How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and Other AI Assistants

Ask ChatGPT for “a reliable roofer in Okotoks” or “the best physio near Kensington in Calgary” and you’ll get a short list. Most business owners have never checked whether they’re on it. Here’s how to change that, step by step.

1. Find out what AI says about you today

Before changing anything, write down 15 to 25 prompts a real customer might use. Mix three types:

• Category prompts: “best family dentist in Airdrie”, “Shopify developer in Alberta”
• Problem prompts: “my furnace is making a banging noise, who should I call in Cochrane”
• Brand prompts: “what do people say about [your business name]?”

Run them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google (watch for AI Overviews). Record whether you’re mentioned, whether your site is cited as a source, and whether the description is accurate. This is your baseline.

2. Make sure AI can actually read your site

AI search tools rely on crawlers. Check your robots.txt and make sure you aren’t blocking the ones that power search features, including Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search) and PerplexityBot. Training crawlers like GPTBot are a separate decision; blocking them doesn’t remove you from ChatGPT’s live search results.

Then check that your important content is in the HTML, not loaded only by JavaScript after the page renders, and not hidden in images or PDFs.

3. Describe your business the same way everywhere

AI assistants build a picture of your business from many sources. When those sources disagree about your name, services, area or hours, confidence drops and so do recommendations.

Make these match exactly:

• Your website (homepage, about page, contact page, footer)
• Google Business Profile
• Apple Business Connect
• Bing Places (often forgotten, and it feeds Bing and Microsoft Copilot)
• Key directories such as Yelp, YellowPages.ca, your chamber of commerce and industry-specific listings

4. Earn mentions from places AI trusts

Generative engines summarise consensus. A business mentioned positively in local media, an industry association directory and a few well-regarded roundups is far more likely to be recommended than one that only talks about itself.

Practical ways to earn those mentions:

• Ask happy customers for detailed reviews that mention the service and location
• Join and get listed by relevant associations
• Offer expert commentary to local journalists
• Sponsor community events that list sponsors online

5. Publish pages worth citing

AI tools prefer sources that answer clearly. For each core service, publish a page that states plainly what you do, where, for whom, and roughly what it costs, with an FAQ covering the questions you hear every week. Original information works especially well: real price ranges, local data, comparisons and checklists.

6. Track it every month

Re-run your prompt list monthly and record the results in a simple spreadsheet. Because AI answers vary, look at the trend across all prompts rather than any single result. “Mentioned in 7 of 20 prompts, up from 3” is a meaningful number.

What not to do

Don’t publish dozens of thin “best X in Y” pages that rank yourself first, buy fake reviews, or stuff pages with keywords for AI. These tactics either violate platform policies or create exactly the kind of inconsistent, low-trust signal that makes AI tools less likely to recommend you.

Want a second pair of eyes? My generative engine optimization work starts with exactly this audit, run across all the major platforms.