How to get recommended by ChatGPT and AI search

Knowing how to get recommended by ChatGPT is becoming as important as ranking on Google. When a customer asks it for "a good accountant in Hackney" or "a web designer for a small business in London", it does not show ten blue links. It names a handful of businesses, and that shortlist is where the buyer starts.

The good news is that OpenAI has published how ChatGPT finds businesses, and much of what decides the answer is in your hands. This guide covers what OpenAI, Google and Microsoft say on the record, the six steps that help, and what we found when we asked ChatGPT about London agencies ourselves. If your question is about Google’s AI Overviews rather than assistants, our guide to earning citations in Google AI Overviews covers that side.

How does ChatGPT decide which businesses to recommend?

OpenAI’s own help page on how ChatGPT searches the web sets out the detail. Ask for "good restaurants near me" from a San Francisco address and, in OpenAI’s example, ChatGPT may search for "top restaurants San Francisco". That rewrite is the most useful fact for anyone working out how to get recommended by ChatGPT: the assistant reduces a vague question to a plain service and a place, so your pages need to say exactly that.

Three other details shape the answer. ChatGPT can use saved memories when it rewrites a search, so two people asking the same question may see different businesses. Local listings come from "trusted third-party providers" that OpenAI does not name. And in June 2026, OpenAI said ChatGPT now makes better use of location "to surface relevant nearby options", and in our own test most local questions came back with a map.

Why AI recommendations matter for a UK business

Half of UK adults now use AI tools, and the habit has spread fast. Most people who get a recommendation still check it, though, so your website, listings and reviews do the closing.

Ofcom’s figure was 31% a year earlier, so use rose from under a third to over half in twelve months. Yext’s survey of 600 UK consumers adds the part that matters most for a business owner: after an AI recommendation, about half go to Google or Bing to check, and 43% visit the business’s own website. Being named gets you onto the shortlist; a credible site and current listings win the enquiry.

How to get recommended by ChatGPT, step by step

There is no form to fill in and no fee that buys a mention, but there is a clear order to the work. Each step below rests on what OpenAI, Microsoft or Google has published, and each one also helps your ordinary search visibility.

Steps one and three are where most sites fall down. OpenAI’s crawler documentation is explicit that a site which blocks OAI-SearchBot will not appear in ChatGPT’s search answers, and some hosting firewalls turn unfamiliar bots away without telling you. Check which crawlers your host allows, and make that choice on purpose rather than by accident. Microsoft, meanwhile, says in its Bing Webmaster Tools announcement that Bing Places keeps your address, hours and contact details "eligible for inclusion in AI-generated responses".

For a local business, step four overlaps with the local SEO work you may already be doing. Step five overlaps with content: the reviews, case studies and named people that make a site trustworthy to readers are the same evidence an assistant can quote.

The lesson is not that broad questions are hopeless. The businesses ChatGPT named for them were the ones with listings, reviews, directory profiles and press round-ups behind them, which is steps three to five working together. Specific pages win the specific questions; reputation across the web wins the broad ones.

How do Google, Copilot and Perplexity differ?

Each assistant draws on different sources, so each has its own lever. ChatGPT leans on partner search providers, Google on its own index and Business Profile, Copilot on Bing, and Perplexity on live search. The table sets out what each platform documents, what you can control and how you can see the result.

Google’s position is the simplest. Its guide to generative AI features says optimising for them "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO", and that Business Profile and Merchant Center help businesses appear in AI responses. Since 31 Aug 2026, Search Console also lets every site choose whether it appears in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and reports the impressions it gets there.

Can AI assistants read your website?

Most sites have never checked whether AI crawlers can reach them, and a single firewall rule can make a business invisible to ChatGPT however good its pages are. These five checks take a few minutes, need no special tools and catch the most common blockers.

The second check is the one to ask your developer or host about. Robots.txt is a public file you can read in a browser, but a firewall rule is invisible from outside, and it can turn a crawler away before it ever reads robots.txt.

Should you advertise on ChatGPT?

ChatGPT ads began rolling out to UK users on the Free and Go plans on 4 Jun 2026, and UK businesses can now buy them through OpenAI’s self-serve Ads Manager. They appear below an answer, clearly labelled, and OpenAI says advertisers "have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT’s responses".

That makes ads a separate route, not a shortcut to the recommendation. They can put you in front of someone at the moment they ask, which suits a business that already runs paid search well and wants to test a new channel. Our earlier piece on ChatGPT ads for marketers covers the format. If you want to try them, our PPC team can help you test whether the numbers stack up for your sector. Treat any claim that you can pay to be recommended as a red flag. The facts move fast here: on 4 Oct 2026, Google’s own AI Overview for this topic still said you cannot buy ads inside ChatGPT.

What does not work

A lot of advice on how to get recommended by ChatGPT has no support from the platforms that run these answers. Google says it ignores llms.txt files, so creating one neither helps nor harms your visibility in Google Search, and OpenAI has said nothing about using them. Google also warns that seeking "inauthentic mentions" across the web is less useful than it looks, which rules out paid listicles and planted forum posts.

Be wary of tools or agencies promising to rank you inside ChatGPT. Google says no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems, and OpenAI describes its own ranking only as "multiple factors". Equally, do not assume your Google Business Profile feeds ChatGPT; OpenAI has never said so. Build the evidence every platform can read, and measure the result.

Should you do this yourself or get help?

Most of this is work a business can start this week. Check your crawler access, rewrite your main service pages so they name the service and the place, claim Bing Places and tidy your Google Business Profile, then ask ChatGPT ten questions your customers would ask and note who it names.

Where it gets harder is the reputation side: the reviews, mentions and listings that win broad questions, and a monthly check that shows what is changing. That is the work our AI search service does, from the technical checks through to the reporting.

Written by

Ibrarr Khan Co-Founder at Vulkan Creative LinkedIn profile of Ibrarr Khan (opens in a new tab)

I’m the Co-Founder & Director of Vulkan Creative. Before that, I spent over 8 years moving from apprentice marketer to software engineer in fast-moving fintech and B2B media. I built high-traffic WordPress and React sites, developed custom APIs for a bespoke CRM, and ran demand-generation campaigns that boosted revenue. I now combine full-stack engineering with performance marketing to deliver practical, measurable growth. If you’re planning a new website or growth campaign, let’s connect.

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