How to get your local business recommended by ChatGPT

More and more people ask a question in full instead of typing a couple of words into Google. "Where's a good cafe in Totnes that does a proper breakfast and has space for a pushchair?" "Who's a reliable electrician near Exeter who can come this week?" Tools like ChatGPT often reply with a short answer and a handful of names.

If your business is one of those names, that's a customer who arrives already half decided. If it isn't, you never get the chance. So it's worth knowing what makes a business get mentioned.

I'll be honest from the start: nobody can promise you'll be recommended. These tools don't publish a rulebook for who they name, and they change often. But after more than a decade building websites made to be found, first on Google and now through things like ChatGPT too, I can tell you what clearly helps. None of it is a trick, and all of it helps you on Google as well. If you run a clinic, there's a clinic version of this guide with a little more on health businesses.

Try it yourself first

Open ChatGPT, or a similar tool, and ask the question your ideal customer would ask. Be specific: what you do, your town, and something they'd care about, like "open on Sundays" or "good for kids". Ask it two or three different ways.

Note who gets named and what's said about them. Then ask about your own business directly: "What do you know about [your business] in [your town]?" If the answer is thin, out of date or wrong, that tells you where to start.

They read the web, so be easy to read

When these tools answer a local question, they can search the web and summarise what they find. OpenAI, for example, publishes details of a crawler it says is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search answers. That means the things that make your business clear on the web matter here more than anywhere.

Say the important facts in plain words, on your own site. What you do, where you are, when you're open, roughly what it costs and how to book. If those facts are only in photos, a menu PDF or your Instagram captions, a tool reading your site may simply miss them.

Make sure your pages work without running scripts. Some modern websites show an almost empty page until the browser runs its code. Your customers never notice, but Google's own developer documentation says "not all bots can run JavaScript". When I build a site, I check the raw page, the version that arrives before any scripts run, and make sure every important word is already in it.

Keep your details the same everywhere. Your name, address, phone number and opening hours should match on your website, your Google Business Profile, Facebook and any directories. When sources agree, a summary is much more likely to be confident and correct.

Let the right readers in

Every website has a small file called robots.txt that tells automated visitors which pages they may read. Some sites block the readers that ChatGPT and similar services use, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident after a rebuild.

There are two kinds worth knowing about. OpenAI says OAI-SearchBot is for search, and that sites which opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Its other crawler, GPTBot, collects pages for training, and OpenAI says each setting is independent, so you can welcome the search reader while blocking the training one if you prefer. If you want to be recommended, you want the search reader allowed in. It's worth asking whoever looks after your site to check.

Answer the questions people actually ask

Think about what customers ask you every week. "Do you take walk ins?" "Is there parking?" "Do you do gluten free?" "How long does a full rewire take?"

Answer each one plainly on the relevant page, in a short question and answer section. It helps real people straight away, and it gives any tool summarising your business a clear answer in your own words rather than a guess.

Structured information (schema), briefly

Schema is a small block of information in the code of each page, written in a standard format that search engines read directly. For a local business it can say: this is our name, address, phone number and opening hours, these are our services, and these are our questions and answers. You never see it on the page, but it removes guesswork, and it's part of every site I build.

llms.txt, in plain words

llms.txt is a simple text file that can sit on your website at an address like yourbusiness.co.uk/llms.txt. It's a short, tidy summary of your business written for tools like ChatGPT to read: who you are, what you offer, where you are and how to book, with links to your key pages.

It's a proposal rather than an agreed standard, and there's no promise any particular tool reads it. But it costs very little to add, and when a tool does look for it, it finds accurate facts written by you. On the sites I build, it's generated from the same content as the pages, so it never goes out of date when your hours change.

Be talked about, honestly

Tools that summarise the web lean on what other people say about you, not just what you say. That means:

• Plenty of genuine, recent Google reviews, and replies to them.
• Being listed correctly on the directories that matter for your trade.
• Mentions on local sites: a club you sponsor, a local news story, a business you work alongside.

Google's own guidance on local results says prominence is partly based on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have, so this helps you on the map as well. None of it can be bought honestly, but it builds over time.

Write a little, regularly

A business with helpful, specific articles ("What to expect at your first cut and colour", "How to choose a wedding cake for a small venue") gives people, and the tools they use, more to understand it by. In my experience, a steady couple of good articles a month, answering what your local customers ask, is easier to keep up and more useful than a burst of twenty that then stops.

Do I need a website for this?

It helps a great deal. A social page alone gives these tools much less to read, and you don't control it in the same way. I've written about whether you need a website if you already have Instagram or Facebook if you're weighing that up.

A quick checklist

• Ask ChatGPT about your business and your main service in your town, and note the answers.
• Check your key facts are written in plain text on your site.
• Add a short question and answer section to your main pages.
• Ask whoever runs your site about schema, llms.txt and your robots.txt file.
• Keep your Google profile and directory listings consistent.
• Keep collecting honest reviews.

If you'd like me to run through this with your site and tell you honestly where you stand, I'm happy to. It's one of the things I help businesses with. You can book a 15-minute call here:

Book a 15-minute call →

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Checked on 7 October 2026.

• OpenAI: overview of OpenAI's crawlers
• llmstxt.org: the /llms.txt proposal
• Google Search Central: JavaScript SEO basics
• Google Business Profile Help: tips to improve your local ranking