How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT (2026 Guide)

More customers are turning to ChatGPT and other AI assistants when they need a product, a service or a local business.

Instead of searching through a list of websites, they might ask:

Yes, businesses can appear in ChatGPT recommendations, but there is no guaranteed way to make ChatGPT recommend a particular company.

When ChatGPT uses web search, it can retrieve information from websites and other online sources to help answer a user's question.

For example, someone looking for a local electrician might receive recommendations informed by relevant business websites, public listings and other accessible sources.

The businesses mentioned can vary depending on the question, location, available information and the way ChatGPT searches for an answer.

There is no public application form that guarantees your business a place in ChatGPT's recommendations.

You cannot simply add a line to your website telling ChatGPT to recommend you and expect it to work.

What you can do is improve the information AI systems have available when evaluating your business.

That means making your website accessible, explaining your services clearly, establishing a consistent business identity and providing credible evidence of what makes you worth considering.

Think of it this way: your website needs to do more than exist. It needs to help someone — or an AI assistant — understand who you are, what you offer, where you operate and why you're relevant.

ChatGPT can answer questions using information learned during model training. It can also use web search to retrieve more current information when that capability is available and appropriate.

When someone asks for a business recommendation, the process may involve finding relevant sources, interpreting their contents and producing an answer suited to the question.

OpenAI does not publish a complete formula for how businesses are selected or ranked in recommendations.

However, several practical factors can affect whether your business is easy to discover and accurately describe.

If a crawler cannot reach your website, it may be unable to retrieve the information you've published.

OpenAI operates OAI-SearchBot to help discover content for ChatGPT Search. Website owners can permit this crawler through their robots.txt settings and hosting infrastructure.

A website returning errors, blocking relevant crawlers or hiding important information behind login screens creates unnecessary obstacles.

What to check: Can a crawler access your public pages, and does the returned HTML contain meaningful information about your business?

You can check the technical foundations of your website with a free launchAEO audit.

Imagine your website says: “We provide quality solutions at competitive prices.”

That could describe almost any business.

Now compare it with: “We're a family-run plumbing company serving Bristol and Bath, specialising in boiler repairs, bathroom installations and emergency plumbing.”

The second description gives a reader much more useful information. It identifies the type of business, services offered and geographic coverage.

Your website should make it easy to establish:

A business claiming to be “the best” is making a statement about itself.

A business displaying relevant qualifications, genuine customer feedback, completed work and independently verifiable credentials gives people more information to assess that claim.

Useful evidence varies by industry.

A Gas Safe registered heating engineer might display their registration details. An electrician might provide relevant NICEIC or other competent-person scheme credentials. A restaurant might publish its menu, location and links to independent customer reviews.

These details do not guarantee an AI recommendation. They help establish what the business does and provide information that can be checked.

Many business websites explain who the company is but fail to answer the questions customers ask before buying.

A builder's website might list “extensions” as a service without explaining the types of extensions offered, the areas covered or what the process involves.

A more useful page might answer: “Can you build a single-storey kitchen extension in Leeds?”

It could explain the service, show relevant projects, discuss practical considerations and provide a way to request a quotation.

That page helps potential customers directly. It also provides clearer information for search systems to interpret.

Your website is the centre of your business's online identity, but it isn't the only place information about you appears.

Public profiles, relevant directories, independent reviews and industry registrations may provide additional evidence.

For a local restaurant, that could include its Google Business Profile and Tripadvisor listing. For an online company, it might include a relevant company record, professional profile or credible industry publication.

The objective isn't to register on hundreds of directories.

It's to establish a small number of accurate, relevant and trustworthy public references that support the information on your own website.

Before changing your content, find out whether your website has technical problems.

A visually attractive website can still contain issues that make information harder for automated systems to retrieve or interpret.

Start by checking:

launchAEO is designed to help business owners understand how ready their websites are for AI search without requiring specialist SEO knowledge.

Its free website audit provides an AI Search Readiness score and examines areas including crawlability, business identity, content structure and credibility signals.

Rather than presenting only a score, launchAEO provides explanations of the findings and an action plan showing what to investigate or improve.

That gives you a starting point before spending money on website changes that might not address the actual problems.

One of the simplest improvements is also one of the most overlooked: explain your business in ordinary language.

Your homepage should answer three questions quickly: What do you do? Who do you help? Where do you operate?

For example, instead of “Professional services delivered with excellence,” try:

“Independent accountants helping small businesses and sole traders in Manchester with bookkeeping, VAT returns and annual accounts.”

The second version is specific enough to be useful to someone looking for those services.

You should also create dedicated pages for your important services.

A roofing company might have separate pages covering roof repairs, flat roofing, guttering and emergency leak repairs. Each page should provide genuinely useful information about that service, rather than repeating the same sales copy with a different heading.

For businesses serving multiple locations, describe actual service coverage and provide locally relevant details. Avoid generating dozens of near-identical location pages simply to target more search terms.

A useful test: if someone landed on one page without seeing your homepage, could they understand what you offer and whether you're suitable for them? If the answer is no, that page probably needs work.

A missing shop address might be a serious issue for a restaurant, but completely normal for an online-only business.

Similarly, a missing Google Business Profile isn't automatically a problem for a business that isn't eligible for one.

launchAEO distinguishes between local and online businesses in its reviews and listings assessment, so recommendations can be interpreted in the context of the business being audited.

A website saying “we offer great customer service” gives very little evidence.

A website that explains its experience, services and relevant credentials gives potential customers something meaningful to assess.

Consider what a customer would need to know before trusting your business.

Start with a clear heading that describes the question or service.

Answer the question directly in the opening paragraph.

Then provide the detail someone needs to make a decision, such as availability, limitations, relevant experience, typical processes or next steps.

Use descriptive subheadings and lists when they make information easier to follow.

Avoid creating pages that exist only to repeat a keyword.

You don't need to mention ChatGPT in every heading or fill your website with phrases such as “AI-friendly business.”

The objective is to publish genuinely helpful information that customers and search systems can understand.

Yes, when customers have real questions that deserve clear answers.

But FAQs aren't a shortcut to getting recommended by AI.

They work best when they provide useful information that isn't already answered elsewhere on the page.

Search for your business name and see what information appears across the web.

Are your details accurate? Do public profiles describe the same business?

Are old addresses, outdated telephone numbers or abandoned profiles creating confusion?

For local businesses, pay particular attention to your Google Business Profile and relevant industry listings. For online companies, look at credible company records, professional profiles and platforms customers actually use to evaluate businesses like yours.

Choose directories based on relevance, legitimacy and whether they help customers find or verify your business.

A restaurant may benefit from hospitality listings. A professional practice may benefit from an appropriate professional register. An online software company may benefit from relevant product platforms or independent reviews.

Don't assume every directory is equally valuable. And don't treat directory listings as a replacement for a useful business website.

Your own website should remain the primary source explaining your services, expertise and value. External profiles can support that information, but customers should still be able to understand and evaluate your business directly.

Structured data is information added to a website's code to help compatible search systems identify what a page describes.

For example, a local business might use LocalBusiness schema to describe its name, location, telephone number and opening hours. An online company might use Organization schema to describe its identity and official website. A service page might contain appropriate information about a particular service.

Structured data should accurately represent the content visible on the website. It is not a place to insert invented reviews, unsupported awards or claims that cannot be verified.

There is no evidence that adding schema markup alone guarantees inclusion in ChatGPT recommendations.

However, appropriate structured data can make information clearer to systems that support it, and it is an established part of technical search optimisation.

For businesses without a developer, the first step is identifying whether suitable structured data already exists and whether it accurately describes the company. A launchAEO audit can help highlight relevant website readiness and business identity issues that deserve attention.

Once your website provides clear information, you need a way to understand your current visibility.

Start with realistic questions that potential customers might ask.

For a local garage, try:

AI answers can change. Results may vary depending on the wording of the question, location, available sources and whether web search is used.

One appearance doesn't prove consistent visibility. Likewise, one missing mention doesn't mean your business is permanently excluded.

A useful assessment involves multiple relevant questions and repeated checks over time.

For business owners who want to go beyond occasional manual searches, launchAEO offers paid AI visibility features that can help assess brand mentions and relevant buyer questions across supported AI platforms.

These capabilities are separate from the free technical readiness audit.

The distinction matters: AI readiness measures aspects of how prepared your website is. AI visibility measures observed mentions or appearances in the questions and platforms being checked.

A technically excellent website isn't automatically being recommended by ChatGPT. Both measurements are useful, but they answer different questions.

Explore launchAEO's AI visibility tools.

After auditing your website, you may discover several things worth improving.

Some will be relatively straightforward. Others may require help from your website developer or marketing provider.

The key is prioritisation.

For example, if your website blocks relevant crawlers, resolving that access problem is more urgent than publishing another blog article.

If your business identity is unclear, improving the homepage and company information may be a sensible starting point.

If your service pages contain almost no useful information, expanding them may help customers understand your offering.

If your local business information is inconsistent, correcting the underlying details should take priority over creating additional listings.

An audit is only useful when it helps you decide what to do next.

launchAEO provides an Action Plan that translates detected issues into explanations and suggested changes. For example, it can flag missing image alternative text or weaknesses in content structure and explain why those findings matter.

This helps business owners move from a technical diagnosis to practical improvements without having to interpret an unfamiliar SEO report.

Not every finding has the same impact, and no automated score should replace judgement about your actual customers and business goals.

Improving your website is not a one-off task.

Businesses change. Services change. Competitors publish new information. AI search experiences continue to evolve.

After making improvements, check whether the underlying technical issues have been resolved. Then look at the outcomes that matter to your business. These may include:

These measures are related, but they are not interchangeable.

An improved readiness score doesn't prove an increase in customers. More AI mentions don't automatically mean more sales.

Before making major changes, record your current position.

Save your initial website audit, list the problems identified and document the customer questions you're monitoring.

After implementing changes, repeat the checks. Compare like-for-like results rather than treating every movement in an automated score as proof of commercial improvement.

launchAEO provides free readiness auditing and action-plan features, with additional paid monitoring and reporting capabilities for businesses that need to follow visibility and performance over time.

For actual customer enquiries and sales, combine these insights with your own website analytics and business records.

There is no guaranteed timeline.

Some website changes may become available to search systems after they are crawled.

Other improvements, such as building a stronger reputation, earning independent coverage or establishing a history of credible customer reviews, can take considerably longer.

Even when a page is accessible and discoverable, ChatGPT may not choose to mention it. That doesn't necessarily mean something is technically wrong.

The business might not be relevant to the specific question, stronger evidence might exist for alternatives, or the search process might retrieve different sources.

A sensible approach is to:

Run a website audit and review the findings. Check whether your business identity, services and locations are clearly described.

Test a selection of relevant customer questions in ChatGPT and record the answers. Save your results so you have a baseline for future comparisons.

Starting tool: launchAEO free website audit.

Run another website audit. Review which technical issues have been resolved. Repeat your original customer-question tests and compare the results.

Check search analytics and any available AI referral data. Identify what still needs work and create your next set of priorities.

The objective after 30 days isn't to guarantee a ChatGPT recommendation. It's to have a clearer, more credible and technically accessible website, supported by evidence of what has improved.

You don't need to be an SEO specialist to start improving your business's visibility.

You need to understand what your website currently communicates, identify genuine problems and make improvements that help customers and search systems find accurate information about your business.

That's what launchAEO is built to help with.

Start with a free website audit. Check your AI Search Readiness score, explore the findings behind it and use your action plan to identify what to improve.

When you're ready to go further, explore additional AI visibility monitoring and reporting features to help understand how your business appears across supported AI platforms.