How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and Other AIs (2026)

Before paying someone to get your business into ChatGPT, ask what they will check and what they can change. A useful proposal should name the work and show how you will judge it.

I would begin with access. Rewriting a service page does little for ChatGPT search if the site's security settings keep its search crawler out. After that, work through the facts a customer needs to decide whether to call.

Can ChatGPT search access the website?

OpenAI's crawler documentation distinguishes OAI-SearchBot, used for search, from GPTBot, used for content that may support model training. Ask your developer to check both robots.txt and the hosting or firewall rules against your intended search policy. Allowing training access is a separate decision.

Have the developer record what was checked and any setting changed. Crawler access only opens the door. The rest of this guide covers what ChatGPT should find once it's in.

For Google AI features, Google's guidance points to ordinary search eligibility and says no special AI markup is needed. Keep platform checks separate instead of buying a single hidden tag said to fix every engine.

What business details should be on the page?

State the business name, the service, and the places actually covered. Add a working contact route and accurate hours. If emergency work is offered only to existing customers, say so beside the emergency claim. A customer should be able to understand the limits without reading three other pages.

Spell out any fee that changes with distance. A Boise plumbing company should say plainly whether its call-out fee goes up for addresses outside its usual area, using its real policy. A line like "Serving Boise with great service" doesn't tell a customer what the plumber charges.

The LocalBusiness vocabulary can express business details in structured data. Have the developer use an appropriate type and accurate values that agree with the visible page. A service-area business should not invent a customer-facing office for a markup field.

Which listings and reviews are worth correcting?

Start with listings customers already use or an AI answer actually cites. Follow Google's business representation guidelines for the Business Profile: use the real-world business name, accurate categories, and truthful location or service-area details. Check an old phone number or closed address before spending time on punctuation differences.

Ask eligible customers for honest feedback without selecting them by expected rating. Google's Maps contribution policy prohibits incentives and selectively soliciting positive reviews. A review request should leave the customer free to decline or describe a poor experience.

A licence lookup or trade association directory may help verify a credential where it applies. Check that the record belongs to the right business.

Which customer questions should a website answer?

Use questions from calls, emails, and estimates. Cost conditions, service limits, and booking requirements are useful starting points. Answer only what the business can support. If a price depends on an inspection, explain what needs inspecting and how the customer gets an estimate.

A Cape Coral HVAC company could explain the difference between asking for an after-hours visit and getting a confirmed appointment. Publish the booking policy you actually follow, not a response time you can't keep.

A Myrtle Beach property service company that works for owners who live out of town could write a page on access: who has to be there, how permission is recorded and where work photos get sent. Write it only if you actually offer that service and customers ask about it.

Choose a question your customers already ask, then give them enough detail to act on the answer.

How do you check whether anything improved?

Save the starting answers before editing. Use a few exact service-and-location questions, plus a business-name question to check factual accuracy. Record the product, date, search setting, and location context. Keep the wording stable on later checks. Our guide to checking whether a business appears in ChatGPT covers the recording process.

If an answer names a competitor, open its sources. An outdated page about your own hours is actionable. If nothing is wrong or blocked, don't rush to add more pages.

There is another check before calling the work successful: did inquiries or booked jobs change? Ask customers how they found the business and keep that information with the inquiry record. Booked jobs are how you tell whether the service paid for itself.

What timeline and promises should you accept?

Ask for a schedule for the work: access checks, corrections, reporting, and the next review. Keep that separate from an outcome deadline. A supplier cannot control when a third-party system revisits a source or which business it names.

Reject a guaranteed recommendation. For a monthly service, ask for the exact questions monitored and the changes included. For a one-time project, ask which specific defect it resolves. Some problems need one correction; others need follow-up. The proposal should explain which applies to your site.