How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT

To be recommended by ChatGPT, a local business needs three things in place: a website ChatGPT's search crawler is allowed to read, pages that plainly answer what a customer would ask, and other trusted sites that say the same things about the business. There is no form to submit and no listing to buy. OpenAI states that placement is not guaranteed, so the work is about becoming eligible and easy to recommend. Nobody can order a recommendation.

If you have already checked and ChatGPT names your competitors, start with our diagnostic guide, business not showing in AI search, which separates the possible causes. This guide is the how-to that follows it.

How does ChatGPT decide which businesses to recommend?

It searches the web, reads what comes back, and writes an answer with links to its sources. OpenAI describes the process on its help page, searching the web with ChatGPT. Four details on that page matter to a local business:

• It rewrites the question into search queries. OpenAI's own example: someone types "What are some good restaurants near me?", ChatGPT works out from the IP address that they are in the San Francisco area, and it searches for "top restaurants San Francisco". A homeowner asking for "a plumber who can come out tonight" is handled the same way, with the city filled in.
• It uses outside search providers. The page says ChatGPT search partners with other search providers and lists Microsoft's privacy statement among them. OpenAI's launch announcement says the same: third-party search providers, plus content from partners.
• It uses outside local data. OpenAI says it may share location with third-party providers that supply local information such as nearby business listings. It does not name them.
• It shows its sources. Answers that use web search may include citations, and a Sources button lists the pages used. On phones, results may include a map.

On ranking, OpenAI says only that ChatGPT ranks search results using multiple factors intended to help users find relevant, reliable information. That is the whole published rulebook. Everything below follows from it: be reachable, be relevant to the question, and look reliable from more than one direction.

Can you submit or list your business on ChatGPT?

No. There is no ChatGPT equivalent of a Google Business Profile for a service business to claim. The eligibility rule OpenAI publishes is one sentence long: to make a website eligible for inclusion, allow OAI-SearchBot to crawl the site, and confirm that your host or content delivery network allows traffic from OpenAI's published search bot addresses. Anyone selling a "ChatGPT listing" for a plumber or a dental practice is selling something OpenAI does not offer.

Step 1: Can ChatGPT's crawler reach your website?

This is the only step with a yes or no answer, so do it first. OpenAI's crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features, and that sites opted out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.

• Check robots.txt. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for OAI-SearchBot. If a web developer or a plugin added a blanket rule against AI bots, it may be blocked. OpenAI says a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to register.
• Keep search and training separate. GPTBot is OpenAI's crawler for model training. OpenAI states each crawler setting is independent, so a law firm that does not want its articles used for training can refuse GPTBot and still allow OAI-SearchBot.
• Check the host and CDN. A firewall or bot-protection setting can block a crawler that robots.txt allows. Ask whoever runs your hosting whether AI crawlers are blocked.
• Check Bing as well as Google. OpenAI lists Microsoft among its search providers, so confirm your main pages appear in a Bing search for your business name and service.

If pages are missing from search altogether, fix that before anything else. Our guide to pages that are not indexed covers the checks.

Step 2: Does your website answer the question the customer asked?

ChatGPT can only recommend you for a question if a page it can read ties your business to that answer. When the question names a service, a town and a constraint, one "Services" page with a paragraph on everything gives it very little to work with.

Put the facts in plain text, not inside images or PDFs. State them once, clearly, near the top of the page for that service. Keep your business name, address, phone number and hours identical everywhere they appear on the site.

One limit: write a page for a town when you have something real to say about working there. Publishing dozens of near-identical city pages is what Google's spam policies call doorway abuse, and it puts your standing in ordinary search at risk.

Step 3: Do other trusted sites back up what your website says?

A business that only its own website vouches for is hard to call reliable. Corroboration from independent sites is how an engine, or a person, checks your claims. OpenAI does not publish which sources ChatGPT prefers for local businesses, so the practical approach is to be accurately described in the places a careful customer would also check.

• Plumbers and other trades: your state contractor license lookup, the Better Business Bureau, your trade association's member directory, manufacturer "find an installer" pages, and the review platforms customers in your area use.
• Dentists: your state dental board record, the American Dental Association's Find-a-Dentist directory, the provider directories of the insurance plans you accept, and patient review sites.
• Law firms: your state bar's attorney directory, legal directories such as Avvo, Justia and Martindale-Hubbell, and court or bar association listings.
• Everyone: local press. A story in the local paper about a sponsorship, an award or an expert comment is an independent page that names you, your trade and your town together.

Check that each of these shows the same name, address, phone number and services as your website. Open the Sources list when ChatGPT recommends a competitor: the pages it cites for them are the pages worth being on.

Reviews count as corroboration only when they are real. The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule bans buying or writing fake reviews, and it has been in effect since October 2024. We do not run review or directory management. These are tasks an owner or office manager can do, and they cost time, not fees.

Step 4: How do you check whether it is working?

Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, several times, on different days, and write down what you get. One check proves little, because AI answers change between runs. Ahrefs measured this on Google's AI Overviews and found 45.5% of cited sources were new from one response to the next. That study covers Google, not ChatGPT, so use it as the reason to repeat your checks and not as a ChatGPT figure.

1. Write five to ten questions in a customer's words, including the service and the town. Leave your business name out.
2. Run each one with web search on, from your service area, on at least three separate days.
3. For each run, record three things separately: were you named, was your website linked in Sources, and were you one of the businesses recommended.
4. Note which pages were cited for the businesses that were recommended.

Being named and being linked are different results. In an Ahrefs study of its own brand across six AI assistants, the mention carried a link about 28% of the time. And neither one is a booked job. Ask new callers how they found you, and keep that record apart from the checks above. Our guide to measuring AI-search enquiries shows how.

What does not work?

• Schema markup as a shortcut. Accurate schema is good housekeeping. When Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added it, citations in ChatGPT and Google's AI features showed no major uplift.
• Paying for a "ChatGPT listing". OpenAI publishes no paid or free listing for service businesses, and says placement is not guaranteed.
• Fake or bought reviews. In the US they break the FTC rule, and they put your real reviews at risk.
• Checking once and declaring victory, or defeat. One answer is a snapshot.

Where does Strata fit?

We do the website half: crawler access, indexing, the service pages in Step 2, and repeated measurement on named engines. That is our AI-search optimization service, built on technical SEO. We do not manage Google Business Profiles, reviews or directory listings, and we do not promise a recommendation. The same pages serve ordinary search, so the work is not wasted if a customer uses Google instead. Our pages for plumbing companies, dental practices and law firms cover the search side for each.

To find out whether your site is reachable and readable today, ask for a free site check. We send one useful finding within two business days, and no call is required.