How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my business?

How do ChatGPT and other AI tools choose local businesses?

None of them keeps a list of businesses to recommend. When someone asks for a good roofer in Southampton, the assistant runs one or more web searches, reads a handful of the pages that come back, and summarizes what those pages agree on. Getting recommended means being clearly and consistently described in the sources it reads.

Each engine searches a little differently, according to its own documentation:

From each company’s own documentation, checked September 2026. None publishes how it ranks businesses inside a recommendation. OpenAI, which now shows ads in ChatGPT, says ads are labeled and “do not influence ChatGPT’s answers.”

What sources do AI engines cite for local businesses?

In September 2026 we ran Long Island prompts through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews, from “best web design company on Long Island” to “who offers an AI receptionist on Long Island.” The same kinds of sources came up again and again:

• Business listings. ChatGPT often shows a map-style list of businesses beside its written answer, and Google’s AI Overview for “long island web design company” cited Google Business Profile listings directly. In one test, a Westhampton Beach business was named in ChatGPT’s written answer but missing from the map list beside it. Its Google Business Profile was new, had no reviews, and wasn’t linked from its website.
• Local lists and directories. “Top 5” roundups, Clutch, GoodFirms, Yelp and similar directories were cited for “best” and “who” questions.
• Pages that state prices. For cost questions, every engine built its answer from small local businesses’ pages with real dollar ranges. Pages that said “every project is different” weren’t cited.
• Town and area pages. Pages about one service in one place, such as a Hamptons SEO page, were cited even when the business behind them wasn’t local.
• Plain statements of fact. ChatGPT described that same Westhampton Beach business almost word for word from its homepage: the town, the owner’s name, what it does.
• Forums and video. Reddit, Facebook and YouTube were among the domains cited most often in Google’s AI Overviews.

For generic how-to questions, the engines cite the platforms’ own help pages. Local, specific, dated information is where a small business wins.

The playbook, step by step

Work through these in order. The first four are one-time fixes that cost nothing but time.

1. Make your business facts identical everywhere

AI engines cross-check. If Yelp has your old phone number and your Google listing names a different town from your website, the engine sees two versions of you and trusts neither. Use one business name, address, phone number, set of hours and service area everywhere, down to the suite number. Then add a short fact block to your homepage or About page, in plain sentences: who owns the business, where it is, what it does, which towns it serves and since when. Add LocalBusiness schema that matches it.

Watch for businesses with similar names. When we asked Perplexity about our own company, it confused us with a WordPress plugin and two other businesses with similar names. Clear, repeated facts are the fix.

2. Complete your Google Business Profile

Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, and says businesses “with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results.” Fill in every field: the most specific primary category, services, service area, regular and seasonal hours, photos and a description. Because Gemini reads Google Maps data, this one free profile feeds several Google products. If you can’t find yourself on Maps at all, start with why a business doesn’t show up on Google Maps.

3. Claim Bing Places and Apple Business

Bing Places for Business, now at bing.com/forbusiness, is free and can import your Google profile. OpenAI doesn’t say which data feeds ChatGPT’s local results, but it does name Bing as a search provider, so an accurate Bing listing closes an obvious gap. Apple Business, which took over from Apple Business Connect in 2026, is also free and controls how you appear in Apple Maps and Siri.

4. Let the AI crawlers in

Check your robots.txt file. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers, apart from navigational links. Blocking GPTBot only opts you out of model training; it doesn’t remove you from search. Google works the same way: blocking Google-Extended doesn’t affect Google Search. Allow PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Googlebot too, and confirm your site is indexed in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

5. Publish answer-first pages

Write one page per question your customers actually ask, with the question as the headline and a direct answer in the first two or three sentences. State prices or ranges where you can. Build a page for each core service and, where you genuinely work, a page for each town. Add an FAQ with FAQPage schema that matches the visible text word for word. Google says no special schema is needed for its AI features, so treat markup as a convenience, not a trick. Our page on AEO vs. SEO explains how little of this differs from good SEO.

6. Earn reviews that mention services and towns

Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking. For AI answers, the words matter as much as the stars: “fixed our furnace in Hampton Bays the same day” tells an engine what you do and where. Ask every happy customer, and suggest they mention the job and the town. Don’t script their words or trade discounts for reviews.

7. Get listed where the engines look

Claim your profiles on the directories that matter in your trade: Yelp and the BBB for most businesses, Houzz or Angi for home services, and your local chamber of commerce. Pitch local press, and join local Reddit and Facebook conversations as yourself when you have something useful to add. Each independent mention is one more source that agrees on who you are.

8. Test what AI says about you every month

1. Write five to ten prompts a customer would use: “best [service] in [town],” “how much does [service] cost on Long Island,” and “what is [your business name]?”
2. Run them in ChatGPT with search on, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode, in a private browser window.
3. Record who gets named and which sources are cited.
4. Fix or earn those sources. Correct a wrong listing, get onto the list that keeps being cited, publish the page that’s missing.
5. Watch referrals. OpenAI says sites that allow OAI-SearchBot can track ChatGPT referral traffic in tools like Google Analytics.

What doesn’t work

• Stuffing pages with keywords. Google’s spam policies treat it as manipulation, and AI engines summarize meaning, not repetition.
• AI files as a shortcut. Google says you don’t need new machine-readable files or AI text files to appear in its AI features.
• Copy-paste town pages. Pages that only swap the town name are what Google calls doorway abuse.
• Anyone who guarantees a recommendation. Answers change with the wording, the location and the day.

How long does it take?

Listing and website fixes show up once the engines re-crawl and refresh their data, which you don’t control. Reviews, directory listings and mentions build over months, much like local SEO, which we break down in how long local SEO takes.

Where East End Web helps

Everything above can be done yourself, and steps one through four are worth doing this week. If you’d rather hand it off, all of our SEO work is AEO-first: we optimize to be cited by AI answer engines as well as ranked by Google. On the market, AI search optimization is usually bundled with SEO; standalone audits typically run $500–$2,500 and ongoing work $500–$2,500 a month. For our clients it’s part of our SEO work, quoted per project. See how our AI search optimization works.