For a long time, being visible online meant one thing: showing up well in Google search results. Today, that has changed. More and more people ask their question directly to an artificial intelligence tool (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot) and expect a direct answer, without ever looking through a list of links. These tools, just like the CVDM's matchmaking engine, need to be able to read the content of a website to understand what a company does.
This is where a more common problem than we might think hides. A website can look perfectly functional to the human eye while being invisible to these crawling robots. An expired security certificate, a misconfigured technical file, a page built entirely in JavaScript, or simply an outdated address are enough to cut off access completely. No alert appears, no error message warns the company. The site keeps existing, but it becomes deaf and silent to anyone trying to find it other than by typing its exact address into a browser.
For CVDM member companies, this invisibility has a direct effect on the quality of matchmaking. The matchmaking engine reads the content of a website to understand an organization's capabilities, products and needs. A site that robots cannot read means an incomplete profile, and collaboration opportunities that get missed.
The good news is that most of these problems are simple to fix, often in a matter of minutes, with help from a web host or whoever manages the site. Checking the site's address, making sure the security padlock is active, or simply opening the robots.txt file of one's own site are steps anyone can take, no technical skill required.
The CVDM has prepared a practical guide that explains, in plain language, how to spot these obstacles and fix them, a tool to hand to whoever manages your website. It is available here, directly in the CVDM toolbox, on our website.
Would you like to raise your company's profile within the Canadian manufacturing ecosystem, or explore new connection opportunities? Become a member!
Are you a CVDM member with good news to share? Reach out to us!
