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How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT, honestly

Nobody can make an AI assistant recommend you. What you can do is make sure the places it reads about you are open, clear and correct. This guide goes through those places one assistant at a time, using what the companies themselves say.

By Kwessa9 min read

A young man on a high street at dusk with his phone, looking at the shopfronts beside him
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You can't make ChatGPT recommend your business, and nobody else can either. What you can do is make sure the places it reads are open to it and say the right things: your website, your business listings, your reviews and what other sites say about you. Google's AI Overviews, Copilot and Perplexity draw on much the same material, so the same work covers them too.

How does ChatGPT find out about a business?

Two ways, broadly. Some of what ChatGPT says comes from what the model already learned, and some comes from searching the web while it answers.

OpenAI's help page on searching the web with ChatGPT says it may search automatically when a question needs current information, and can use your approximate location for local results such as restaurants. When it searches, ChatGPT "sometimes partners with other search providers", rewriting the question into shorter queries. It may also share a person's general location with third-party providers that supply "nearby business listings". For restaurant bookings it can show times from OpenTable, which OpenAI lists as available globally.

The consumer page doesn't name those search providers. OpenAI's page on ChatGPT search for Enterprise and Edu does say queries in those workspaces may be shared with Bing. So being properly indexed by Bing is sensible, but it's only part of the picture.

For shops, OpenAI's shopping help page says ChatGPT considers "structured metadata from first-party and third-party providers (e.g., price, product description) and other third-party content" when choosing products. It says product results are not ads, and that review summaries are built from reviews on public websites.

On your own site, the setting that matters is a crawler called OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites that opt out of it "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers", though they can still appear as plain navigational links.

How do Google, Copilot and Perplexity decide what to show?

Mostly from their own search indexes, which is good news: the work overlaps.

Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini

Google's page on AI features and your website is unusually direct. A page can appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode if it's indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. There are "no additional requirements", and you don't need new machine-readable files or special schema.org markup.

What Google recommends is ordinary good practice: let Googlebot crawl the site, link your important pages together, put key information in text, make sure structured data matches what's visible, and keep your Business Profile and Merchant Center details current.

For local searches, Google's Business Profile help says results are mainly based on relevance, distance and how well known a business is, which draws on things like how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have. It also says there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

Gemini is harder to pin down. Google's Gemini Apps help says it may link to sources, including public websites, but doesn't set out how they're chosen. The Google Search advice above is the best guide you have.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft's Bing Webmaster Guidelines cover Copilot as well as Bing search, and say both "rely on the same core crawling, indexing, and ranking foundation as traditional search". They ask for one topic per page, key facts early, and structured data that reflects what's visible. Microsoft's AI Performance announcement points local businesses to Bing Places for Business to keep address, hours and contact details current for AI answers, and recommends IndexNow, a way of telling search engines a page has changed.

Perplexity

Perplexity's crawler documentation says PerplexityBot is the crawler that puts websites in its search results, and recommends allowing it in robots.txt. A second fetcher, Perplexity-User, visits pages when someone asks a question, and Perplexity says it "generally ignores robots.txt rules".

Here is the short version, based only on what each company publishes.

AssistantWhere it says it gets informationWhat to check
ChatGPT searchPartner search providers (Bing named for business workspaces), third-party business listings, product dataOAI-SearchBot allowed in robots.txt
Google AI Overviews and AI ModeGoogle's search indexPages indexed, Business Profile and Merchant Center current
GeminiPublic websites, shown as sourcesNo separate guidance published
Microsoft CopilotBing's indexBing can crawl the site, Bing Places, IndexNow
PerplexityIts own search indexPerplexityBot allowed, and not blocked by your firewall

What can you control, in practice?

More than you might expect. Most of this would help with ordinary search even if AI assistants didn't exist.

Let the right crawlers in

Check your robots.txt file (it lives at yoursite.co.uk/robots.txt) and make sure nothing in it blocks these crawlers by accident. If you'd rather your content wasn't used to train AI models, that's a separate choice: OpenAI says blocking GPTBot (its training crawler) is independent of OAI-SearchBot, so you can block one and allow the other. If you use a firewall service such as Cloudflare, check it isn't blocking search crawlers too.

Write the facts down where they can be read

Assistants can only repeat what's written somewhere. If your delivery area, prices, opening hours or returns policy only exist in your head or in a photo of a sign, there's nothing to quote. Give each important topic its own clear page, and put the answer near the top. Bing's guidelines say "avoid long introductions", which is good advice for people too.

Keep your business details identical everywhere

Same name, address, phone number and hours on your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps if you're on it, and the directories that matter in your trade. An old address on one directory is exactly the kind of thing an assistant can pick up and repeat.

Add structured data that matches the page

Structured data is a small block of code stating your business type, address and hours in a format machines read. Google's LocalBusiness documentation shows how, and its Rich Results Test checks it. Both Google and Bing say the markup must match what's visible on the page, and Bing adds that it doesn't promise visibility on its own.

Earn reviews the allowed way

Ask real customers, all of them, not just the happy ones. Google's Maps content policy bans paying for reviews, offering discounts in exchange for them, and asking only satisfied customers. In the UK, the CMA's fake reviews guidance explains the consumer law on reviews that changed in April 2025. Reply to reviews too, including the bad ones. Google's own tips say it helps.

Be mentioned on sites that are relevant to you

Local guides, trade bodies, suppliers' stockist pages, industry lists. Bing lists "external links from relevant websites" as one of the ways it finds pages, and Google counts links when judging how well known a local business is. Paid or fake mentions are a different matter and carry real risk.

For shops: keep product data clean

Price, stock, delivery cost and returns, in your product pages' structured data and, if you sell through Google, in Merchant Center. ChatGPT's shopping results lean on structured product data from providers, and OpenAI says price changes can take a while to show up.

A quick checklist to work through:

  • robots.txt lets in Google's and Bing's crawlers, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot
  • Firewall or security settings don't block those crawlers
  • Your site is verified in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
  • Google Business Profile is verified, with correct category, hours and photos
  • Bing Places listing exists and matches
  • Name, address, phone and hours match on every listing you can find
  • Prices, delivery area and returns are written on the site in plain text
  • Structured data for your business (and products, if you sell online) passes Google's test
  • You ask every customer for a review and reply to the ones you get
  • At least a few relevant local or trade sites mention you by name

How can you check what assistants say about you today?

A man at a café table comparing answers on his phone and laptop

Ask them, the way a customer would. "Best place to get a boiler serviced in Leeds", not "tell me about" followed by your business name. OpenAI's help page suggests including a city or postcode if local results seem to cover the wrong area.

A few habits make the results more useful:

  • Ask the same question several times, and on different days. Answers vary, and one run tells you very little.
  • Try ChatGPT, Google (look for an AI Overview, or use AI Mode), Copilot and Perplexity separately. They don't all read the same sources.
  • Open the sources each answer cites. That tells you where the wrong facts are coming from, which is the part you can fix.
  • Ask a "should I trust this business?" style question too. People who already know your name may ask that before they pay.

For harder numbers, Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted within the "Web" search type in Search Console's Performance report. Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, and which pages.

If you'd rather someone else did the asking, Kwessa's free AI Check does it for you, with a person checking the results.

Which tips are myths, or just unproven?

"You need an llms.txt file." It's a proposed standard: a text file that summarises a site for AI tools. There's no good evidence that ChatGPT, Google, Copilot or Perplexity use it to decide what to say about a business, and Google's AI features page says you don't need AI text files to appear. It's harmless and quick to add. Just don't expect it to change your answers.

"There's special schema for AI." Google says there isn't any you need to add. Ordinary, accurate structured data is what helps.

"Blocking AI training hides you from ChatGPT." Not according to OpenAI. GPTBot (training) and OAI-SearchBot (search) are separate settings.

"You can pay to be recommended." Google says you can't pay for a better local ranking. OpenAI says ChatGPT's product results aren't ads. ChatGPT does now show ads, but OpenAI says they're kept separate from product results.

"A batch of five-star reviews will fix it." Bought or incentivised reviews break Google's rules and, in the UK, consumer law, and Google says it removes them.

Why can't anyone promise a recommendation?

Because the companies that run these assistants won't promise it either. Bing's guidelines say SEO doesn't promise rankings or traffic, and that GEO (generative engine optimisation, the newer name for this work) doesn't promise citations in AI answers. Google says meeting its requirements doesn't mean a page will be crawled, indexed or shown, and that AI Overviews only appear when Google thinks they add something.

The answers are also personal. ChatGPT can use a person's location, saved memories and custom instructions when it searches and picks products, so two people asking the same question can get different businesses. Distance matters for local results. And OpenAI's own help page warns that search results and citations "can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect".

So when someone promises you a place in ChatGPT's answers, they're promising something the platforms themselves won't. What's real is narrower and more useful: removing the reasons an assistant might skip you, get your details wrong, or confuse you with someone else.

Where to start

Start by finding out what the assistants say now. It's quicker than guessing, and the mistakes usually point straight at what needs fixing first.

The free AI Check puts three of your customers' most common questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Mode, and a person emails you what came back and the one thing we'd fix first, within two working days. If you then want Kwessa to help with the fixes above, that's what getting found by AI assistants covers.

Sources

All checked 10 November 2026.

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See what AI assistants say about you today

The free AI Check puts three questions your customers ask to ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Mode. A person checks the answers and emails you what came back, and the one thing we'd fix first.

Get a free AI Check

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