How does ChatGPT come to recommend my business? What you can do

Nobody outside the providers knows a fixed rule by which ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity recommend businesses. What can be observed: the assistants tend to name businesses about which a lot of reliable and consistent information can be found on the web. You can influence that. The points below are hints, not a guarantee.

1. Consistent business details everywhere

Name, address, phone number, website and opening hours should read the same on your website, in your Google Business Profile, in Bing Places, in Apple Business Connect and in the important trade directories. Contradictions (two spellings, an old address) make it harder for a system to match the details to one business.

2. A well-kept Google Business Profile

• The right main category and fitting additional categories.
• Services, service area and opening hours, including public holidays.
• Current photos of the business, the team and the work.
• Replies to reviews, factual and related to the service.

3. Reviews that say something

Reviews are a signal for people and for systems. Texts in which customers write what was done and where are the most useful. Ask satisfied customers for a review, but do not buy or fake any: that breaks the platforms’ rules and can have consequences under competition law.

4. A website that speaks plainly

• Say in simple sentences what you offer, for whom, and in which town or area, ideally with a page of its own for each service.
• Answer the questions customers really ask (process, duration, price range, emergency service).
• The text should be readable without JavaScript, so not loaded in later by a script. Not every crawler runs scripts.
• Structured data (schema.org, for example LocalBusiness) helps machines read your details reliably.

5. Mentions on other sites

Local newspapers, clubs, trade guilds or the trade groups of the Chamber of Commerce, and trade portals that name and link your business, confirm that you exist and what you do. That is work, but it also pays off beyond AI.

6. Do not lock crawlers out

If your robots.txt or a firewall turns away search crawlers, the services behind them cannot read your site. Check that you are not blocking everything by accident, for example after a relaunch or through a security plugin.

What does not help

• Texts that repeat the town name dozens of times. Search systems notice, and customers do not enjoy reading it.
• Bought or self-written reviews.
• Offers of “number 1 in ChatGPT guaranteed”. Nobody can guarantee that.

Whether it worked shows in your share

Change something, and after a few weeks check whether your share of the answers goes up. A single question is not enough for that, because answers vary. How to check systematically is described in How to check whether AI assistants name your business. With the free Nennquote scan you see your starting value and the competitors named instead.