How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?

AI assistants recommend the businesses they can find clearly described on other sites they trust, such as booking platforms, review sites and directories, so most of the work is being present and consistent in those places, not only on your own website.

Your own site still matters: it is where the assistant checks what you do, where you work and how to reach you. But in our measurements the recommendation itself almost always came from somewhere else.

Guide

What we measured

September 2026. We asked OpenAI's model through its API with web search switched on. The ChatGPT app may answer differently, so read these as a snapshot of one model on one day, not as a law.

• Our own agency. We asked fourteen general questions in Turkiye, Germany and the United Kingdom, such as which company can build an AI assistant for a small business. We appeared in none of the fourteen. Then we asked directly what roroweb.com is: the model described us correctly and cited our site. So it could read us. It simply had no reason to put us on a list.
• A beauty studio in Germany. Ten local questions in German, such as which studio in this city would you recommend. The studio appeared in none of the ten. In seven of those ten answers the model took its information from the same booking platform, and quoted the star ratings and review counts listed there.
• A health tourism website in the United Kingdom. The model read that site and cited it as a source. What the site blocked was the training crawler, which is a different thing from the crawler that fetches pages for an answer. The caution in the answer came from the content: no named surgeon or hospital, a free email address as the only contact, and few independent reviews.

What you can do

Six things, in the order we would do them.

• Check that assistants can fetch your pages. Hosting and security services sometimes block them silently. Note that the crawler used to answer a question and the crawler used to train a model are separate: blocking training does not hide you from answers, and allowing everything is not required either.
• Answer real questions on your own site, in the first sentence. People ask how long it takes, whether you take bookings online, which languages you speak. If your page answers plainly, the assistant can quote you.
• Be listed where your customers already look. For a studio that may be a booking platform; for an agency a business directory or a profile site. Find which sources the assistant actually uses in your sector and city, then complete your profile there.
• Collect real reviews from real customers. Reviews from family or swapped between businesses break platform rules and can get a profile removed.
• Keep the name, address, phone and email identical everywhere. Small differences make it harder for a model to be sure all those pages are the same business.
• Measure, then measure again. Ask the same questions every month and count how often you appear. Without a number from before, you cannot tell whether anything you did worked.

Measurement

The measurement table and a step by step plan

Method: we asked OpenAI's model through its API with web search switched on. The September 2026 rows summarise the measurement above. In the 3 October 2026 rows we asked each question three times and counted how many answers mentioned RoroWeb. These are a snapshot of one day, not a law.

Reading: the model knows the brand but does not recommend it for category questions. Category answers are carried by price and guide style content pages and by website builder platforms.

1. Check bot access. Open your robots.txt and your hosting or security settings. Confirm that the crawlers which fetch pages for answers are not blocked. Blocking the training crawler does not hide you from answers.
2. Write question and answer content. Give each question your customers ask its own page or section: price, timing, location, languages. Answer in the first sentence.
3. Add structured data. Put your business name, address, phone and services into the page code as schema. Mark up your FAQ section too.
4. Write your name, address and phone the same way everywhere. Site footer, legal page, schema and outside profiles should match letter for letter.
5. Be present elsewhere. Open and complete your business profile, map listings and the directories your customers use. Collect reviews only from real customers.
6. Measure every month. Ask the same questions from the same place, each one several times. Write down how many answers mention you and compare with the month before.

There is no guarantee

Nobody can promise that an AI assistant will recommend a business. The companies behind these models do not publish how they choose, and the answers change from day to day. What you can do is remove the reasons you are left out and check the result with honest measurement. Be careful with anyone who sells a place in AI answers.

How we help

We check whether assistants can read your site, find which sources they use in your sector and city, fix the structure and the answers on your pages, and measure the same questions every month so you can see the change yourself.

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