How to Help ChatGPT and Google's AI Recommend Your Business

When someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI for a business like yours, the answer draws on the same kinds of places your customers check: business listings like your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your website.

Nobody can guarantee you'll be named. Anyone who promises a spot in an AI answer is guessing. But you can make it easy for these tools to understand what you do, where you do it and why people choose you. The work is mostly the same work that helps you on Google Maps, and it's work a small business can do.

It's worth doing now. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 45% said they had used ChatGPT or another AI tool for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. BrightLocal sells tools that track AI visibility, so keep that in mind.

How AI tools find local businesses

Each tool works a little differently, but they all lean on information that's already public:

• ChatGPT searches the web for many questions. OpenAI says its search crawler, called OAI-SearchBot, is what lets websites appear in ChatGPT's search answers. For local questions it uses the location of the person asking, plus what OpenAI calls "trusted third-party providers" for nearby business listings. OpenAI doesn't say which providers.
• Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on Google Search. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in them. To be eligible, a page must be indexed and able to show in normal Google results with a short text preview. For places like restaurants, salons and stores, AI Mode shows ratings, reviews and opening hours from Google's own information about local businesses.
• Gemini, Google's assistant, uses public information from Google Maps to find businesses and show their ratings, hours and websites.
• Microsoft Copilot works with Bing. Microsoft says keeping your Bing Places listing current helps keep your address, hours and contact details eligible for its AI answers.

The common thread: these tools draw on what other sources say about you. Your job is to make those sources complete, consistent and easy to read.

Step 1: Make your Google Business Profile complete

Google's AI tools show ratings, reviews and hours from Google's own business information, and your Business Profile is the part of that you control. Google lists keeping it up to date as a best practice for its AI features. For local rankings, Google says results are based mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, and that "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking."

• Pick the most specific primary category, then add the secondary ones that fit.
• List every service you offer, in the words customers use.
• Keep hours current, including holidays.
• Add real photos of your work, your place and your team.
• Write a plain description: what you do, for whom and where.

Step 2: Get steady, recent reviews

Reviews tell both people and machines that real customers chose you. Ask every customer, not just the happy ones, and make it easy with a direct link. Reply to reviews, including the bad ones, calmly and briefly.

Don't buy reviews or write them yourself. Since 2024, a Federal Trade Commission rule bans fake reviews, including AI-generated ones, and paying for reviews that must say something positive. The FTC can seek fines from businesses that knowingly break it.

Step 3: Say it plainly on your website

AI tools summarize what they can read. If your homepage says "Quality you can trust" and nothing else, there's little to summarize. Give each main service its own page, and on each page answer the questions customers ask before they call:

• What exactly you do, and what you don't.
• Where you work: your city, the areas you serve, and your address if customers come to you.
• Prices or price ranges, if you can share them.
• How to book, and how soon.
• Short answers to common questions, written as questions and answers.

If you want to go one step further, ask whoever built your site to add LocalBusiness structured data. This is a small block of code that tells Google your hours, address and other details in a format it can read. It isn't required. Google says its AI features don't need special markup or AI text files, and the markup doesn't guarantee any special display. It just makes the facts on your page easier for machines to read.

Step 4: Let the right crawlers in

Most websites have a file called robots.txt that tells automated visitors what they may read. OpenAI uses separate crawlers for separate jobs: OAI-SearchBot finds pages for ChatGPT search, and GPTBot collects content for training its models. You can allow the first and block the second. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that changes take about a day to apply.

Google's AI features use the same crawler as regular Google Search, so if your pages show up on Google, they're eligible. Ask whoever manages your site to check robots.txt, especially if a security plugin or an old setting blocks bots it doesn't recognize.

Step 5: Use the same details everywhere

Your business name, address, phone number and hours should match on your website, Google, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing, Facebook and any directories in your industry. When details disagree, any system that reads them has to guess which one is right.

Two listings often get skipped. Bing Places is the one Microsoft ties to its AI answers in Copilot and Bing. Apple Business, which replaced Apple Business Connect in April 2026, is where you manage how your business looks in Apple Maps and other Apple apps.

How to check what AI says about you

Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google the questions your customers ask, like "best caterer in Fort Lauderdale" or "notary open Saturday near Miramar." Write down who gets named, what the answer says about you and which sources it shows. When an answer is wrong, look at the sources it cites. They often show what to fix: an old listing, wrong hours or a page that never says what you do.

Your reviews matter here too. In a follow-up BrightLocal report, 97% of people who had used AI for local recommendations said they sometimes double-check its picks against real reviews.

What doesn't work

• Promises of a guaranteed spot. AI answers change from one question to the next and from one week to the next.
• Stuffing pages with keywords or city names. It reads badly to people and helps no one.
• Fake reviews, or paying for good ones. They break the FTC rule and Google's review policies, and Google can remove them.
• Special AI files or tricks sold as a shortcut. Google says you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup to appear in its AI features.
• Paying for a better ranking. Google says there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Ads exist, but they're labeled and separate.

Where to start this week

1. Open your Google Business Profile and fill in every empty field.
2. Send your review link to your last ten customers.
3. Read your homepage as a stranger. Does it say what you do, where and how to book in the first few lines?
4. Ask ChatGPT and Google about your type of business in your area, and save the answers.

If you'd like help, our Website & Marketing Audit includes an AI answer check: we ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google the questions your customers ask and show you who gets named and what the answers say about you. It's $250 and taken off any website or software project you start within 30 days of paying for the audit. Or send us your website for a free website review.