How Do I Get My Business Recommended by ChatGPT?
You’ve worked hard to build a business people recommend. Now there’s another question to consider: what happens when someone asks ChatGPT who to hire?
You can improve your business’s chances of being discovered by making your website accessible, your services clear, and your claims easy to verify. But you can’t guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend you.
I’d approach this as an extension of building a useful online presence—not a reason to throw out your marketing plan and start chasing AI tricks.
For a local contractor or service business, here’s where I’d start.
First, Separate Being Mentioned From Being Recommended
These are different outcomes:
A mention: Your business name appears in an answer.
A citation: An answer links to your website as a source.
A recommendation: Your business is presented as a potential fit for someone’s needs.
An inquiry: Someone actually contacts you.
A citation to your article about maintaining a deck doesn’t necessarily mean ChatGPT recommended your deck-building service.
And a recommendation doesn’t automatically become a paying customer.
That distinction matters when someone offers to improve your “AI visibility.”
My first question would be: visibility for what?
Your business name? Your advice? The services you want to sell?
Start with the customer and the decision you want to support.
Make Sure Your Website Isn’t Blocking Search Access
Before rewriting your website for AI, check whether the relevant search crawler can access it.
OpenAI’s official crawler documentation identifies OAI-SearchBot as the crawler used to surface websites in ChatGPT’s search features. OpenAI recommends allowing it through your website’s robots.txt settings and allowing requests from its published IP ranges.
The same documentation distinguishes that crawler from GPTBot, which concerns content that may be used for model training. Those settings are independent: allowing search access doesn’t require allowing training access.
If that sounds technical, ask your website provider:
“Are we blocking OAI-SearchBot through robots.txt, our firewall, or another security setting?”
Don’t remove security protections indiscriminately. Have someone check the specific rules.
And remember: opening the door doesn’t guarantee someone walks through it.
Crawler access is an access issue, not a recommendation promise.
Explain What You Actually Do
A website that says “quality solutions you can trust” leaves a lot unanswered.
What solutions? For whom? Where?
I’d make sure your main service pages clearly explain:
The specific work you provide.
The customers and properties you serve.
Your actual service area.
Important limitations or exclusions.
How someone requests help.
Imagine a home-service business that offers exterior painting but doesn’t handle roofing or structural repairs. Its website should make those boundaries clear.
That helps prospective customers determine whether the company fits their project. It also creates a more useful public description of the business.
This is my practical recommendation—not a published ChatGPT ranking formula.
You don’t need to wedge “Savannah painting contractor” into every paragraph. You need a visitor to understand the business without doing detective work.
Put Useful Evidence Behind Your Claims
“Experienced.” “Reliable.” “Best in town.”
Those words are easy to publish. They don’t give someone much to evaluate.
I’d rather see genuine project photos, accurate qualifications, a clear process, and specific explanations of the work.
For example, a remodeling project page could describe:
What the homeowner wanted to change.
What work the contractor completed.
Which materials or project constraints mattered.
What the finished space looks like.
Only include information you can substantiate and have permission to share.
Don’t invent a case study because the page feels empty.
Likewise, explain credentials accurately.
A qualification held by one team member shouldn’t become a sweeping claim about the entire company.
The goal is to make your business easier to evaluate, whether the visitor arrives from a referral, Google, or an AI answer.
Keep Business Information Accurate Beyond Your Website
Review the places customers already encounter your company: your Google Business Profile, relevant directories, professional memberships, and active social profiles.
Check the basics. Is the phone number current? Does the website link work? Are the services accurate? Are you advertising coverage you no longer provide?
For Google specifically, its local ranking guidance explains that local results depend mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence or popularity. It recommends complete, accurate business information and notes that reviews and links can contribute to prominence.
Those are Google’s stated considerations, not necessarily proof that ChatGPT uses the same formula.
My recommendation is to maintain those profiles because they help customers find and verify your business. Treat any additional AI-search benefit as something to investigate, not something to promise.
Answer questions that help someone choose
You don’t need fifty articles that repeat what every competitor already says.
Start with questions customers ask before hiring:
“Do you handle small projects?”
“What should I prepare before requesting an estimate?”
“Can you work on an occupied home?”
“What affects the scope of this service?”
Answer honestly and specifically. Put essential service information on the service page rather than hiding everything in blog posts.
For broader context, Google’s guidance on AI search features says established SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no additional technical requirements beyond the stated Search eligibility requirements. That guidance applies to Google, not automatically to ChatGPT.
The practical overlap is worth noticing: useful information and a sound website remain sensible investments.
A new discovery channel doesn’t make clarity obsolete.
Measure more than one impressive screenshot
Testing a few realistic questions can help you see how your business is described.
But I wouldn’t treat one answer as a permanent position.
Keep a simple record of the question, date, answer, and linked sources.
Distinguish searches that name your business from questions someone might ask before knowing you exist.
Then look for business outcomes:
Are identifiable AI referrals reaching your website?
Are those visitors submitting legitimate inquiries?
Do customers mention using ChatGPT during their research?
Are those inquiries relevant to your services and location?
Ask new customers how they found you. Their answers won’t provide perfect attribution, but they can add useful context.
A screenshot of your name appearing is interesting.
A qualified project inquiry is more useful.
Build a stronger presence, not a shortcut
At Matt Davis Marketing, I’d approach this through Diagnose, Build, Refine.
Diagnose access problems, unclear information, and missing evidence. Build stronger service pages and a more useful customer experience. Refine the work based on what people find, ask, and do.
You can’t control every AI answer. You can control whether your business has an accurate, credible online presence—and whether someone who discovers it can confidently take the next step.
Want to understand how your website supports discovery, trust, and inquiries?
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