How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT
More customers ask an AI assistant who to call. Here's how those assistants choose which local businesses to name, and what you can do so they name yours.
By the AccordX team · Updated
Why this matters now
When someone asks ChatGPT "who's a good emergency plumber in Tulsa?", they usually get a short list of names, not ten blue links. If you're not on that list, you don't get a chance to compete for the job.
AI assistants don't replace Google, but they're becoming one more place customers decide who to call, especially for people who already use them for everyday questions.
How AI assistants decide who to recommend
Assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot combine what they learned during training with live web searches. For local questions they lean heavily on live results: maps data, business listings, review sites and the websites that come up for the search.
They tend to recommend businesses they can describe with confidence. That means the same name, services, location and contact details showing up consistently across several trusted sources, plus reviews that say what the business is good at.
Seven steps to get mentioned
None of these are tricks. They make your business easier for both people and machines to understand.
- Ask the assistants yourself. Type the questions your customers ask into ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity and note who gets named and how you're described.
- Make your website state the basics plainly: what you do, where you do it, your hours and how to contact you, on pages AI crawlers are allowed to read.
- Give each core service its own page that answers the questions customers actually ask about it.
- Complete and update your Google Business Profile, and claim your Bing Places and Apple Business Connect listings if you serve customers in person.
- Fix inconsistent details on directories and review sites. An old phone number or address on one site creates doubt.
- Ask happy customers for reviews that mention the service and the town, such as "fixed our water heater in Broken Arrow the same day".
- Add structured data (schema markup) to your site so your business type, services and service area are machine-readable.
What not to do
Avoid fake reviews, keyword-stuffed pages and buying mentions on low-quality sites. They break platform rules and can make assistants less likely to trust you, not more.
Be wary of anyone who guarantees AI placement. Nobody controls what assistants say, and answers vary from one question and person to the next.
How to measure progress
Keep a fixed list of 10 to 20 customer questions and run them through the main assistants each month. Track whether you're mentioned, where in the answer, and whether the details are right. Over a few months this shows a clear trend.