The short answer. ChatGPT recommends businesses it can find and trust. Make your business facts clear and consistent everywhere, answer customers' questions plainly on your own site, collect genuine reviews, and earn mentions on sites ChatGPT already cites. Then check what it says about you every month.
How ChatGPT chooses
When someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, it usually searches the web, reads a handful of sources and summarises them. The businesses it names are the ones those sources mention clearly and agree on. If your details are patchy or contradictory, or nobody else mentions you, you're unlikely to make the list.
Seven steps
- See what it says now. Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, such as "who's the best accountant for a small charity in Bristol?" Note who it names and which sources it cites. Repeat with Gemini, Perplexity and Claude.
- Make your facts consistent. Your name, address, services, prices and opening hours should match on your site, your Google Business Profile and every listing.
- Answer questions on your own site. Pages that state plainly what you do, who for, where, and what it costs are easy to quote. Put the answer first and the detail after.
- Add structured data. Organisation, local business and service markup give AI tools machine-readable facts about you.
- Collect genuine reviews. Reviews on Google and trusted review sites are often quoted in recommendations.
- Get mentioned elsewhere. Coverage in news sites, industry publications and comparison articles carries weight, because those are the sources AI tools read. Digital PR helps here.
- Don't forget Bing. ChatGPT's web search has historically drawn on Bing, so check your site in Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Search Console.
How to measure it
AI answers change with wording, location and timing, so a single check proves little. Pick a fixed set of questions and check them every month across the main tools. Track how often you're mentioned, how you're described and which competitors appear.
What to expect
Nobody can guarantee a recommendation, and anyone who promises one is guessing. Fixing wrong facts can show quickly. Earning mentions and building trust takes months, much like SEO.
Every one of our search plans includes monthly AI visibility tracking. If you'd like to see where you stand first, start with a Search Blueprint.