How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity

"What's the best roofing company in Dallas?" "Which accountant in Manchester is good for small businesses?" People increasingly type questions like these into ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Copilot — or read Google's AI Overview at the top of the results — instead of clicking through ten links. If an assistant names three businesses and you are not one of them, you are invisible for that customer.

The good news: AI search is built on the same foundations as good SEO. The difference is that AI assistants reward clear, factual, well-structured information and consistent mentions across the web even more strongly.

How AI assistants find businesses

There are two ways an assistant "knows" about you:

1. Live search. When an assistant searches the web to answer (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode), it reads pages from a search index and its own crawlers, then summarises them with links. Bing powers much of Copilot and has historically supplied results to other assistants, so being indexed well by both Google and Bing matters.
2. Training data. Models also learn from large amounts of public text. Businesses that are mentioned often and consistently — on their own site, in directories, reviews, news and industry sites — are more likely to be "known".

You cannot buy a placement inside an AI answer. You can make yourself the easiest, most trustworthy answer to cite.

1. Let AI crawlers read your site

Check your robots.txt. Some sites block AI crawlers by accident (or on purpose) and then wonder why they never appear. If you want to be recommended, allow the search crawlers of the assistants you care about — for example OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Googlebot — and keep private areas like admin and customer portals blocked.

2. Say clearly what you do, for whom, and where

AI assistants match questions to facts. Every important page should answer, in plain words near the top:

• what the service is,
• who it is for,
• where you offer it,
• what it costs or how pricing works,
• what makes you different (with specifics, not slogans).

"We help businesses grow" gives an assistant nothing to quote. "Fixed-price websites and local SEO for builders and trades in the UK, from £X" does.

3. Answer the questions customers actually ask

Collect the real questions from sales calls, emails and chats and answer each one directly — ideally a short, quotable answer followed by detail. FAQ sections, comparison pages ("X vs Y"), pricing explanations and "how it works" pages are exactly what assistants pull from.

4. Use structure machines understand

• Headings that are questions or clear topics, short paragraphs, lists and tables.
• Schema markup: Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Product, FAQPage, Article and BreadcrumbList help search engines (and the assistants built on them) interpret your pages.
• An llms.txt file — a plain-text summary of your site for AI tools — is an emerging convention. It is cheap to add and does no harm.

5. Be consistent everywhere you are mentioned

Assistants cross-check. Make sure your name, services, locations and contact details match across your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, LinkedIn, industry directories and review sites. Contradictions reduce confidence.

6. Earn mentions on sites assistants trust

Reviews on major platforms, listings in respected industry directories, local news, podcast appearances, guest articles, partner pages and "best X in Y" lists written by independent publishers all increase the chance you are named. Genuine third-party mentions matter more than anything you say about yourself.

7. Keep it fresh and accurate

Outdated prices, old staff or discontinued services on your site can end up repeated in AI answers. Review key pages every few months and keep a visible "last updated" date on guides.

8. Get indexed fast

Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and use IndexNow so Bing and other engines learn about new or changed pages immediately instead of waiting for a crawl.

How to check whether it is working

• Ask the assistants the questions your customers ask, in different ways and locations, and note who gets mentioned.
• Watch referral traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot and gemini in your analytics.
• Bing Webmaster Tools has started reporting on AI performance; Google Search Console includes AI Overview appearances within its search data.

Where to start

Start with the foundations most businesses skip: clear service pages, real FAQs, schema, consistent listings and a strong review profile. Our AI Search Optimization service does this as an ongoing programme alongside SEO, and the free website audit checks the technical basics in seconds.

FAQ

Is AI search optimisation different from SEO?

It builds on SEO. The same things help both — clear content, good structure, technical health and reputation — but AI answers lean more heavily on concise factual answers and consistent third-party mentions.

Can I pay to appear in ChatGPT answers?

Not inside the organic answer. Some platforms are testing ads, but recommendations in the answer itself come from what the model and its search sources find about you.

Should I block AI crawlers?

Only if you do not want to be recommended or summarised. Most service businesses benefit from allowing search-focused AI crawlers on public pages.