How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and other AI assistants
By Christopher Robinson · Updated · 6 min read
Short answer
AI assistants recommend businesses they can fetch, understand and verify. Make your site readable without JavaScript, answer buyer questions directly, keep your details identical everywhere, publish information only you have, and earn mentions on other sites.
How does ChatGPT decide which businesses to recommend?
When a question needs current information — “best junk removal in Atlanta” — assistants with search run several web searches, pull candidate pages, read the most relevant chunks and blend them with reviews and listings. You need to appear in those searches, be readable when fetched, and look trustworthy enough to name.
Step 1: Make sure AI crawlers can read your site
Many AI crawlers download raw HTML and don't run JavaScript. If your site is a client-side app, they see a blank page. Pre-render or server-render every page, and check that robots.txt doesn't block OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot.
- View your page source — is the text there?
- Allow AI search crawlers in robots.txt
- Keep pages fast; slow pages get truncated or skipped
Step 2: Answer buyer questions directly on your pages
Put the questions buyers actually ask as headings — what it costs, how long it takes, which areas you serve — and answer each in the first two sentences underneath. Assistants quote chunks, and a chunk that answers its own heading is the one that gets used.
Step 3: Keep your business facts identical everywhere
Use exactly the same business name, address, phone, hours and service list on your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook and industry directories. Conflicting facts make an AI less confident, and less confident systems tend to recommend someone else.
Step 4: Publish information only you have
Real prices, real results, real job photos and case studies give an assistant something it can't get elsewhere. Generic advice is available everywhere; your own numbers are not. That's why our guide on Facebook lead costs uses our clients' actual dashboards.
Step 5: Add structured data that matches the page
Organization or LocalBusiness, Service, Product, FAQPage and Article schema make your facts machine-readable. Only mark up what's visible on the page — schema that contradicts the page can hurt trust rather than help it.
Step 6: Earn mentions and reviews off your site
Assistants cross-check what you say about yourself against reviews, directories, news and other sites. Steady Google reviews that mention your service and town, local press, partner pages and industry listings all act as independent confirmation.
Step 7: Check your visibility every month
Write ten prompts a buyer would use — “who's the best appliance repair in Macon?” — and run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot monthly. Note whether you're named and which sources are cited, then improve the pages and profiles those sources point to.