ChatGPT recommends local businesses it can find, describe, and trust: businesses whose name, address, and services match everywhere they appear online, whose reviews describe the actual work they do, and that other websites mention. You can't pay your way into ChatGPT's answer, and there's no secret trick. The good news is that the work is the same local marketing fundamentals you've probably heard about, just done more thoroughly than most of your competitors bother to do them.
Let me explain with a story.
Let's call her Maria. Maria owns a small landscaping company, and she's been doing fall cleanups in her town for twelve years. Her customers love her. One evening, a homeowner a few streets over opens ChatGPT and types, "Who should I hire to clean up my yard this fall?"
ChatGPT names two companies and explains why it picked each one. Neither of them is Maria.
She didn't do anything wrong. She just never gave ChatGPT enough to go on. And that's what this guide is about.
How ChatGPT picks which businesses to recommend
When someone asks ChatGPT for a local recommendation, it looks information up, weighs what it finds, and writes back a short answer with a handful of names. Not a page of ten results. A handful.
That makes it far pickier than Google. A study of roughly 350,000 business locations found that ChatGPT recommended just 1.2 percent of them, while the same businesses showed up in Google's local map results 35.9 percent of the time. Doing well on Google doesn't guarantee a thing here, either: fewer than half of the brands that led in traditional local search also showed up in AI recommendations.
Now, let me be crystal clear about something. Nobody outside of OpenAI knows exactly which sources ChatGPT trusts most for local businesses. You'll find articles that swear it's Foursquare, others that say it's Bing, Yelp, or your Google Business Profile. OpenAI hasn't published a list. So I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
What almost everyone agrees on is this: ChatGPT recommends businesses when the information about them is consistent, complete, and confirmed by more than one source. Those three things are the whole game, and they don't depend on which directory turns out to matter most.
6 ways to get your business recommended by ChatGPT
1. Make your business information identical everywhere
If your address says "Suite 4" on your website and "Ste. 4" on Yelp, or your hours are different on Facebook than on Google, you've given ChatGPT a reason to doubt you. And a system that isn't sure about you will recommend someone it is sure about.
This happens more than you'd think. The same study found that business profile accuracy on ChatGPT was only 68 percent.
The fix: Pick one exact way to write your business name, address, phone number, and hours, and make every listing match it character for character. I covered this in more detail in Why Isn't My Business Showing Up on Google Maps?, because it matters there too.
2. Get listed everywhere AI is likely to look
Since nobody knows exactly which directory ChatGPT leans on, don't bet on one. Cover the major ones, and make sure every one of them is claimed, complete, and correct:
- Google Business Profile
- Bing Places for Business
- Apple Business Connect
- Yelp
- Foursquare
- The directories for your industry, like Angi or Houzz for contractors, or Healthgrades for medical practices
Most of these are free. It takes an afternoon of spit, grit, and a whole lot of duct tape, and then you're done.
3. Get reviews that describe what you actually did
Reviews matter to ChatGPT in two ways. First, the rating: the locations ChatGPT recommended averaged 4.3 stars. Second, and this is the part most people miss, the words.
A review that says "Great service!" tells ChatGPT almost nothing. A review that says "They cleaned up our whole yard in one afternoon and hauled away every bag of leaves" tells it exactly what Maria is good at, and exactly which questions she deserves to show up for.
The fix: Ask every happy customer for a review, and ask them to mention what you did for them. The Local Marketing Kit includes seven ready-to-use scripts for asking in person, by text, and by email, plus templates for replying to every kind of review.
4. Say plainly on your website what you do and where you do it
When ChatGPT reads your website, it's trying to answer two questions: what does this business do, and where does it do it? Make both answers impossible to miss.
- Give each main service its own page. One page that lists eight services tells ChatGPT very little about any of them.
- Name the towns and neighborhoods you serve, written out in a sentence, not buried in a footer.
- Answer the questions customers actually ask you on the phone, right on the page.
- Ask your web person about "LocalBusiness schema." It's a small piece of code that labels your name, address, hours, and services so machines can read them without guessing.
Keep in mind, your photos count too. More people are searching with their phone camera now, which I wrote about in What Is Multimodal Search?
5. Get other websites to mention you
Here's where it gets interesting. ChatGPT gives more weight to what other people say about you than to what you say about yourself, and that makes sense. Anybody can call themselves the best landscaper in town. It carries a lot more weight when the local newspaper, the chamber of commerce, or a garden center you partner with says it for you.
A few places to start:
- Your chamber of commerce member directory.
- Your local newspaper or community news site. Pitch them a story about something real you did.
- Your suppliers and partners. Many keep a "where to buy" or "find a pro" page.
- Local sponsorships, like the Little League team, the 5K, or the church fundraiser, which almost always come with a mention online.
6. Check where you stand, then ask ChatGPT why
This is the step almost nobody does, and it's the most useful one on the list. Open ChatGPT and ask it cold, the way a customer would. Don't mention your business first:
Who should I call for [your service] in [your town]? Give me your top recommendations and explain why you chose each one.
Write down every business it names and the reason it gives, and put today's date on the page. Try it again with different wording, and in Gemini and Perplexity too.
If a competitor comes up and you don't, ask this next:
You recommended [competitor] for [service] in [town]. Walk me through exactly what information you used and where it came from. Then, given this is my business — [your business name, website, and Google Business Profile] — tell me specifically what's missing or inconsistent that kept me out of that answer.
That answer is a to-do list, written by the system you're trying to reach. Treat it as a starting point rather than gospel, since ChatGPT can get details wrong, but it's usually pointing you at something real.
If you want a simple way to track it, the AI Visibility Check worksheet in the Local Marketing Workbook gives you a table for exactly this, with room to run it again in ninety days and compare.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay ChatGPT to recommend my business?
No. There's no way to buy a spot in ChatGPT's answer itself. Getting recommended comes from having consistent, complete information and a good reputation across the web.
Is getting recommended by ChatGPT different from ranking on Google?
Yes. They overlap, since a strong Google Business Profile and good reviews help with both, but ranking well on Google doesn't guarantee a recommendation. ChatGPT is much pickier and names far fewer businesses.
Does ChatGPT use my Google Business Profile?
OpenAI hasn't said exactly which sources it uses for local businesses, and outside reports disagree. Keep your Google Business Profile complete regardless. It matters for Google, for Google's own AI answers, and very likely for the other AI assistants too.
How long does it take to start showing up?
There's no set timeline, and anyone who promises one is guessing. Make the fixes in this guide, then check again once a month using the same questions, so you can see whether anything has changed.
Does this work for Gemini and Perplexity too?
Yes. The same things that help with ChatGPT, consistent information, specific reviews, clear service pages, and mentions on other websites, help with every AI assistant.
Where to start
So now that we've covered all six, where should you begin? Right where Maria should have. Open ChatGPT tonight and ask it who to call for what you do, in your town. See who it names. Then ask it why.
You'll know exactly which of these six steps to tackle first.
If you'd like the whole system for getting found locally, The Local Marketing Handbook is free and takes about fifteen minutes to read, including a full chapter on getting recommended by AI: https://thelocalmarketer.com/b/handbook
And if you'd rather have someone walk you through it on your own business, that's what a Live Marketing Session is for: https://thelocalmarketer.com/b/live
Sources
- Search Engine Land, "AI local visibility is up to 30x harder than ranking in Google: Report": https://searchengineland.com/ai-local-visibility-report-2026-468085
- SOCi, "How to Rank in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview": https://www.soci.ai/blog/how-to-rank-in-chatgpt-perplexity-and-google-ai-overview/
- SOCi, "How Multi-Location Marketers Can Use Local Visibility Benchmarks to Dominate Local Markets": https://www.soci.ai/blog/local-visibility-benchmarks/