How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and AI Search

To get your business recommended by ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and other AI assistants, make sure they can find and trust you. Let their search crawlers in, publish pages that answer buyer questions directly, keep your business facts consistent everywhere, and earn mentions on sites they already rely on. There is no special trick.

This practice is often called answer engine optimisation (AEO) or generative engine optimisation (GEO). This guide sticks to what the platforms themselves say, what a small business can control, and how to check progress without paying for a tracking tool.

Key takeaways

How do AI assistants decide what to recommend?

The details are not public, but the broad mechanics are. When someone asks an assistant a question that needs current information, such as “best CRM for a three-person agency”, many assistants run web searches, read a set of pages, and write an answer that summarises and links to them. Others answer partly from what the model learned in training.

Google is explicit about its own AI features. Its guidance for site owners says that the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that there are no additional requirements to appear in them (Google Search Central, AI features and your website). It also describes a “query fan-out” approach, where several related searches are run across subtopics to build a response.

That last point is practical. An assistant answering a broad question may look for pricing, comparisons, reviews and how-to content separately. A business with clear pages on each has more chances to be found.

Step 1: let the right crawlers in

An assistant cannot recommend a page its search system cannot read. Check your robots.txt file and any firewall or bot-blocking settings.

The OpenAI rows come from its crawler documentation (OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers), which notes that each setting is independent. Other assistants publish their own crawler names, so check the documentation for any you care about. Many security and CDN products block unfamiliar bots by default; make sure yours is not quietly turning away the ones you want.

Step 2: publish pages that answer buyer questions

Write down the questions a buyer asks before choosing a business like yours, then make sure each has a page with a direct answer near the top.

The examples are illustrative. Write the answer in the first paragraph, in plain language, then explain. Assistants and skimming humans both reward that structure. Google's guidance on helpful, people-first content is the best single checklist for the page itself.

What makes a page easy to quote

• A direct answer up top, in a sentence or two.
• Specific facts: prices, service areas, hours, who you serve, with dates where they change.
• Clear headings phrased like the questions people ask.
• Tables for comparisons and price ranges.
• An FAQ section for the follow-up questions.
• Honesty about limits, which makes the rest more credible.

Step 3: keep your business facts consistent

Assistants have to work out that the business on your website, on your Google Business Profile, in directories and in reviews is the same entity. Inconsistent names, addresses or descriptions make that harder.

• Use the same business name, address and phone number everywhere.
• Write one clear sentence describing what you do and for whom, and reuse it on your homepage, profiles and social bios.
• Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current.
• Add structured data (schema markup) for your organisation, local business details and FAQs where it fits. It helps search engines read the page, though it is not a guarantee of anything.
• Update old pages when prices, services or locations change.

Step 4: earn mentions where assistants look

When an assistant answers “which is best”, it often draws on pages other than yours: review sites, directories, comparison articles, forums and news. You cannot write those pages, but you can give people reasons to mention you.

What about llms.txt?

llms.txt is a proposed standard: a plain Markdown file at the root of your site that summarises what the site is and links to its most useful pages, written for language models (llmstxt.org). It is cheap to add and harmless. It is not clear how widely AI assistants read it, so treat it as tidy housekeeping rather than a ranking factor, and do not let it distract from the steps above.

Step 5: measure what assistants say about you

There is no reliable rank tracker for AI answers, because responses vary by person, wording and time. A simple manual process works for a small business:

• Write 15 to 25 buyer questions in your customers' words, including your town or niche where relevant.
• Once a month, ask them in the assistants your buyers use. Use a logged-out or fresh session where you can.
• Log the result: mentioned or not, linked or not, accurate or not, and which other businesses appeared.
• Check referral traffic in your analytics for visits from AI assistant domains.
• Ask new customers how they found you, and add “AI assistant” as an option.

When an answer about you is wrong, find the page it seems to rely on and correct the source: your own page, a directory listing, or an outdated article whose author you can contact.

A 60-day plan

How Scalry handles this

Scalry does not sell an AEO tracking product, and no tool can promise you a place in an AI answer. What it helps with is the steady publishing and reputation work above. Scalry's AI content agent plans and drafts blog posts and social content in your brand voice and holds them for approval; our guide to an AI content marketing agent explains that workflow. Landing pages, email and review requests run in the same workspace.

We practise what this guide describes: scalry.com publishes answer-first guides like this one, keeps its plan prices on one public pricing page, and serves an llms.txt file. Starter is $29 a month, Pro $79 and Scale $199, each with monthly AI credits; AI content generation and social scheduling are on Pro and Scale.

Questions to ask before you commit

Whichever way you are leaning, these are the questions that change the answer. Work through them against your own numbers rather than anyone's feature matrix — including this one.

• Can the crawlers you care about read your site?
• Which ten questions do buyers ask before choosing you?
• Does a page on your site answer each one in its first lines?
• Are your name, address and description identical everywhere?

If you cannot answer the first three, you are not ready to choose between Scalry and doing nothing until the dust settles yet — you are still deciding what you need, which is a cheaper problem to solve first.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get my business mentioned by ChatGPT?

Make sure ChatGPT's search crawler (OAI-SearchBot) is not blocked, publish pages that answer buyer questions directly, keep your business details consistent across the web, and earn reviews and mentions on sites people trust. Then check monthly what it says in answer to your buyers' questions.

Is AEO different from SEO?

Mostly it is SEO with more emphasis on direct answers, clear facts and third-party mentions. Google says the same SEO best practices apply to its AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no extra requirements. Treat AEO as a reason to do SEO fundamentals well, not a separate discipline.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

It is optional. llms.txt is a proposed standard that gives language models a summary of your site and links to key pages. It is cheap to add, but it is not clear how widely assistants use it, so do the basics first: crawlability, answer-first pages and consistent facts.

Can I pay to appear in AI answers?

Not in the organic answer itself, as far as the major providers have said publicly. Some platforms sell ads near or inside AI experiences, which are labelled separately. Be wary of services promising guaranteed placement in AI answers.

How long does it take to show up in AI search?

There is no fixed timeline. If your pages are already indexed, changes can show up once they are recrawled. Building reviews and third-party mentions takes months. Track progress with a fixed list of questions checked monthly.

Should I block AI crawlers to protect my content?

It is your choice, but understand the trade-off. Blocking a search crawler can remove you from that assistant's answers. Some providers let you allow search while blocking training separately, as OpenAI does with OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot.