How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and Google's AI (2026 Guide)

Ask ChatGPT "who's the best roofer in Des Moines" and it will give you a short list of names. Ask Google the same question and there's a good chance an AI Overview answers it before you see a single website.

If your business isn't in those answers, a growing share of customers will never know you exist. This guide explains how AI assistants decide which local businesses to recommend, and the specific things you can do on your website and beyond it to be one of them.

Why this matters now

Two numbers tell the story.

• Customers are asking AI. In BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, 45% of consumers said they use ChatGPT or other AI tools for local business recommendations. The year before, it was 6%. BrightLocal's breakdown of that data found ChatGPT was the most used, by 31% of consumers in the previous 12 months.
• Fewer people click through. Ahrefs studied 300,000 keywords and found that when a Google AI Overview appears, the top-ranking page gets about 58% fewer clicks than it otherwise would. Pew Research Center tracked real browsing and found people clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with an AI summary, versus 15% without one.

Ranking on Google still matters. But being the business the AI names is quickly becoming just as important.

How AI assistants pick which businesses to recommend

AI search tools don't have a secret list. They work from the same raw material a careful person would:

1. What your website says, if they can read it.
2. What other sites say about you: review platforms, directories, local news, forums like Reddit, and YouTube.
3. Whether all of that agrees. A business with the same name, address, services, and reputation everywhere is a safe recommendation. A business with a different phone number on Yelp and no prices anywhere is not.

Google's own guidance on AI features and your website is blunt about it: there's no special trick or AI-only markup required to appear in AI Overviews. The same SEO fundamentals apply. What changes is how much each fundamental matters, because the AI is looking for a clean answer it can quote with confidence.

7 steps to get your business recommended by AI

1. Let the AI crawlers in

This is the easiest thing to get wrong and the easiest to fix. Your site's robots.txt file tells bots whether they may read your pages. Some website builders, security plugins, and firewalls block AI bots by default.

OpenAI's documentation is direct: sites that block its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Check that your robots.txt allows at least Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, and Claude-SearchBot. If you've never looked at yours, visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt.

2. Put a direct answer at the top of every page

AI tools quote sentences, not vibes. A service page that opens with "We're passionate about excellence" gives them nothing. A page that opens with "Interior detailing starts at $200 and includes a full vacuum, steam clean and shampoo, and conditioned leather, by appointment in Pleasant Hill" gives them a complete answer to lift.

For each key page, write two or three plain sentences at the top that answer: what is it, what does it cost, how long does it take, and who is it for.

3. Publish your prices, or at least your starting prices

Price is one of the most common questions people ask AI about local services. If your site doesn't answer it, the AI will answer it with someone else's site. Starting prices ("from $200") or typical ranges are enough. They also filter out customers who were never going to buy.

4. Write your FAQs as real questions

Use headings phrased the way people actually ask: "How much does a roof replacement cost in Iowa?" rather than "Pricing." Answer each one in the first sentence underneath, then add detail. Mark the page up with FAQ schema so search engines can read the question-and-answer pairs directly, and keep the schema identical to what's visible on the page.

5. Add local business structured data

Schema markup is a block of code that tells search engines, in a format they don't have to guess at, exactly who you are: business name, address, phone, hours, services, service area, and links to your profiles on other platforms. Those profile links (Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, BBB, your chamber listing) help AI tools confirm that all of those pages describe the same business.

6. Get reviewed in more than one place

A strong Google rating is great, but it can't carry you alone. BrightLocal's AI research notes that ChatGPT and other AI tools can't see inside Google's own review system, so a reputation that only exists on Google can be invisible to them. Ask happy customers to review you on Yelp, Facebook, or your industry's main platform too, and reply to reviews wherever they land.

7. Be mentioned where AI looks

AI assistants lean heavily on third-party sources. The businesses they recommend usually show up in local directories, community discussions, "best of" roundups, and videos. You don't need to go viral. A few real mentions help: a chamber of commerce listing, a local news feature, a helpful answer in a local Reddit thread, a short YouTube video of your work.

A quick self-check

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google a few questions your customers would ask, like "best [your service] in [your city]" or "how much does [your service] cost in [your city]." Note:

• Are you named at all?
• If you are, is the information correct: prices, hours, services, location?
• If you're not, which businesses are named, and which websites are cited as sources?

The cited sources are your roadmap. They show you exactly where the AI is getting its information, and where you need to be.

What this looks like in practice

We rebuilt the website for A-1 Auto Detailing in Pleasant Hill with every on-site step above: AI crawlers allowed, direct answers at the top of every page, published starting prices, FAQ and local business schema, and links to every profile where A-1 is reviewed. You can read the full story in our A-1 Auto Detailing case study.

Want help?

Axeon Studio builds websites for Iowa businesses that are designed from day one to rank on Google and get recommended by AI. Every build ships with SEO built in, and every site is structured so AI assistants can read it. See our pricing, read how we work with Des Moines businesses, or book a call and we'll check how AI currently sees your business.