How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT (and other AI assistants)
More customers open ChatGPT before they open Google now. They type “who’s the best remodeler near Fort Collins?” and get two or three names with a short reason for each. Land on that list and you’ve skipped the entire ranked-results competition. Miss it and you were never in the race. The good news is that getting named isn’t luck. It comes down to specific, learnable signals.
How ChatGPT decides who to name
An AI assistant doesn’t have opinions. It assembles answers from what it can read and what it trusts. When ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews names a local business, it’s drawing on web content it can parse (your site and everyone else’s), on consistent business information that confirms you’re real, and on third-party corroboration: the reviews, directories, and mentions that repeat your name in the right context.
Give it clear material and matching signals and you become an easy answer to give. That’s the whole practice of Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO.
Step 1: Make your site plainly readable and citable
These engines extract facts. Vague, image-heavy pages give them nothing to quote. State in plain text what you do, where you do it, and who you do it for. FAQs help a lot here, because generative engines quote them almost verbatim. So do clear headings and a fast site, since an engine that struggles to read your page will skip it for one it can.
Step 2: Lock down your entity signals
The engine has to be sure you’re one specific, real business before it says your name. That means your name, category, phone, and location match on your website, your Google Business Profile, and every directory that lists you. When the details disagree, the model hedges, and hedging means leaving you out.
Step 3: Add structured data
Schema.org markup and an llms.txt file lay out the basics in a format built
for machines: name, services, area served, how to reach you.
Without it you’re hoping the engine infers who you are. With it you’ve told
it.
Step 4: Earn third-party trust
An AI repeats names it has seen confirmed by sources it already trusts. Reviews on Google and elsewhere. Listings in local and industry directories. Inclusion in roundup articles, the “best web designers in Northern Colorado” type, which these engines love to summarize.
Step 5: Test, then keep at it
Ask the assistants what your customers would ask: “best [your service] near [your city].” See whether you come up. Don’t expect overnight movement, since the engines update on their own schedule. But almost nobody in local business has done this work yet, so moving early puts your name in the answer before your competitors know there’s a race.
Where that leaves you
ChatGPT names businesses it can read, verify, and trust. Make your site citable, keep your entity signals consistent, add structured data, and earn real reviews and mentions. Then start now, while the list is short.
This is what I do under AI Search & GEO for businesses across Northern Colorado and the Front Range. Want to know whether AI is recommending you today? Book a free consult and I’ll check with you.
