How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and AI search

To get your business recommended by ChatGPT and AI search, make sure AI tools can read your website, publish pages that answer customers’ questions plainly, keep your business details consistent across Google and other listings, and earn genuine reviews and mentions on other sites. There’s no form to submit and no way to buy a place in organic AI answers. Most of the work overlaps with good local SEO, done properly.

Below is a practical checklist based on what the platforms themselves document, plus a simple way to check whether AI tools mention you each month.

How AI tools find and recommend local businesses

When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI Mode “who’s a good electrician in Penrith” or “which accountants in Geelong work with tradies”, the tool usually draws on two things: what its model learned during training, and a live web search for current information. For local and up-to-date questions, the live search matters most.

What the platforms say about that live search:

• ChatGPT. OpenAI’s crawler documentation says its search features use a crawler called OAI-SearchBot, and recommends allowing it in your robots.txt file if you want to appear in ChatGPT search answers.
• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google’s Search Central documentation says there are no additional requirements to appear in these features. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet, and normal SEO practices apply.

None of the providers publish exactly how they choose which businesses to name. In practice, the sources they cite are the same places customers look: your website, your Google Business Profile, directories, review sites, and articles that mention you. A business that is clearly described, consistently listed and well reviewed gives these tools more to work with. For a local business, a complete Google Business Profile is one of those sources.

The audience is real. auDA, which manages the .au domain, reports from its Digital Lives of Australians 2025 research that a majority of Australians now use AI, and that finding answers to search queries is one of the main uses.

Let the crawlers in: robots.txt and site speed

If AI tools can’t read your site, nothing else on this list matters. Check these first.

• Look at your robots.txt file. Visit yourdomain.com.au/robots.txt. If it blocks OAI-SearchBot or Googlebot, those tools can’t use your pages for search answers.
• Know the difference between search and training. OpenAI lists GPTBot separately as the crawler for model training, and Google says its Google-Extended control does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search. You can decide on training separately from search visibility.
• Check your security settings. Some hosting, firewall and security services can block AI crawlers. Make sure any blocking is a deliberate choice, not a default you didn’t know about.
• Keep the site fast and mobile friendly. auDA’s advice to business owners includes checking that your site loads quickly, works on phones and uses HTTPS. Google PageSpeed Insights is a free place to start.
• Put key information in text. Prices, service areas and hours shown only inside images or PDFs are harder for any tool to read reliably.

Pages that answer real questions clearly

People ask AI tools full questions, not two-word searches. Your pages should answer those questions in plain sentences.

• One page per main service. Say what it is, who it’s for, where you do it, roughly what it costs or what affects the price, how long it takes, and what happens next.
• Name your service areas. List the suburbs and regions you actually cover, in text.
• Answer first, then explain. Put the direct answer in the first sentence or two, then the detail.
• Use real customer questions. Go through your emails, enquiry forms and phone calls. The questions people actually ask make better headings than anything a keyword tool suggests.
• Keep it current. Update service pages and older articles when prices, services or rules change.

Compare these two lines. “We deliver quality solutions for all your needs” tells an AI tool nothing. “We install and upgrade switchboards for homes in Penrith, the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury, usually within a week of quoting” tells it exactly who you are, what you do and where.

Consistent business details across listings

AI tools cross-check information. If your name, address, phone number and hours differ between your website, Google and directories, you look less certain as an answer.

1. Complete your Google Business Profile. Correct categories, services, service areas, hours, photos and a description that says what you do in plain words.
2. Claim your other main listings. Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, and the directories and associations relevant to your industry.
3. Use identical details everywhere. Same business name, same phone number format, same address.
4. Fix the old ones. Search for your business name and old phone numbers or addresses. Update or remove outdated and duplicate listings.

Reviews and mentions on other sites

Recommendations rely heavily on what other people say about you. Two things help.

A steady flow of genuine reviews. Ask every customer, at the right moment, on the platforms that matter in your industry. Reviews that describe the actual job in the customer’s own words, such as “replaced our hot water system in Mount Druitt the same day”, give AI tools useful detail. Don’t script reviews or offer rewards for them. Google’s policies prohibit incentives, and the ACCC warns that incentives for positive reviews can mislead consumers. Here is how to get more Google reviews without breaking the rules.

Mentions on other sites. Local news, industry associations, supplier and partner pages, community sponsorships, podcasts and guest articles. Each one is another independent source that describes your business. These build slowly, which is why AI visibility is a months-long project rather than a quick fix.

Schema markup: what helps

Schema markup is code on your pages that labels facts, such as your business name, address, phone, hours and services, in a standard format that machines can read.

Be realistic about it. Google’s documentation on AI features says there is no special schema.org structured data you need to add to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no AI-specific files are required. Structured data still helps search engines understand your basic details and supports other search features, which is why auDA lists it in its advice to business owners.

What’s worth having:

• LocalBusiness markup, using the most specific type that fits, with name, address, phone, opening hours and links to your official profiles.
• Organization markup with your logo and official social profiles.
• Markup that matches the page. Google says structured data should match the visible text. Don’t mark up anything a visitor can’t see.

If your site runs on WordPress or a common website builder, a reputable SEO plugin or your developer can set this up in an afternoon.

How to check whether AI tools mention you

You can’t see an AI ranking report, but you can run a simple check once a month.

1. Write ten questions customers would ask. Mix broad ones (“best plumber in Newcastle”) with specific ones (“who fixes leaking showers without retiling in Newcastle”).
2. Ask them in several tools. ChatGPT with search, Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode, Gemini, and any others your customers use. Use a private browser window where you can.
3. Record the results. Were you mentioned? Which competitors were? Which sources did the tool cite?
4. Look at the cited sources. If a tool keeps citing a directory where your details are wrong, fix that listing. If it cites competitors’ service pages, compare them with yours.
5. Watch trends, not single answers. AI answers change from one run to the next. A pattern over three months tells you more than one result.

A simple spreadsheet is enough. One row per question, one column per tool:

If a tool says something wrong about your business, such as old hours, a service you don’t offer or an area you don’t cover, trace it back. The error usually comes from an outdated listing, an old page on your own site or a third-party article. Correct the source and the answers tend to follow over time, though not immediately.

Also check your website analytics for visits referred from AI tools, such as chatgpt.com, and keep an eye on Google Search Console for changes in impressions on your service pages.

What to do this month

• Check robots.txt and your security settings so search crawlers aren’t blocked.
• Rewrite your main service page so the first two sentences say what you do, for whom and where.
• Audit your Google Business Profile and two or three other listings for consistency.
• Start asking every customer for a review.
• Run your first ten-question check and save the results.

If you’d like help, CentriWeb looks after AI search visibility as part of the same work as your websites, listings, and SEO and reviews, so the pieces stay consistent.