How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT

Nobody can guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend your business, but you can make sure it can find you and describe you correctly. Don’t block OpenAI’s search crawler (OAI-SearchBot), publish clear pages that say what you do and where, keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere, and earn real reviews where customers already look. That’s the whole official playbook today.

What you’re after is simple: when someone in Kitchener asks ChatGPT for “a bookkeeper who works with sole proprietors”, the answer has your correct details, not a closed location or an old phone number. Here’s what’s known, what isn’t, and what to do this month.

How does ChatGPT find local businesses?

When ChatGPT searches the web, it relies on crawlers. OpenAI documents three, and they do different jobs (OpenAI):

Crawler	What OpenAI says it’s for	Should a local business allow it?
OAI-SearchBot	”used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features”	Yes, if you want to appear in ChatGPT search answers
GPTBot	Crawling content that “may be used in training our generative AI foundation models”	Your choice; it’s separate from search
ChatGPT-User	”certain user actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs”, such as visiting a page a user asked about	Usually yes

What OpenAI does not publish, as far as we could find, is a list of which directories or map data ChatGPT uses for local businesses. Third-party write-ups make different claims about this. We treat it as unknown, and the steps below work regardless of the answer.

How do you check that ChatGPT’s crawler can reach your site?

Open yourdomain.ca/robots.txt in a browser (use your own domain). Look for a section that starts with User-agent: OAI-SearchBot or User-agent: * followed by Disallow: /. That line blocks the crawler from your whole site. OpenAI is explicit: “Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links” (OpenAI).

If you change the file, OpenAI says “it can take ~24 hours from a site’s robots.txt update for our systems to adjust” (OpenAI). If your website was set up by someone else, ask them to check this for you; it’s a five-minute job.

What should your pages say so an AI describes you correctly?

The same thing they should say to a person, in plain text:

• One sentence on what you do, for whom and where: “Mobile bike repair in Waterloo and Kitchener.”
• A page per main service, with a heading that names it.
• Hours and service area as text, not inside an image or a PDF.
• Answers to the questions customers ask, in their words. These are the phrases AI tools search for.

Google says the same approach covers its own AI features: “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO” (Google Search Central). Microsoft’s advice for being cited in Bing and Copilot is similar: “Clear headings, tables, and FAQ sections” and “Examples, data, and cited sources” (Bing Webmaster Blog). How that plays out on Google specifically is in our Get Found Locally guide.

Why do matching details matter so much?

An AI tool that finds “Smith Cleaning” at one phone number on your website and “Smith Cleaning Co.” at another on a directory has to guess which is right, or leave you out. Pick one exact version of your name, address and phone, and use it everywhere: website footer, Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles. It’s dull work, and it’s the easiest part to skip.

Do reviews affect ChatGPT recommendations?

OpenAI hasn’t published how, if at all. What is documented is that on Google, “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking” (Google Business Profile Help), and AI answers often reflect what’s said about a business across the web. So earn reviews the honest way: ask every customer, reward nobody, and reply to all of them. Google’s rules on that are in Get Found Locally.

Should you pay for “AI search optimization”?

Be careful. Google says that “seeking inauthentic ‘mentions’ across the web isn’t as helpful as it might seem” and lists “creating unnecessary AI text files (like llms.txt)” among tactics you can ignore (Google Search Central). If a service can explain its work in terms of the steps in this article, fine. If it promises a guaranteed ChatGPT placement, it’s promising something nobody outside OpenAI controls.

How can you check what ChatGPT says about you?

Once a month, ask it three questions and write down the answers:

1. “Who offers [your service] in [your town], Ontario?”
2. “What are [your business name]‘s hours and phone number?”
3. “What does [your business name] do?”

If a detail is wrong, fix it where it most likely came from: your website, your Google Business Profile or a directory listing. Answers vary between sessions, so look for patterns rather than reacting to a single reply.

A hypothetical example

Picture a home-renovation contractor in Cambridge who asks ChatGPT about his own business and gets an old phone number. The obstacle: his website’s robots.txt, set up years ago, blocks all crawlers, and a directory still lists his previous number. He removes the block, fixes the directory and adds a services page that names Cambridge, Kitchener and Guelph. Whether ChatGPT then recommends him is still ChatGPT’s decision, but it now has correct information to work from. It’s an illustration, not a case study. Our home services website guide for Cambridge shows what that kind of site includes.

Next step

Next read: the full Get Found Locally plan, which covers Google Maps and AI Overviews alongside ChatGPT. The bigger picture is in our small business website guide for Waterloo Region; if you’re adding a chat to your site, see AI assistants for small business, and before you hire anyone, the questions to ask a web designer.

Try the three questions above today; it takes five minutes and tells you where you stand. A good moment is before your holiday hours change: Christmas Day and Boxing Day are Ontario public holidays (Ontario.ca: Public holidays), so ask ChatGPT what your hours are on December 26 and see what it says. If the fix turns out to be the website itself, see the five steps and their prices at /express. Each step shows a range in business days, and the clock starts when we have your content. Name and email are enough to get the price in writing. We don’t promise rankings or AI mentions; nobody honest can.

Sources checked on 29 September 2026. Examples are hypothetical.

How we wrote this: drafted by the YourFirstAI team with AI assistance, sources checked on 2026-09-29, and reviewed against our editorial rubric before publishing. Examples are hypothetical unless they cite a source.