AI
How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI
AI search hands your customers a short list of names. What decides who makes that list, and what you can control.
Your next customer might never see your website in a list of search results. They’ll type “who does good AC repair in north Scottsdale” into ChatGPT, or read the AI answer at the top of Google, and get three or four names back.
To get your business recommended by ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers, you need one of those spots. The list is shorter than page one ever was.
How AI search picks who to recommend
ChatGPT and Google don’t keep a secret directory. They pull from what the web says about you: your website, your Google Business Profile, your reviews, directories, and local sites or articles that mention you.
They favor businesses they can describe with confidence. When your information is thin, vague, or contradicts itself from one site to the next, the AI has less to go on and names someone else.
Nobody outside OpenAI or Google knows the exact rules. You can still act on the patterns, and most of them overlap with good local SEO.
Make your website easy to quote
AI tools read your site the way a rushed customer does. They scan for plain answers.
Near the top of your homepage, say what you do, who it’s for, and where you work. Give each core service its own page. Answer the questions customers ask, in their words, on the page where they’d look for the answer.
Write out your service area. A map embed doesn’t count. If you serve Cave Creek, Carefree, and north Phoenix, name all three.
Ask whoever manages your site about schema markup. This code labels your business name, services, and location so machines can read them without guessing. Visitors never see it, and it helps you show up in AI search.
Your Google Business Profile matters more now
For local questions, Google’s AI Overviews draw on Google Business Profile data. Fill in your categories, services list, hours, photos, and description.
Most profiles I review got set up once and never touched again. Ten minutes of cleanup here pays off more than almost anything else in local SEO right now.
Reviews and mentions do the heavy lifting
AI answers often repeat what reviewers say. “Known for fast response times.” “Customers mention fair pricing.” Those phrases come from your reviews.
When you ask happy customers for a review, ask them to name the service they got. “They fixed our irrigation system in one visit” teaches an AI tool far more than “great job!”
Mentions on other sites count too. A local news feature, a chamber of commerce listing, a partner who links to you. Keep your business name, address, and phone number identical everywhere. Mismatched details make you harder to trust, for people and for software.
What not to spend money on
Skip anyone selling guaranteed placement in ChatGPT. Nobody can promise that.
Skip mass-produced AI blog posts. Fifty generic articles won’t make you more quotable. They’ll make you sound like every competitor using the same tool. I covered that pattern in AI is a tool. Not a strategy.
Some businesses add an llms.txt file to their site. It’s small and cheap, and you can do it. It won’t fix weak listings or thin pages.
Start with a five-minute check
Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google. Ask each one the question your best customer would ask: “Who’s a good [your service] in [your city]?”
Note who shows up and what each tool says about you, if it mentions you at all. You’ve now run a free audit of AI search for your small business, and the next step tends to make itself clear.
I check search visibility in every Marketing Scan. If the gaps go beyond a quick fix, Strategy + Systems keeps it maintained month to month so you stay in the answers.
— Rylee
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