Get your business mentioned in ChatGPT

To get your business mentioned in ChatGPT answers, you need to be easy to find and easy to trust in the places these assistants look: search indexes, business listings, review sites and other websites that talk about businesses like yours. There is no form to submit and no way to buy a mention in the organic answer. What works is the same groundwork as good local SEO, with a few extra steps aimed at how AI assistants gather information.

More customers now ask an assistant "who's a good electrician in Kelowna?" or "which Thai restaurant in Ottawa is good for a group?" instead of typing a search. The answer usually names a few businesses with a short reason for each. If you're not among them, the customer may never see your website at all.

Where the answers come from

ChatGPT can answer from what its model learned during training, and, when it searches the web, from live results it retrieves and cites. For local and current questions, like recommendations, opening hours or prices, it typically runs a search. OpenAI doesn't publish every source it uses, but its answers draw on web search results, business listings, maps data and pages that review or list businesses. Other assistants work in similar ways: Microsoft Copilot relies on Bing, and Google's Gemini on Google's own index and Maps.

For a small business, that means visibility depends on:

1. Whether your website can be crawled and is indexed by the major search engines, including Bing.
2. Whether your business listings are accurate across Google, Bing, Apple and major directories.
3. What reviews and other websites say about you.
4. Whether your own website states clearly what you do, where and for whom.

Seven steps to be part of the answer

1. Don't block the crawlers that power search features

Check your robots.txt file. Some website platforms and security plugins block AI-related crawlers by default. OpenAI separates its crawlers: one is used for training models, another (OAI-SearchBot) for search features. You can block training if you prefer while still allowing the search crawler, so your pages can appear in ChatGPT's search results. Make the choice deliberately rather than inheriting a default.

2. Get your Bing presence in order

Many business owners ignore Bing entirely, but it feeds Copilot and is widely reported to be one of the sources behind ChatGPT's web results. Claim your Bing Places listing, verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap. The setup takes under an hour. See Apple Business Connect and Bing Places for the steps.

3. State the facts plainly on your website

AI assistants summarize. Make it easy for them. Your homepage and service pages should say in plain sentences what you do, in which city and areas, for what kind of customer, with typical prices or ranges and what makes you different. "Family-run roofing company serving Kelowna, West Kelowna and Lake Country since 2009, specializing in metal roofs" is easy to quote. "Excellence in every project" isn't.

4. Build reviews on more than one platform

Assistants often summarize reputation: "highly rated for punctuality", "praised for clear pricing". Those summaries come from reviews. Keep a steady flow on Google, and where it fits your industry, on other platforms customers use. Never buy or fake them; beyond the policy and legal risks covered in my Google reviews guide, fake patterns are exactly what these systems are built to spot and ignore.

5. Get mentioned by other sites

When an assistant recommends "the best bakeries in Moncton", it often leans on local articles, lists and community pages. Being covered in local news, listed by your association, featured in a "best of" roundup by a credible local publication or recommended in community discussions all increase the chance you're named. The tactics overlap with local link building.

6. Be consistent everywhere

If one directory says you close at 5 and your website says 6, an assistant may repeat the wrong one. Same business name, address, phone, hours and description across your profile, website and the main Canadian directories.

7. Answer the questions customers ask assistants

People ask assistants longer, more conversational questions: "Is it worth fixing a 15-year-old furnace or should I replace it?" A page on your site that answers that honestly, with your local experience, is the kind of source an assistant can cite and link to.

How to check where you stand

Ask several assistants the questions your customers would ask, in a few phrasings, with and without your city name. Write down:

• Which businesses are named and in what order.
• What reasons are given for each.
• Which sources are cited, if any.
• Whether anything said about your business is wrong.

Repeat every couple of months. Answers vary between sessions, so look for patterns rather than one result.

Special notes for Canadian businesses

If you serve French-speaking customers, ask the assistants your questions in French as well. Answers in French often draw on different sources, and a business with only English pages may be missing from them entirely. The same goes for immigrant communities: customers who search in Polish, Ukrainian, Punjabi or Tagalog may get different recommendations depending on what exists in their language.

How to measure visits from ChatGPT

In GA4, look at traffic sources for referrals from chatgpt.com and other assistant domains. ChatGPT often adds a tracking tag to links it shows, which makes these visits easier to identify. The numbers are usually small today for local businesses, but they're often high-intent: the person arrives already recommended. Track whether they become enquiries, not just visits. My GA4 guide shows how to set up the reports.

What not to waste money on

You'll see services promising to "get you into ChatGPT" through special files, hidden text or mass-produced articles. Be sceptical. No one controls what an assistant says, and tricks that game one system tend to stop working quickly. The durable approach is the boring one: a clear website, accurate listings, real reviews and a good reputation in your community.

That's how I approach it in my AI search visibility work, which builds on regular SEO rather than replacing it. For the Google side of the same shift, see Google AI Overviews for small businesses.