How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT

A customer in Naples types "Who's a reliable roofer near me that speaks Spanish?" into ChatGPT. It answers with three names, a sentence about each and links. If your business isn't one of them, you never knew that customer existed.

This is already happening. More people ask AI assistants for recommendations the same way they used to ask a neighbor. The good news: the businesses that get recommended aren't chosen at random, and most of what helps is work you can do yourself.

How does ChatGPT decide which businesses to recommend?

ChatGPT answers in two ways:

1. From what it learned during training. Large, well-known businesses get mentioned this way. Most small local businesses don't, because there wasn't enough written about them.
2. By searching the web in real time. For local questions ("near me", a city name, "open now") ChatGPT usually runs a search, reads the results and summarizes them. This is where a small business can win.

When it searches, it looks for businesses that are clearly described, consistently listed and talked about by others. If your website is vague, your hours differ between Google and Yelp, and nobody else mentions you, the safer answer for ChatGPT is someone else.

Step 1: Let ChatGPT's crawler read your website

OpenAI uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot to find pages for ChatGPT search. If your site blocks it, your pages can't be shown with links in ChatGPT's answers. OpenAI explains this in its documentation about its crawlers.

What to check:

• Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you see Disallow: / under User-agent: * or under OAI-SearchBot, your site is blocking it.
• Some security plugins and website builders block "AI bots" with one switch. Check that setting, and if you want to block AI training, block GPTBot only, not OAI-SearchBot.
• Make sure important information isn't only inside images or PDFs. Crawlers read text.

Step 2: Be findable on Bing, not just Google

OpenAI says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers, and Bing is widely reported to be one of them. Many local businesses have never touched Bing, so this is an easy edge:

• Claim your listing on Bing Places for Business. You can import your Google Business Profile in a few minutes.
• Add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap.
• Turn on IndexNow if your website platform supports it, so Bing hears about new and updated pages right away.

Step 3: Make your business details identical everywhere

AI tools compare sources. If one site says you close at 5, another says 6 and your website doesn't say, the information looks unreliable. Check and match these everywhere you're listed:

• Business name, written exactly the same way
• Address (or service area, if you go to your customers)
• Phone number
• Hours, including holiday hours
• Your main services and the areas you serve

Start with Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp, Facebook, the Better Business Bureau if you're listed there, your industry's directories and local directories such as South Florida Network.

Step 4: Give each service its own clear page

When ChatGPT reads your site, it needs to answer: what exactly do you do, for whom, where, and how does someone hire you? One "Services" page with a list of words doesn't answer that.

For every main service, create a page that covers:

• What the service is, in the words customers use ("AC repair", not "climate solutions")
• Who it's for and the problems it solves
• Where you work: cities, neighborhoods, counties
• What it costs or how pricing works, even as a range or "starting at"
• How the process works, step by step
• Common questions, with direct answers

Pages written like this are easier to quote. When someone asks a specific question, ChatGPT can lift a clear answer from your page and link to it.

Step 5: Earn reviews and mentions on other sites

People trust recommendations from others, and AI tools work the same way. Businesses that show up in "best of" lists, local news, chamber of commerce directories and community sites are easier to recommend than a business that only talks about itself.

Practical ways to build this:

• Ask every happy customer for a review, on Google first, then on the platforms your industry uses.
• Reply to reviews, good and bad. It shows you're active and care.
• Join local organizations that list their members online (chambers of commerce, trade associations, business networks).
• Share useful knowledge: answer questions in community groups, write a guest article for a local publication, sponsor a local event that gets written about.

Step 6: Add structured data and an llms.txt file

Two technical extras help AI tools read your site correctly:

• LocalBusiness structured data (schema markup): a small block of code that states your name, address, phone, hours and services in a format machines read without guessing.
• An llms.txt file: a short, plain-text summary of your business and your most important pages, written for AI tools.

Neither replaces Steps 1 to 5, but both remove guesswork.

How do you check whether it's working?

• Ask ChatGPT yourself, the way a customer would: "best [your service] in [your city]", "who does [service] near [neighborhood]", in English and in Spanish if you serve both. Repeat every month and write down who appears.
• Look at Google Analytics for visits from chatgpt.com. ChatGPT usually adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it shows.
• Ask new customers how they found you. Add "an AI assistant (ChatGPT, etc.)" as an option on your contact form.

Be patient and honest with yourself about the results: nobody can guarantee that ChatGPT will name your business. What you can do is make yours the clearest, most consistent and best-documented option in your area.

What we'd do first for a local business

If we were starting today with a small business in Southwest Florida, we'd check crawler access and Bing in the first hour, fix the business details on the top ten listings in the first week, then rewrite the main service pages so each one answers the questions customers actually ask. That order fixes the things that block you before spending time on the things that help you stand out.

If you'd like help with any of these steps, that's what our SEO and search visibility service and our Google Business Profile setup are for. If you're still getting the basics in place, start with our guide on why your business isn't showing up on Google Maps; the same fixes help with ChatGPT.