Does ChatGPT recommend your business? How to check, and how to get recommended

Short answer: ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google the way your customers would: “Can you recommend a reliable removals company in Manchester?” If you don’t appear, there probably isn’t enough clear, consistent and trustworthy information about your business online. To fix that, make your website, Google Business Profile and reviews easy for AI systems to understand.

Why it matters

When people needed a service, they used to click through Google results one by one. More and more of them now just ask: “Who’s a good boiler engineer near me?” or “Which office cleaning company should I use in central London?”

AI assistants usually answer with three to five businesses. If you’re not on that list, you don’t exist for that customer. And people asking these questions are usually close to making a decision.

Step 1: Check where you stand

Try the following prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google (on searches that show an AI-generated answer). Use your own area and service:

• “Which [service] companies would you recommend in [area]?”
• “What’s the best [service] company in [area]?”
• “What do you know about [your business name]?”

The last one matters most. Does the AI know who you are? Is your information correct (address, phone, services), or is it giving out wrong or outdated details?

Write down what you find: which competitors get recommended, and what’s said about you. That tells you where to start.

Step 2: Understand what AI looks for

When an AI assistant recommends a business, it pulls together information from across the web and favours the sources that look most trustworthy. The strongest signals are:

1. Consistent business details. Your name, address, phone number and services should be identical on your website, your Google profile and your social media.
2. Reviews. Businesses with plenty of recent, detailed reviews get recommended more often.
3. A clear website. Pages that spell out what you do, where you do it and why people should choose you.
4. Question-and-answer content. Clear answers on your site to the questions customers actually ask: how pricing works, how long a job takes, which areas you cover.
5. Structured data. “Schema” markup in your site’s code that describes your business in a format machines can read.
6. Mentions on other sites. Industry directories, local news, partners’ websites.

Step 3: Improve your chances of being recommended

Complete your Google Business Profile. Category, services, service area, opening hours, description and photos. Google’s AI uses this information directly. (Step-by-step guide: How to set up and verify a Google Business Profile.)

Give each service and area its own page. Instead of a one-line list under “Our services”, write a page for each main service that explains what you do, how you work and which areas you cover. When an AI looks for an answer to “office cleaning in Camden”, this is exactly the kind of content it’s searching for.

Write an FAQ section. Add the questions customers ask you on the phone, with your answers. AI assistants love content in a question-and-answer format.

Add structured data. Marking up your business name, address, phone, opening hours and services in your site’s code makes it much easier for machines to understand you correctly. It’s a technical job, but it only needs doing once.

Collect reviews consistently. Ask every happy customer for a Google review. It helps when a review mentions the service and the area (“We hired them to clean our office in Camden…”), but never tell customers what to write.

Keep your details identical everywhere. If an old phone number or a pre-move address is still sitting on a directory site, AI assistants may repeat it. Track down and update old listings.

Is classic SEO dead?

No. AI assistants still draw heavily on well-ranked, trustworthy websites. A fast, mobile-friendly, clear website and a well-managed Google profile are the foundation for showing up both in classic search and in AI answers. GEO and AEO are a layer built on top of that foundation.

---

See how many of these basics your website covers with our free site audit: it checks 10 points, including structured data, in 30 seconds. If you’d like to look at how your business appears in AI search together, have a look at our AI Solutions or message us on WhatsApp.