexed entity3 ranked evidence4 selected source
In focus now
«…the owned website exists, yet the AI search system selects a directory, stale listing or mixed-language record first…»
The lab is focused on French SMB cases where the owned website exists, yet AI search systems select a directory, stale listing or mixed-language record first. Current work follows the four retrieval gates a French business must pass — discovered page, indexed entity, ranked evidence, selected source.
From the research desk
Research notes in the index follow source trails rather than polished answers.
How Can a French Business Test Retrievability?
A practical research note on testing whether a French business is actually retrieved before judging the quality of an AI answer.
Read → How does AI search read French geographic intent?
A field-style analysis of how AI search keeps, stretches or collapses French location signals in local business retrieval.
Read → Visibility starts before the answer is written.
Indexe Clair helps readers inspect whether French business evidence can be retrieved at the moment AI search systems look for it.
Contact the lab →