Guide
How do I get my small business recommended by ChatGPT?
Make your business easy to find, read and confirm. ChatGPT and Claude search the web before they answer a local question, then name businesses whose pages they found and whose details agree with other sites. So: let their crawlers in, keep a complete Google listing, say plainly on your site what you do, where and for how much, and get listed on the directories they read. Then measure it monthly, because one answer proves nothing.
What did the assistants actually cite?
On 8 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT and Claude, each with web search on, six questions an Australian customer might ask: "who builds websites for marriage celebrants in Australia", "website designer for marriage celebrants", "local SEO for marriage celebrants", "website designer for tradies in Australia", "affordable website for a tradie in Australia" and "how do I get my small business recommended by ChatGPT". That is twelve answers. ChatGPT cited 45 pages across 25 websites; Claude cited 35 pages across 25.
The pages they cited most were business pages with the niche in the address (a "celebrant website builds" page, a "website design for tradies" page), prices or packages on the page, and a contact page with a phone and a place. The most cited business, SME Digital, was cited eight times, for its celebrant page and its contact page. Next to the businesses' own pages sat profile and review pages on other sites: Word of Mouth, Cylex, Birdeye and Clutch.
For the record, creativebyjake, which runs this site, was recommended in none of the twelve answers. That is our own starting line, and the reason Appear measures every month.
One pass per question per assistant, so this is a floor, not a census; the same question asked again can name different businesses. The next read is part of our monthly series.
Which directories and profile sites did they read?
| Site | Cited for | By |
|---|---|---|
| Word of Mouth | local SEO for marriage celebrants; an affordable website for a tradie | Claude, ChatGPT |
| Easy Weddings (an article) | local SEO for marriage celebrants | Claude |
| Wedlockers | local SEO for marriage celebrants | Claude |
| Cylex | who builds websites for marriage celebrants | ChatGPT |
| Birdeye | website designer for tradies | ChatGPT |
| Clutch | how do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT | ChatGPT |
None of them is exotic. They are the free or cheap listings any local business can claim, and they matter because an assistant uses them to confirm what your own site says.
What do OpenAI and Google say about it?
For the ChatGPT question, ChatGPT itself cited two pages from the companies concerned. OpenAI's page on its crawlers explains that it uses separate agents for search (OAI-SearchBot) and for training (GPTBot), so a site can be in ChatGPT's search results without its pages being used for training. Google's page on AI features in Search says the same good practice that helps a page in ordinary search applies to its AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that no special markup is needed to appear in them.
Who did the assistants name for "how do I get recommended by ChatGPT"?
Australian agencies, not guides. ChatGPT named Digital Marketing Tribe, One Orange Cow and Firewire Digital; Claude named Intellar, Prosperity Media, AIIMS Group and PK SEO. On Bing Australia the same question was answered by three guides, none of them Australian, so no Australian page answered it directly when we looked (13 Oct). That is one of the reasons this guide exists.
What should a local business do, step by step?
- Let the search crawlers in.Check your robots.txt does not block the crawlers the assistants search the web with: OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, Claude-SearchBot for Claude, PerplexityBot for Perplexity, and Googlebot, which Google's AI Overviews read through. GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended control training, a separate choice. The free check reads it for you in seconds.
- Complete your Google listing.Primary category, website, hours, services, real photos. Assistants and Google's own AI read it, and it is the first thing a customer sees on Maps.
- Make your details identical everywhere.The same name, phone and area on your site, your listing and every directory. Disagreement makes a business harder to confirm.
- Give each service and area its own page.The cited pages had the niche in the address and the price on the page. "Plumber in Penrith, from $X a call-out" says more to a machine than a home page that tries to say everything.
- Get onto the profile sites they read.For trades, Localsearch, hipages and the like; for weddings, Easy Weddings, ABIA and Word of Mouth; for most businesses, a Clutch or industry profile where it fits.
- Collect honest reviews steadily.Ask every happy customer, from your own phone, with a direct review link. Never buy or swap them.
- Measure it as a series.Ask the question a customer would ask, the same way, every month, and count how often you are named. A single answer, good or bad, tells you very little.
Questions people ask next
Do I need a new website to be recommended?
Usually not. Most of the work is the listing, consistent details and a few clear pages on the site you have. The free check shows whether your current site can be read at all.
Does llms.txt help?
It is a small plain-text summary of your site for language models. Few assistants have said they read it. It costs little to publish, so it is worth doing once the basics are right, not before.
Is being recommended by ChatGPT worth it for a local business?
It depends on your customers. In Easy Weddings' 2026 report, 9% of the planning tasks couples used AI for were finding and comparing suppliers, and 54% trusted its recommendations less than a person's. The groundwork for Google and for the assistants is the same, so you do not have to choose.
How do I know whether ChatGPT names me now?
Run the free check: it reads your site at once and, with your email, asks ChatGPT and Claude the question a customer would ask about your trade and suburb.
Start with the free check
Find out whether AI and Google know your business.
Two minutes for your website basics, then the AI and Google Maps read by email.