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How to Get ChatGPT to Recommend Your Business: It’s Not SEO

Your Google listing is the page AI answers cite most. Except in ChatGPT. A September 2026 BrightLocal study says the listing is “hardly used by ChatGPT.”

So to get ChatGPT to recommend your business, start somewhere else. Ask it what your customers ask. Write down who it names. Then look at your website and the other sites that list your business, like Yelp and BBB.

That’s where the same study points. Of every 100 sources AI answers showed, 42 were business websites. All three AI platforms it tracked “rely on Yelp.” It also names Facebook, Mapquest, BBB and Angi as listings that are “still important,” and says AI platforms use industry directories too.

Bar chart of where AI answers got their sources. All business sites together 42%, your Google listing 28.6%, Yelp 9.5%, Facebook 2.2%, Mapquest 0.4%, BBB 0.3%, Angi 0.2%.
Three AI platforms combined. Source: BrightLocal, September 2026.

Why it’s not SEO: one answer, a few names, and they change

Google shows a page of results. Your customer picks. ChatGPT picks for them. In our September 2026 check of the ChatGPT app, each answer named 3 to 6 businesses. Everyone else was left out.

Left, a Google results page with a long list of links. Right, an AI answer that names three businesses and no others.

Ask again and it’ll often recommend different businesses. In our September 2026 tests, we asked AI assistants the same question twice. Of all the businesses named, only about half came up both times.

Two lists for the same question, each naming three businesses. Two names are on both lists. One name on each list is different.

Google and ChatGPT do share one thing. Both have to be able to read your site. Google says a page “must be indexed” (on Google’s list of pages) to show as a link in its AI answers. OpenAI says sites that block its search crawler “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.”

After that, they split. BrightLocal followed a set of businesses. Google Maps showed them in 66% of searches. ChatGPT named them in 33%. BrightLocal’s verdict: success in Maps “doesn’t necessarily lead to success in an LLM.” (An LLM is the kind of AI ChatGPT is.)

Bar chart. Google Maps mentioned a tracked business in 66% of searches. ChatGPT mentioned one in 33%.
Source: BrightLocal, September 2026.

Five places to look first

1. Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask

Open a new chat. Ask what a customer would ask, such as “Who should I call for a plumber in [your town]?” Do it three times, in a new chat each time. Write down every business named. The names that keep coming back are the ones that count.

This is where we help. AI Referral Tracker does it for you. It asks the most common customer questions in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. One report asks 20 questions and reads 180 answers.

2. Let ChatGPT’s search crawler in

ChatGPT has its own crawler, a program that reads websites. OpenAI calls it OAI-SearchBot. Ask whoever runs your site to check your robots.txt file. That file tells crawlers what they may read. Make sure it lets OAI-SearchBot in. OpenAI says a change can take “~24 hours.” Its page lists no way to add or submit a business.

3. Read your website, your Google listing and the other sites that list you, as a customer would

Open your website, your Google listing and the other sites that list you. That means Yelp, BBB, Angi and any directory for your trade. Read each one as a customer would. BrightLocal’s study points to your website and to sites like Yelp. Your Google listing still counts for Google’s own AI answers, BrightLocal says. Does each page say what you do, and where? Look for old hours, a wrong phone number or a missing service.

These sites do show up. In our September 2026 roofing test, BBB pages were among the sources in 15 of 36 answers from OpenAI’s AI. Across all three AIs, BBB showed up in 42 of 108 answers and Angi in 32.

4. Answer the exact customer question on a page of your own

Write the question as a heading and answer it in plain text. A roofer can answer what happens after a storm. A dentist can answer what to do about a chipped tooth today. A plumber can answer who comes out for a burst pipe at night.

Roofers with fuller websites did much better in our September 2026 roofing test. That includes a page that answers the customer’s exact question. In 13 of 21 cases, those roofers were named in at least a third of the answers. Roofers with small sites and no such page: 1 of 32.

Bar chart. Roofers with a fuller website and a page answering the exact question were named in at least a third of answers in 13 of 21 cases. Roofers with a small site and no such page, 1 of 32.
Source: our September 2026 roofing test.

5. Keep collecting reviews, but don’t count on them alone

A roofer with 236 Google reviews never came up in 36 answers from OpenAI’s AI. A roofer with 37 reviews came up 14 times. That was our September 2026 roofing test.

Two roofers compared. One has 236 Google reviews and was named in 0 of 36 answers. The other has 37 reviews and was named in 14 of 36.
Source: our September 2026 roofing test.

In three of the four trades we checked, businesses with more reviews tended to get named more. In plumbing, they didn’t. Either way, the link was weak. Read more on reviews and AI answers.

We know of no test that proves these steps get a business named more often. We haven’t run one either. They’re the places to look first.

Check where you stand

AI Referral Tracker, our service, checks whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude name your business when they are asked the questions your customers ask in your town. A report shows how many answers named you, who was named instead, and what to fix first. One report is $97 for 20 questions and 180 answers. Online ordering isn’t open yet; join the list to hear when it opens. The How we check page says what we ask and what a report measures.

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