To get recommended by ChatGPT, your business needs three things: information an AI can actually read on your own website, consistent details everywhere else it looks, and enough third-party signals — reviews, listings, mentions — to trust you're real. AI assistants don't rank pages the way Google does. They read, summarize, and name one or two businesses. Here's how to be one of them.
Something changed quietly over the last two years. A customer who used to type "plumber near me" into Google and scroll through ten blue links now asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI summary the same question — and gets back two or three names, with no list to scroll. If your business isn't one of those names, you don't get a worse position. You don't appear at all.
That's the part most owners miss. Traditional search gives you a rank. AI search gives you a mention or nothing.
Why AI assistants ignore most local businesses
It usually comes down to one of four things, and none of them are about how nice your site looks:
- The information only exists in an image. Your hours, services, and service area are in a designed graphic or a PDF menu. A person can read it. A language model reading your page's text cannot.
- The answer is buried. The page takes four paragraphs of brand story to get to what you actually do. AI pulls short, direct statements — if the answer isn't stated plainly, there's nothing clean to quote.
- Your details contradict each other. Your website says one set of hours, your Google Business Profile says another, an old directory listing has a phone number you stopped using in 2023. When sources disagree, the safe move for an AI is to name a competitor whose details line up.
- Nothing outside your own site confirms you exist. A website is a claim about yourself. Reviews, directory listings, and mentions on other sites are what turn that claim into something an assistant will repeat.
What actually moves the needle
The work splits into two halves, and both matter.
On your website
Answer the real questions in plain text. What you do, where you do it, what it costs, how fast you deliver, and what makes you different — written as sentences, near the top, not hidden in a hero image. If a customer asks it on the phone, it belongs on the page in words.
Add structured data. This is code the visitor never sees that labels what each part of the page is — this is a business, this is its address, this is a question and its answer. It's how a machine reads your page with certainty instead of guessing. An llms.txt file takes the same idea further, giving AI a plain-language summary of your business written specifically for it.
Make sure AI crawlers aren't blocked. This one catches people out. Plenty of sites — including ours, at one point — silently block GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or Google-Extended through a security setting nobody remembers turning on. You can be doing everything else right and still be invisible because the door is shut.
Everywhere else
Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. For a local business this is the single highest-leverage thing on the list. It's a primary source that AI assistants lean on heavily, and most profiles sit half-filled.
Get real reviews, and reply to them. Reviews are third-party confirmation that you exist and deliver. An assistant weighing two similar businesses will name the one with recent, responded-to reviews.
Keep your name, address, and phone identical everywhere. Not similar — identical. "Suite 4" and "Ste. 4" across two listings is enough to introduce doubt.
What this doesn't mean
It doesn't mean stuffing your pages with keywords or writing for a machine instead of a person. The uncomfortable truth about AEO is that it rewards the same things a good site should already do: say clearly what you offer, keep your facts straight, and have real customers vouch for you. The difference is that a human visitor will forgive a vague homepage and dig around for your phone number. An AI won't — it'll just move on to the next business.
How to find out where you stand
Open ChatGPT and ask it the question your best customer would ask — "who's the best [what you do] in [your city]?" — and see what comes back. Then ask it directly about your business by name and see whether the details it gives are right. That five-minute test tells you more than any tool.
If you'd rather have someone check it properly, our SEO, GEO & AEO audit is free — we look at whether AI engines can read your site, what they currently say about you, and what's blocking them. You keep the report either way. We only charge if you want us to implement the fixes, starting at $475 for the GEO and AEO work.
The businesses getting named right now aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones whose information is clear, consistent, and confirmed by someone other than themselves.
Frequently asked
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?
No. There is no ad slot and no way to buy placement in an AI answer. What you can do is make your information readable, consistent and confirmed by third parties — which is what these assistants use to decide who to name.
How long does it take before an AI starts naming my business?
Weeks to a few months. AI assistants read the web on their own schedule, and some of them rely on search indexes that need to pick up your changes first. Reviews and directory listings usually move faster than site changes.
Do I need a blog for this?
No. What matters first is that your own pages state plainly what you do, where you work and for whom. A blog helps you show up for more questions later, but it will not fix a homepage an AI cannot read.
Does this replace Google SEO?
No. Most of the groundwork is the same, and Google still sends far more traffic than AI assistants do today. This is added on top, not instead of.