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How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and AI assistants

- 9 min read - by , Founder

Cafe owner reading an AI assistant answer on her phone behind the counter

AI assistants recommend local businesses they can find, read and cross-check on the web. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews search the web and summarize what they find. To be recommended, let their search crawlers into your site, answer customer questions plainly, keep your details identical everywhere, and earn genuine reviews and mentions.

How do ChatGPT and other AI assistants find local businesses?

AI assistants find local businesses by running web searches while they answer and summarizing the pages and listings they retrieve. None of them has a secret directory you need to join.

  • ChatGPT sometimes uses outside search providers, rewrites a question into targeted searches using the person's approximate location, and may pull nearby business listings from third parties, per OpenAI's help center. Its search crawler is OAI-SearchBot.
  • Perplexity crawls the web with PerplexityBot to surface and link websites in its answers.
  • Claude has offered web search with source citations on all plans since May 27, 2025, per Anthropic.
  • Google AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on Google Search and may run several related searches across subtopics and data sources, which Google calls query fan-out.

The inputs are ordinary: your website, your Google Business Profile, your listings and what other sites say about you.

How do you let AI crawlers into your website?

You let AI assistants read your website by making sure your robots.txt file, and any firewall or CDN in front of your site, does not block their search crawlers. Robots.txt is a plain text file at yourdomain.com/robots.txt, and Google notes that anything it does not disallow is allowed by default.

The crawlers that decide whether you can appear in answers:

  • OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI). Sites that block it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers, and changes take about 24 hours, per OpenAI's crawler page.
  • PerplexityBot (Perplexity). Perplexity recommends allowing it to appear in results; changes can take up to 24 hours, per its crawler docs.
  • Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic). Blocking it may reduce your visibility in Claude's search results, per Anthropic's help page.

Model training is controlled separately, so you can stay searchable while opting out of it. GPTBot (OpenAI) and ClaudeBot (Anthropic) collect content for training, and Google-Extended controls whether Google may use your content to train future Gemini models. Google states that Google-Extended does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search.

Then check the layer in front of your site: OpenAI asks owners to confirm their host or CDN allows its published crawler IP addresses. Cloudflare, for example, lets you allow or block AI Search, Agent and Training traffic separately, per its changelog.

What should your pages say so AI assistants can quote them?

AI assistants quote pages that answer a customer's question in plain words, in sentences that still make sense when lifted out on their own. ChatGPT and Google split one question into several narrower searches, so pages that cover specific details have more chances to match.

  • Open your home page with who, what and where: "[Name] is a family dental clinic in [town], open Monday to Saturday."
  • Give each main service its own page: what it is, who it is for, how long it takes, and a price range if you publish one.
  • Add a short FAQ built from questions you hear on the phone: parking, insurance, areas you cover.
  • Keep hours, address and phone number as real text, not only inside images or PDFs. Google's AI features guidance asks for important content in textual form.

Write the answer first, then the detail. "We repair furnaces and boilers of all brands across [area], including weekend calls" is easy to quote; a paragraph of slogans is not.

Does structured data help AI assistants understand your business?

Structured data helps by stating your business name, address, hours and phone number in a machine-readable format, but no search engine promises it will make you appear. Google's LocalBusiness documentation requires only name and address, recommends telephone, url, openingHoursSpecification, geo and priceRange, and uses JSON-LD in its examples.

Pick the most specific type on schema.org, such as Dentist or HomeAndConstructionBusiness, and use sameAs to point to your official profiles. Google says the markup must match the visible text on the page, and that no special schema is needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Treat it as a clear label, not a shortcut.

If you build your site with SiteCreatorEngine, page titles, descriptions, schema.org structured data and a sitemap are included from day one.

Why does consistent business information matter for AI recommendations?

Consistent business information matters because AI answers are assembled from several sources at once, and conflicting names, addresses or hours leave an assistant with no single fact to repeat. ChatGPT may draw on third-party listings, and Google's AI features guidance asks you to keep your Business Profile up to date.

Google's Business Profile guidelines say your name should match your storefront, website and stationery, and ask for a local phone number and regular customer-facing hours. Google also says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show in local results.

  1. Claim and verify your Google Business Profile.
  2. Write down one master version of your name, address, phone, hours and website.
  3. Make every listing match it: maps apps, industry directories, booking platforms. For restaurants, ChatGPT may show reservation times from OpenTable, Resy or Yelp.
  4. Change holiday and seasonal hours everywhere on the same day.

Do reviews and mentions on other websites affect AI recommendations?

Reviews and mentions on other websites matter because they show a business is real and well regarded, and Google counts both toward how prominent a local business is. According to Google's page on local ranking, prominence is based partly on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have, and more reviews and positive ratings can help.

Follow Google's rules for reviews. You can ask customers with a Google review link or QR code, and you should reply to reviews, good and bad. Offering discounts, freebies or anything else in exchange for a review is prohibited and treated as fake content, per Google's review tips. SiteCreatorEngine's Google reviews assistant drafts replies for you to read and send yourself.

Mentions work the same way. A trade association listing, a supplier's "where to buy" page or a local news story is one more page that confirms who you are and what you do.

Should you add an llms.txt file to your website?

An llms.txt file is optional: it is a proposed convention for giving AI tools a plain Markdown summary of your site, not a standard that search engines have confirmed they use. The proposal at llmstxt.org, first published by Jeremy Howard on September 3, 2024, describes a file with your site's name, a short summary and links to key pages.

The site notes that OpenAI, Anthropic and Google's Gemini publish llms.txt files for their own developer docs, which is not the same as reading yours when someone asks for a local plumber. Google says you do not need AI text files to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Add one if it is easy, but do the other work first.

How can you check whether AI assistants mention your business?

You can check whether AI assistants mention your business by asking them your customers' questions and watching the few reports the platforms provide.

  1. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google questions like "best [service] in [town]". Name the town, since ChatGPT's local results depend on approximate location and saved memories. Repeat monthly; answers vary.
  2. Look for visits tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com in your analytics. ChatGPT adds this to referral links, per OpenAI's publisher FAQ.
  3. Open Google Search Console, which counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic in the Performance report under the "Web" search type, not separately.
  4. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools. Its AI Performance report, in public preview since February 10, 2026, shows citations in Microsoft Copilot and AI summaries in Bing, per the Bing Webmaster blog.
  5. Ask new customers how they found you.

If an assistant gets a fact wrong, fix it at the source - your website and listings - and check again later.

If you are starting from scratch, SiteCreatorEngine builds a WordPress site for your business in a few minutes, free to start.

Frequently asked questions

Can I pay to get recommended by ChatGPT or Google?

Not in their regular answers. Google states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. OpenAI says ChatGPT ranks search results using several factors and that placement is not guaranteed. What you can control is access for their crawlers, clear pages, accurate listings and genuine reviews.

Will blocking GPTBot stop ChatGPT from recommending my business?

No. According to OpenAI, GPTBot collects content for training AI models, while OAI-SearchBot controls whether your site can appear in ChatGPT search answers. You can disallow GPTBot in robots.txt to opt out of training and still allow OAI-SearchBot, so your pages stay eligible to be found and cited.

Do I need special markup or files for Google AI Overviews?

No. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no need for new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup. A page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet in Google Search. Normal SEO basics apply.

How long do robots.txt changes take to reach AI assistants?

OpenAI says its systems take about 24 hours to adjust after you update robots.txt, and Perplexity says changes can take up to 24 hours. Being crawled does not guarantee being recommended; it only makes your pages eligible to be read and cited when they match what someone asks.

Sources

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