More customers now ask ChatGPT the questions they used to type into Google: “who's a good accountant for a small limited company in Bristol”, “best Sunday roast near Totnes”, “emergency locksmith in Leeds that's open now”. If you want to know how to get recommended by ChatGPT, the honest starting point is that nobody can place you in its answers. What you can do is make sure that when ChatGPT goes looking, it finds your business, understands it, and has good reasons to name it.
This guide explains how ChatGPT actually builds an answer, what it can and cannot see, and the work that genuinely moves the needle. It applies to any business: a salon, a solicitor, a garden centre, a software firm or a roofer.
How ChatGPT builds an answer about businesses
ChatGPT answers in one of two ways, and it matters which.
The first is from what the model learned during training. That knowledge is a snapshot of the public web at a point in time, months or more before you read the answer. A well-known restaurant chain will be in there. A three-person plumbing firm that started last year almost certainly is not, and even if it is, the details may be stale.
The second is by searching the web live. When a question needs current or local information, ChatGPT can run a search, read a handful of pages and write an answer with links to its sources. OpenAI describes a crawler called OAI-SearchBot that it uses to find and index pages for ChatGPT search, and says sites that block it may not appear in search answers. OpenAI has also said ChatGPT search draws on third-party search providers alongside its own crawling, without publishing the full list, so treat any claim about exactly which provider is used as a moving target.
For local and “best X near Y” questions, the search route is what usually decides who gets named. That is good news for a small business, because it means the answer is built from pages that exist today, including yours.
| Route | Where it comes from | How current | What you can influence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Training data | A large snapshot of the public web used to train the model | Months to years old | Very little in the short term; being widely and consistently mentioned helps over time |
| Live web search | OAI-SearchBot’s index plus third-party search results, read at the moment of the question | Current | A great deal: crawler access, clear pages, listings, reviews and mentions |
Step 1: make sure ChatGPT is allowed to read your site
This is the step most often broken, and nobody notices because nothing looks wrong. OpenAI runs three separate agents and each can be allowed or blocked in your robots.txt file:
- OAI-SearchBot: finds pages for ChatGPT search results. If you want to be recommended, this must be allowed.
- ChatGPT-User: visits a page when a user’s conversation asks ChatGPT to open it. Blocking it stops ChatGPT reading your page even when someone asks about you directly.
- GPTBot: collects content that may be used to train future models. You can block this and still appear in search answers, although allowing it is reasonable if you want the next model to know you exist.
Step 2: write pages an AI can quote
When ChatGPT reads your site it is looking for plain statements it can repeat with confidence. Vague marketing copy gives it nothing to use. “We deliver bespoke solutions tailored to your needs” could describe anyone. “We fit and service air-source heat pumps across Exeter, Exmouth and Crediton, and we're MCS certified” is a sentence an assistant can lift straight into an answer.
Every business can apply the same test. On your home page and each service page, can a stranger find, within a few lines:
- What you do, in the words customers use (“dog grooming”, not “canine aesthetics”).
- Where you do it: the town, the areas you cover, or that you work nationally or online.
- Who it is for, if that is narrow (“small limited companies”, “listed buildings”, “nervous patients”).
- What makes you a sensible choice: qualifications, memberships, how long you have traded, opening hours, typical prices or what moves a price.
- How to contact you: phone, address or service area, and a booking or quote route.
Step 3: be consistent everywhere ChatGPT might look
For local questions an assistant rarely relies on one source. It cross-checks your website against directory listings, review sites, maps data and local press. If your website says you are open until 6pm, your Google listing says 5pm and an old directory lists a phone number you gave up in 2021, the assistant has three versions of the truth and may choose the wrong one, or leave you out.
Pick one exact form of your business name, address and phone number and use it everywhere. Then work through the listings that matter in your sector. For most local businesses that means Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and a handful of well-known directories; our guide to local citations covers which ones are worth the effort. For professional firms it also means your regulator’s register and trade body directory. For restaurants and hospitality it means the booking and review platforms your customers already use.
Step 4: earn the mentions ChatGPT trusts
When an assistant is asked for the “best” or a “recommended” business, it looks for evidence that other people rate you. That evidence is mostly the same thing that has always built a local reputation: reviews, a mention in a local news story, being listed by a trade body or professional association, a write-up on a respected local blog, a supplier or partner naming you on their site.
None of it can be faked safely. Buying reviews is illegal in the UK under consumer protection law, and paid “AI citation” schemes that plant mentions on low-quality sites are as likely to be ignored as to help. The durable approach is slower and dull: do good work, ask happy customers for reviews, say yes to the local paper, sponsor the under-11s, and make sure each mention links to the right website.
Step 5: test what ChatGPT says about you
Once a month, ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, with search switched on. Use a private or logged-out window where you can, because answers are influenced by your own chat history. Try a few versions:
- “Who are the best [your service] in [your town]?”
- “I need [specific job] in [area]. Who should I call?”
- “What do people say about [your business name]?”
- “Is [your business name] open on Saturdays?”
What does not work
A small industry has grown up selling “ChatGPT SEO”, “GEO” and guaranteed AI rankings. Be sceptical. No one outside OpenAI controls what ChatGPT says, and OpenAI does not sell placement in its answers at the time of writing. The things that genuinely help are the ones above, and most of them are the same things that help you in Google.
Specific things we would not spend money on: hidden text written “for AI”, pages stuffed with every town name in the county, bulk-generated blog posts, fake reviews, and any service that promises a named position in ChatGPT answers. Files like llms.txt are cheap and harmless, but no major assistant has said it relies on them to choose which businesses to recommend.
If you would like a website built so that people and assistants can both understand it straight away, that is the kind of site Nerdsharks designs from scratch for each client. The steps above are worth doing whoever builds yours.