How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and other AI assistants

"How do I get my business on ChatGPT?" is a brand-new question, and most of the answers online are either vague or selling something. Here is the plain version. AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google's AI answers, Perplexity, Claude and Microsoft Copilot don't keep a list of businesses you can sign up for. When someone asks for a recommendation, assistants with web access search the web, read what they find, and summarize the businesses they can describe with confidence. So the job is to make your business easy to find, easy to read and easy to trust.

1. Be listed where AI tools look

Assistants lean on the same big listing platforms and search indexes people use. Make sure your business is claimed and correct on each:

• Google Business Profile (google.com/business), which feeds Google Search, Maps and Google's AI answers.
• Bing Places for Business (bingplaces.com). Microsoft's search index powers Copilot and has been one of the sources behind ChatGPT's web search, so this one is easy to overlook and worth doing.
• Apple Business Connect (businessconnect.apple.com), for Apple Maps and Siri.
• The main directory for your industry (Yelp for restaurants, for example) and your CheckThisBiz listing.

2. Say what you do, where, and for whom, in plain words

AI tools match questions to text. "Best emergency plumber in Tampa" gets answered with businesses whose pages clearly say emergency plumbing, Tampa, and the neighborhoods they serve. Check that your website's home page states, in one or two sentences:

• What you are (a family-owned Mexican restaurant, a licensed roofing contractor).
• Where you are and which areas you serve.
• What you're known for (your signature dish, storm repair, same-day service).

Slogans like "quality you can trust" don't help. Specific facts do.

3. Keep the same details everywhere

If your name, address, phone number and hours differ between your website, Google, Bing, Apple and directories, an assistant can't be sure which is right, and a business it isn't sure about is easy to leave out. Pick one exact version and use it everywhere.

4. Let AI search tools read your website

Some websites accidentally block the crawlers AI search tools use. If you or your web host have a "block AI bots" setting turned on, you may be keeping your business out of AI answers. Ask whoever manages your site to check that search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Googlebot are allowed. While they're in there, ask them to add structured business data ("LocalBusiness" schema) with your name, address, phone and hours.

5. Get reviews, and reply to them

Recent, genuine reviews tell both people and machines that you're real, open and doing good work. Our guide covers how to get more Google reviews without breaking the rules.

6. Get written about

This is the step most local businesses are missing, and it's the one that matters most for "who's the best" questions. Assistants look for independent sources that describe a business: local news, community sites, publications and articles about the business, its owner and its work. A business with a website and a listing is known to exist. A business that others have written about in detail can be recommended.

You can earn coverage by being part of your community: sponsoring local events, offering expert comments to local reporters, joining your chamber of commerce. You can also have it created for you: The Company Chronicle's Feature Package is a set of articles about your business, your town and your niche, built to be read by customers, search engines and AI tools.

7. Check your progress

Ask the assistants yourself, the way a customer would: "What's the best taco place in Ocala?", "Who's a good roofer in Tampa?". Try a few phrasings, in more than one assistant, and note whether you appear and what they say about you. If an answer gets a fact wrong, trace it back to where the wrong information lives online and correct it there.