Short answer: No trick or setting gets a business recommended by ChatGPT or Gemini. AI assistants with web search mostly recommend businesses that are easy to find in search indexes, described the same way across many trustworthy sources, well reviewed on more than one platform, and clearly explained on their own websites. Work on those four things and your odds go up. No one can promise you a spot.
This guide is for owners and office managers, not developers. Every step is something you can do yourself or hand to whoever manages your website.
Why does this matter for a local business?
Customers are already asking. In BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey (1,002 US adults), 45% of consumers said they had used an AI tool to find local business recommendations in the past year, up from 6% the year before. ChatGPT was the most-used tool for this (31%), followed by Google’s AI Mode (23%) (BrightLocal, March 2026).
The difference from a regular search is that an AI answer usually names a few businesses and stops there. There’s no page two. If you’re not in the answer, that customer may never see you.
How do AI assistants choose which local businesses to recommend?
When a question needs current, local information, assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini usually search the web first and then write an answer from what they find:
- ChatGPT: OpenAI says ChatGPT search “sometimes partners with other search providers.” It rewrites your question into targeted search queries, and it can use your general location to do this. Its example is turning “good restaurants near me” into “top restaurants San Francisco” (OpenAI Help Center). For Enterprise and Edu workspaces, OpenAI states that queries go to Bing (OpenAI).
- Gemini: With Grounding with Google Search, the model decides whether a Google search would improve the answer. If it would, the model runs one or more searches and cites the pages it used (Google AI for Developers).
- Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: Google says there are “no additional requirements” to appear in them. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet in regular Google Search (Google Search Central).
So in practice, the assistant can only recommend you if it can find you, trust what it finds, and match you to the customer’s specific need. Each step below works on one of those three.
Step 1: Can search engines actually find your website?
If your site isn’t in Google’s or Bing’s index, AI tools that rely on those indexes have nothing to cite.
- Set up Google Search Console and check that your important pages (home, services, locations, contact) are indexed.
- Set up Bing Webmaster Tools. You can import your site from Search Console. Bing recommends submitting an XML sitemap with accurate “last modified” dates and using IndexNow so updates get picked up faster (Bing Webmaster Blog).
- Make sure your key information is text, not just images. Hours, services, and service areas inside a photo or a PDF menu are hard for any system to read.
Step 2: Are you accidentally blocking AI search crawlers?
Some website platforms and security settings block bots by default. OpenAI uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT’s search features, and says sites that opt out of it “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers” (they can still appear as navigational links) (OpenAI crawler documentation). Blocking GPTBot is a separate choice that affects model training, not search.
Ask your web person a simple question: “Does our robots.txt or firewall block Googlebot, Bingbot, or OAI-SearchBot?” The answer should be no.
Step 3: Is your business described the same way everywhere?
AI systems cross-check. If your name, address, phone number, hours, or services differ between your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, and industry directories, the AI has less reason to be confident about you.
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results. Fill in categories, hours, attributes, services, and photos.
- Claim Bing Places for Business and the main directories for your industry (for example, healthcare directories for practices, or Avvo and state bar listings for law firms).
- Use one exact version of your business name, address, and phone (often called NAP) everywhere. Update every listing when something changes, such as new hours, a new suite number, or a new phone line.
Step 4: Do you have strong, recent reviews on more than one platform?
Reviews feed the “trust” part of an AI answer and the tone it uses to describe you. BrightLocal’s CEO put it bluntly: assistants like ChatGPT “can’t see inside Google’s walled garden of reviews,” and businesses whose reputation exists only on Google risk being invisible there (BrightLocal). The same survey found that 97% of AI users sometimes double-check AI recommendations against real reviews, so your reviews matter after the recommendation too.
Practical moves:
- Ask every happy customer for a review. Spread the requests across Google and one or two other platforms that matter in your industry.
- Reply to reviews, especially critical ones, calmly and specifically.
- Encourage reviews that mention what you actually do (“emergency water heater repair,” “great with anxious kids”). Specific wording helps an AI connect you to specific questions.
- Never buy or fake reviews. Platforms prohibit it, and it can backfire badly.
Step 5: Does your website answer the questions customers actually ask?
Customers don’t ask AI “dentist.” They ask things like “dentist near me who takes Delta Dental and is good with nervous patients.” If your website never mentions insurance, sedation, or anxious patients, the AI has no evidence to match you to that question.
For each main service, make sure a page clearly states:
- What you do, in plain words, and who it’s for
- Where you serve: neighborhoods, cities, service area
- When you’re available: hours, emergency or same-day options, how to book
- Price signals: ranges, free estimates, accepted insurance or financing (only what’s true)
- Proof: licenses, years in business, notable credentials (only what you can verify)
A short FAQ section on each service page is an easy way to cover these. Write it the way customers talk.
Step 6: Have you added structured data that matches your page?
Structured data is a small block of code that tells search engines your business type, address, phone, and hours in a machine-readable format. Google documents a LocalBusiness type for this, and asks you to use the most specific subtype available, like Dentist, Plumber, or Attorney.
Two cautions. Google says no special schema is needed to appear in AI features (Google Search Central), so treat structured data as good hygiene, not a magic switch. And the information in it must match what’s visible on the page.
Step 7: Do other credible websites mention you?
Assistants are more confident recommending a business that other sources talk about: local news, chamber of commerce and association member pages, “best of” lists from real local publications, sponsorship pages, and industry directories.
- Join and get listed by your local chamber or trade association.
- Pitch a genuinely useful story or tip to local media.
- Sponsor or take part in community events that publish their partners online.
- Make sure every mention links to your website and uses the same name and address.
How do you know if any of this is working?
Measure before and after. You can ask assistants your customers’ questions yourself, but answers vary from run to run and from person to person. Look at trends over several checks, not a single screenshot.
Our free AI visibility check runs customer-style questions through Google Gemini with live web search and scores how visible you are on four dimensions: Visibility, Position, Sentiment, and Sources. It’s one engine and one snapshot, so it’s not a reading of ChatGPT or every assistant. But it gives you a consistent baseline to compare against after you make changes. Our methodology page explains exactly how it works. If you want to see what a full readout looks like before paying, read the sample report. The one-time full report is $69 on the pricing page — no subscription.
Frequently asked questions
Not through any organic program we’re aware of. Anyone promising a guaranteed AI recommendation for a fee is overpromising. What you can do is strengthen the signals these systems rely on: being indexed, consistent listings, strong reviews, clear website content, and credible mentions.
There’s no reliable timeline. Search engines need to recrawl your updates, and AI answers also depend on what competitors are doing. Google notes that recrawling can take anywhere from several days to several months (Google Search Central). Re-check every month or two and watch the trend.
Not necessarily. Ahrefs’ March 2026 analysis found that only about 38% of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews also ranked in the top 10 for the same query (Ahrefs). Strong rankings help, but AI answers draw on a wider set of sources.
For Google, no. Google says you don’t need new machine-readable files or “AI text files” to appear in its AI features (Google Search Central). Spend that time on the steps above.
The fundamentals overlap a lot: being indexed, consistency, reviews, clear content, and third-party mentions. The search sources differ (Gemini grounds in Google Search, and ChatGPT uses its own search partners), so being indexed in both Google and Bing is worth the effort.
See where you stand today
Before you change anything, get a baseline. Run your free AI visibility check →. It takes about a minute, with no account and no credit card. Then look at the sample report if you want the full evidence pack, or go to pricing for the one-time $69 report.
Our check currently uses Powered by Google Gemini with live web search.
Our results are a snapshot of model API responses (Powered by Google Gemini with live web search) at the time of testing and may differ from what you see in ChatGPT or other consumer AI products due to model versions, personalization, location, and timing. Nothing in this guide guarantees rankings or recommendations.
Last updated: October 10, 2026 · By the Cognitive Authority Team