How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT: What AI Assistants Read and What You Can Do

To get your business recommended by ChatGPT, make sure it can find you and has good reasons to name you: a website it's allowed to read that says plainly what you do and where, a complete Google Business Profile, a steady flow of reviews, and mentions of your business on other trusted sites. AI assistants that search the web build their answers from what they find, so the work is making what's out there about your business complete, current and consistent.

There's no trick here, and anyone selling one is guessing. But there is a list of things you can actually do, and most of them cost nothing but time.

Are customers really asking ChatGPT for local businesses?

More of them than a year ago. In BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey, a survey of 1,002 US adults published in February 2026, use of ChatGPT and other AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% the year before to 45%.

That changes the shape of the search. Instead of scrolling a page of results and opening three tabs, a homeowner asks one question and gets a few names back. If you're not one of the names, you don't even get the chance to lose the job on price. You just never come up.

Picture the scene: you're loading the truck after a job, and the customer mentions she almost hired someone else. She'd asked ChatGPT for a plumber nearby and it named two companies, neither of them yours. She only found you because a neighbor said your name.

How does ChatGPT decide which local businesses to recommend?

Nobody outside these companies knows the exact formula, so be skeptical of anyone who claims they do. But the companies do say where their assistants get information:

• ChatGPT. OpenAI says its crawler, OAI-SearchBot, "is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features," and that sites that block it "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers."
• Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft says "Copilot Search is grounded on Bing search results."
• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says a page has to be indexed and eligible to show in regular Google Search, and that "there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode."

Put simply, these assistants read the web. If your business is thin, stale or inconsistent online, there isn't much for them to go on, no matter how good your work is in person.

What do AI assistants read about a local business?

Roughly the same things a careful customer checks, just faster:

• Your website. What you do, where you do it, and whether that's written in plain text a machine can read, not buried inside images.
• Your Google Business Profile. Category, service area, hours, photos, and whether anyone keeps it up.
• Your reviews. How many, how recent, and what people actually say about the work.
• Other sites that mention you. Directories, local news, trade associations, supplier "find a pro" pages, best-of lists.

That last one gets overlooked. In Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, local search experts ranked "Presence of Business on Expert Curated Best of and Similar Lists" and "Dedicated Page for Each Service" as the top two factors for visibility in AI search. Keep in mind that's the opinion of experts who do this work, not a rule published by OpenAI or Google.

How can I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?

Here's what an owner can do, roughly in order of payoff:

1. Make sure your site can be read. Ask whoever runs your website to confirm it doesn't block OAI-SearchBot or other search crawlers. It's a quick check.
2. Give every service its own page. "Water heater replacement" and "drain cleaning" each get a page with a plain description, the towns you serve and what the job involves. A home page with a logo and a stock photo of a handshake gives an assistant nothing to repeat.
3. Write your basics in plain text. Business name, phone, service area, hours, license, how estimates work. Use the same wording everywhere.
4. Fill out your Google Business Profile completely. Google says businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local results, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.
5. Ask for reviews every time, not in bursts. Text the review link the day you finish the job. Steady and recent beats a pile from two years ago.
6. Claim your Bing listing too. Since Copilot works from Bing results, an accurate Bing Places listing is worth the time.
7. Get mentioned where it counts. Your trade association's member directory, your supplier's contractor list, a local news story, a sponsorship page. One real mention on a trusted local site beats a stack of spammy directory listings.
8. Ask the assistant yourself. Type the question your customers would ask, like "who's a good electrician in [your town]," and look at which sources it cites. That shows you where it's reading.

What doesn't work?

• Fake reviews. They're dishonest, and they put your listing at risk if they get caught.
• Stuffing town names into every sentence. Write for people. A page that reads like a list of keywords doesn't help anyone trust you.
• Buying a single file or trick as the answer. Google says you don't need to create new machine-readable files, "AI text files" or special markup to appear in its AI features. If someone sells one file as the whole solution, ask what else they're doing.
• Expecting a date. Nobody can promise when, or whether, an assistant will name you.

Where does Medalist fit?

Keeping all of that current is the part most owners never get to. Medalist's plan covers the website, built so Google and AI assistants can read and understand your business: $1,000 to set up, then $297 a month on a 12-month plan or $397 month to month, with one new article a week and the upkeep handled (see the plan). Google Business Profile management isn't part of that plan, and it can be added for $497 to set up, then $897 a month. It can't promise that ChatGPT will name you, and nobody honestly can.

FAQ

Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitor and not me? Most likely it found more, clearer or more recent information about them. Ask it the same question and look at the sources it cites. That shows you where it's reading, and what you're missing there.

Does blocking AI bots on my website hurt me? It can. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Blocking GPTBot is a separate choice: OpenAI says that one is about whether your content may be used to train its AI models.

Do I need a special AI file on my website? Not for Google. Google says there are no special files, AI text files or schema markup required to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Clear text on real service pages matters more.

Do reviews matter for AI recommendations? Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, and AI assistants read the same web. A steady flow of recent, specific reviews is one of the few things fully in your control.

How long does it take to get recommended by ChatGPT? Nobody can promise a timeline. What you control is how complete, current and consistent your information is.

Want to see what we build and what it costs? It's all at medalisthq.com/websites. Or call Henrique at (407) 890-7557 and ask him what an assistant would find about your business today.