How to get ChatGPT to recommend your business

Short answer: you can't pay for a place in ChatGPT's answer or submit your business to it. What you can do is make it easy for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI to find the right facts about you and to find them in more than one place: a page on your site that answers the buyer's question in its first lines, the same details on your Google Business Profile and directories, real reviews, and a site those tools are allowed to read. This guide takes you through it in eight steps, with prompts to copy and a one-page checklist at the end. Nobody can guarantee a recommendation. Last updated 9 October 2026.

It's written for the owner of a café, a trade business, a clinic or a small online shop, not for marketers. Any technical word is explained the first time it appears. You don't need to pay anyone to follow it. If you'd rather not spend the hours, the last section says what it looks like when Dinkum does it for you.

What you're actually trying to change

When someone asks ChatGPT "who's a good plumber near me?" it answers one of two ways. Sometimes it writes from what it picked up in training, which is months old and can't be edited by you. Often, for a question about a real business, it searches the web at that moment, reads a handful of pages, and writes an answer from them. The second way is the one you can influence, and it's why the same advice that helps you in Google also helps here: pages it can fetch, facts that agree across the web, and mentions on pages it already trusts. Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode work the same way: they search, read, then write. For the longer version see what AEO is and how an answer engine picks a page.

Two things follow. First, you're not trying to trick a model; you're trying to be the clearest, most consistent source on you. Second, answers vary from ask to ask, so you judge progress over weeks and many questions, never one screenshot.

Step 1: check what AI says about you today

Do this before changing anything, so you know what you're fixing. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google (turn on AI Mode if you can) in a private window, and paste these in one at a time. Swap the square brackets for your own details. Ask each one two or three times in fresh chats, because the answers differ.

What is [business name] in [town] and what do they do?

I need a [service, e.g. emergency plumber] in [suburb or town]. Who would you recommend, and why?

What are the best [type of business, e.g. cafés for brunch] in [town]?

Is [business name] in [town] any good? What do customers say?

What are the opening hours, address and prices for [business name] in [town]?

[Business name] vs [your biggest local competitor]: which should I choose for [job the customer wants done]?

The first, fourth, fifth and sixth name you, so they test what the tool knows. Only the second and third don't, so they are the discovery questions: they test whether a stranger would be sent to you, and they are the ones that bring in new customers. Track the sixth separately as a branded comparison and keep it out of your discovery count.

Write the results in a sheet like this and keep it, because you'll repeat it later (see "How to tell if it's working"):

Then sort each answer into one of four outcomes, because each needs a different fix:

• It doesn't know you, or describes a different business with a similar name. Start with Steps 2 and 3.
• It knows you but gets facts wrong: old hours, a closed location, a price you stopped charging. Step 2 first. Wrong facts are quoted as readily as right ones.
• It names you but only after others, or only when asked about you by name. Steps 3 to 5 and 7.
• It names competitors and not you. Look at the sources it cites. Those pages, a "best of" list, a directory, a local news piece, are where it's learning the market. Step 7 covers getting onto them.

Write down every page Perplexity and Google's AI link to. That list is your to-do list for the whole guide.

Step 2: make the same facts true everywhere

AI tools lean on facts that several sources agree on. A business whose name, address, phone number and hours match on its own site, Google, Bing, Apple Maps and a few directories is easy to describe with confidence. One that's listed three different ways is easy to get wrong.

Write a fact sheet once, in a plain document, and copy from it every time:

• The business name exactly as you want it written, and any other names people know you by.
• Address, phone, email, website address.
• Opening hours, including public holidays.
• The services or products you want to be known for, each in one plain sentence, with prices or "from" prices if you publish them.
• The area you serve (suburbs, towns, "within 30 km of ...").
• The year you started, and who runs it, if you want that known.

Then bring each place into line with it:

1. Your own website. Put the sheet's facts in text on your home page or contact page, not only in an image or a PDF.
2. Google Business Profile. Free, and the first place Google's own AI looks for a local business. Fill in every field: categories, services, hours, description, photos.
3. Bing Places (free). Other products use Bing's index, so it's worth being right there too.
4. Apple Business Connect (free), which feeds Apple Maps.
5. Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages, where your name and "about" text should match.
6. Directories that suit your trade: the ones that showed up in the sources you wrote down in Step 1, plus your industry body, your chamber of commerce and any supplier or franchise "find a stockist" page.

Fix the old ones too. A directory listing with a dead phone number is the kind of page that gets cited.

Step 3: write a page that answers the buyer's question in the first lines

This is the change that matters most, and the one owners skip. AI tools look for the passage that answers the question. If your page opens with "Welcome to our family-run business, where passion meets craft", there's nothing to lift. If it opens with the answer, there is.

For each thing you want to be recommended for (each main service, and each town you serve if you work in several), have one page whose first paragraph says four things in plain words: what it is, who it's for, where, and roughly what it costs or how it works. Then the detail underneath. Here's a made-up example to show the difference. It's an illustration, not a real business.

Example only: Harbour Street Café, the address and the phone number are invented for this guide.

Some habits that help:

• Make headings the questions people ask. "How much does a blocked drain cost in Penrith?" works better than "Our pricing". Use the questions from Step 1.
• Put real numbers and specifics on the page. Prices or price ranges, service areas, how long the job takes, what's included. These are exactly what a buyer's question is about, and vague pages have nothing to quote.
• Add a short FAQ of the real questions customers ask you on the phone.
• Keep it as text. If the answer is only inside an image, a slider or a PDF, many tools won't read it.
• Date it when the facts change. "Prices checked 9 October 2026" tells both readers and machines the page is current. Only write that if you've checked.

If you only do one step, do this one. A page that answers the question also ranks better in normal Google search, which is where these tools get many of their sources. Our guide to choosing an AI SEO agency shows what a good answer-first page looks like from the buyer's side.

Step 4: get real reviews, and answer them

For "is X any good?" questions, AI tools read review sites and summarise what people say. You can't control that, but you can give them more true material:

• Invite all your customers, not just the ones you expect to be happy, to share their honest experience in a Google review, with a direct link (your Google Business Profile has a "get more reviews" link you can copy) sent by text or on the receipt.
• Leave the wording to them. Don't tell people what to write or what to say about you. Honest reviews that happen to name the job and the suburb ("fixed our hot water system in Parramatta the same day") tell a machine what you do and where, but those details have to come from the customer.
• Reply to reviews, good and bad, in plain words, including the service and place where it's natural. Calm replies to complaints are read too.
• Don't buy or write fake reviews, or offer discounts, gifts or any other reward for a review, positive or not. It breaks the rules of Google and most review sites, consumer regulators in many countries treat it as illegal, and a pattern of fake reviews is exactly what these systems learn to discount.

Step 5: add schema (and know what it can and can't do)

Schema, or structured data, is a block of code on your page that states the facts in a form a machine reads without guessing: this is a business, here is its name, address, hours and phone. Visitors never see it. It helps tools tie your site to the same business they see elsewhere. It does not force a recommendation, and none of the AI companies has promised to use it, so treat it as tidying, not a trick.

Here's the basic version for a local business. Change every value to match your fact sheet, and use a more specific type than LocalBusiness if one fits (Restaurant, Plumber, Dentist). Everything in it must also be visible on the page.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "name": "Harbour Street Café",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "telephone": "+61 8 5550 0123",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1 Harbour Street",
    "addressLocality": "Fremantle",
    "addressRegion": "WA",
    "postalCode": "6160",
    "addressCountry": "AU"
  },
  "openingHours": "Mo-Su 07:00-15:00",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/example",
    "https://www.instagram.com/example"
  ]
}
</script>

Paste it into your page's HTML (most website builders have a "custom code" or "header" box; WordPress SEO plugins add it for you). Then check it with Google's Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org. The name, address and phone above are invented placeholders.

Step 6: let the AI crawlers in

A crawler is the program a company runs to fetch web pages. If your site blocks it, your pages can't be read live, and nothing else in this guide matters. Check two places.

Your robots.txt file. Open yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. This plain text file tells crawlers what they may fetch. Look for lines that name the bots below with Disallow: /.

Bot names and what they do come from each company's own documentation (OpenAI, Perplexity, Google, Microsoft) and change over time. Check those pages if it matters to you.

Whether to allow the training bots is your call: some owners are happy for AI to learn from their site, some aren't. But the search bots are how you get shown, so if you want recommendations, allow those. A robots.txt that welcomes everyone is just:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Your host or security service. Many sites also block bots at a level robots.txt doesn't show. Cloudflare, for example, has a setting to block AI crawlers, and it's on by default for some newer sites. If you use Cloudflare, Wordfence, Sucuri or a host with "bot protection", look in their settings for anything about AI bots or "AI crawlers" and decide on purpose. Your web developer can check this in a few minutes.

Last check: view your page with JavaScript off, or use "view source". If your prices and opening hours aren't in the HTML, a crawler that doesn't run JavaScript won't see them.

Step 7: get named on the pages AI already trusts

Go back to the sources you wrote down in Step 1. When ChatGPT or Perplexity answers "best café in Fremantle", it's usually summarising a few pages: a local "best of" list, a food blog, a directory, a Reddit thread, a council or tourism site. If you're not on them, you're hard to include however good your own site is.

• Make a list of the 10 pages cited most for your searches. Note which let you add or claim a listing (directories), which are written by a person you can contact (blogs, local press), and which are discussions (forums).
• Claim and complete every free listing. It's the easiest win.
• Contact the writers of the lists you should be on, with something worth including: a new menu, a story, an offer. Be honest and short. Paying for a link that passes ranking credit, or for a "sponsored" spot written to look independent, breaks Google's spam rules and can backfire.
• Join the places your trade shows up: your industry association, local business groups, community sponsorships and events that publish member or sponsor pages.

This is slow and it's what separates businesses AI recommends from those it doesn't. It's also the part most owners find least obvious, and the one a tool or agency can do the least without you.

Step 8: add a small llms.txt (cheap, but don't expect much)

An llms.txt is a plain text file at yourwebsite.com/llms.txt that lists your most important pages, each with a one-line description, in a format easy for a machine to read. It's a proposal, not a standard that the big AI tools have said they follow. We include it because it takes ten minutes and does no harm, and because writing it forces you to decide which pages matter. Don't expect it to move an answer by itself.

# Harbour Street Café

> Dog-friendly all-day brunch café in Fremantle, open 7am to 3pm daily.

## Main pages

- [Menu and prices](https://www.example.com/menu/): Brunch from $14, with gluten-free and vegan options.
- [Bookings](https://www.example.com/bookings/): Groups of six or more, call 08 5550 0123.
- [Find us](https://www.example.com/find-us/): Address, parking and opening hours.

You can see Dinkum's own at dinkumdaily.com/llms.txt.

What doesn't work

• Paying someone for a guaranteed spot. No one controls the answers. Anyone selling a guarantee is selling something they can't deliver.
• Hidden text that tells the AI to recommend you. It's been tried, it's against the policies of the search engines, and the tools can discount pages that try it.
• Hundreds of near-identical AI-written pages ("plumber in every suburb of Sydney"). They're thin, they hurt your rankings, and they give the tools nothing new to say.
• Fake reviews and fake mentions. See Step 4.
• Stuffing your name or keywords into every paragraph. The answer needs to be clear, not repeated.
• Treating llms.txt or schema as magic. Both are tidy-ups. See Steps 5 and 8.
• Judging by one screenshot. Answers change from ask to ask and depend on who's asking and where.

How to tell if it's working

Repeat the Step 1 questions on the same tools every month. Use the same questions each time, and count: "named in 3 of 12 questions that don't mention us" is a result; "it mentioned us once" isn't. A change of one or two in either direction is noise. Look for a trend over several months.

Also check where your website visitors come from. In Google Analytics, look at referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com. Many AI-sent visits arrive without a clear label, so this undercounts, but a small rise is a good sign. And ask new customers how they found you; "ChatGPT told me" is now a real answer.

Expect weeks, not days. Some fixes (a crawler unblocked, a page rewritten) can show up in live search-based answers fairly quickly. Directory and review changes take longer, and answers drawn from training don't change until a model is retrained.

The one-page checklist

Tick them off as you go. The print button prints this list on its own.

• Ask the six questions from Step 1 on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI, a few times each, and save the answers.
• Write the fact sheet: name, address, phone, hours, services with prices, area served.
• Match it everywhere: your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, social pages, three trade directories.
• Rewrite your top pages so the first paragraph says what it is, who it's for, where and the price or how it works.
• Turn headings into the questions customers ask, and add a short FAQ.
• Invite your next 10 customers to leave an honest Google review, and reply to every review.
• Add LocalBusiness schema that matches the page, and test it.
• Check robots.txt and your host's bot settings so OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Googlebot and Bingbot are allowed.
• Make sure prices and hours are in the page's HTML, not only in images or scripts.
• List the 10 pages the AI cites for your searches, and get onto the ones you can.
• Publish a short llms.txt listing your main pages.
• Repeat the questions every month, count how often you're named, and check Analytics for AI referrals.

Print the checklist

Questions

Can I pay ChatGPT to recommend my business?

Not for the answer itself. Nobody can sell you a guaranteed place in what it writes, so be wary of anyone who says they can.

Do I need a website?

It helps a lot. Without one, AI tools have to piece you together from directories and reviews, which is possible but leaves you at the mercy of whoever wrote them. Even a simple one-page site with your facts in text gives them a source you control.

How long does it take?

Fixes that live search can read can show up within weeks. Reviews and mentions on other sites take months. Answers that come from a model's older training only change when it's updated.

Does ChatGPT use my Google Business Profile?

OpenAI doesn't publish a list of sources, so nobody outside it can say exactly. A complete, accurate profile is cheap, and Google's own AI and many directories draw on it, so keep it right.

Do I need llms.txt?

No. It's harmless and quick, but the major AI companies haven't said they use it. Put your effort into Steps 2 to 4 and 6 first.

Will this work for my kind of business?

The steps are the same for a café, a plumber, a dentist or a shop. What changes is the questions your customers ask, so spend most of your time on Step 1 and Step 3 for your own trade.

Can I do all this myself?

Yes. Everything above is free and needs a couple of hours a week, access to edit your website and a spreadsheet.

Do it yourself, or have Dinkum do it every weekday morning

Everything in this guide you can do yourself, and we'd rather you did than did nothing. The hard part is keeping it going: asking the questions every week, noticing which answer got something wrong, rewriting the page that should have won, checking the technical side.

That's what Dinkum is. It asks a fixed set of buyer questions each week across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers, finds the page or fact that needs fixing, and ships one change to your site each weekday as a pull request you approve, then judges each change at 14 and 28 days against the rest of your site. It needs access to your website's code, because that's how it makes the changes, and it costs $2,000 a month for one site, month to month. There are no published client results yet, so we won't quote any. How it works in detail is on how Dinkum works, and what an AEO agency should do covers what to expect from anyone you hire.