We've partnered with Metronyx AI

CleanTender helps UK soft FM SMEs (cleaning, security, grounds, waste, catering) win public sector contracts. We build the tools for the tedious bits: bid writing, compliance tracking, social value calculations.

There's a problem in UK procurement we keep running into. Even businesses with the cleanest profiles, the best accreditations, and the tightest pricing don't always win. Why? Buyers can't find them.

Procurement officers don't just Google company names anymore. They ask ChatGPT. They use Perplexity. They cross-check on Claude. If your business doesn't show up in those answers, you're invisible to a growing chunk of the buying market.

That's a problem CleanTender can't fully solve for you. But the same problem applies to us: if buyers can't find CleanTender in AI answers, fewer of them list contracts here, and our directory shrinks. So we partnered with Metronyx AI, a UK SEO agency that focuses on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). That means making sure brands get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, and Claude.

What this means for you¶

Honestly? Nothing directly. Your dashboard, your evaluations, your compliance vault, none of it changes. Metronyx is working on CleanTender's own visibility, not yours.

The reason we're flagging it is different. If you've been wondering how to make your own cleaning, security, or grounds business show up when buyers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for UK FM contractors, this is the agency we picked to do that for ourselves. They take direct clients. Their site has the contact details if you want to talk.

Why we're sharing this¶

Most agency partnerships happen quietly. We're sharing this one because of a question we get a lot: how do small UK soft FM businesses get found by buyers?

The answer is rarely "more leaflets" or "another LinkedIn ad". It's usually about making sure search engines and AI engines know who you are, what you do, and where you operate. That's a slog. Most cleaning, security, and grounds firms haven't done it because they didn't have the budget or the time.

We don't have a fix for that yet. But we're learning from Metronyx, and we'll share what we pick up. Practical stuff: what to do this week, what to do this month, what's a waste of time.

The bigger lesson on partnerships¶

There's something worth taking from this beyond the announcement.

Search engines and AI engines reward local businesses that work together. Co-published case studies. Shared customer stories. Mutual recommendations between non-competing firms. These build the kind of authority that gets you cited. A cleaning company working with a local security firm and a grounds contractor on a joint case study about a school FM contract is doing more for its visibility than three separate businesses pumping out solo content.

This isn't theoretical. Google's helpful content guidelines, OpenAI's training data preferences, and Anthropic's source weighting all favour businesses that real people talk about, link to, and refer to other people.

So if you've been waiting for a sign to email that local supplier you've thought about working with, there it is.

Regards,

The CleanTender Team!