How to Show Up When Someone Asks AI for the \"Best [Trade] Near Me\"

AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity build "best near me" answers from your Google Business Profile, review sites, directories and your own website. They name businesses with the same details everywhere, strong recent reviews, and clear pages about what you do and where you do it. Get those right and you give AI a reason to pick you.

Picture this

It's 9 pm on a Tuesday. Sarah in Carindale has water coming through her kitchen ceiling. She doesn't open Google and scroll through ten ads. She opens ChatGPT on her phone and types: "Who's the best emergency plumber near Carindale?" She gets three names. Maybe four. A line about each one. Then she rings the first one.

If you're a plumber in Carindale and you're not on that list, you didn't lose the job to a better plumber. You lost it before the phone even rang. This is happening more every month. So let's look at how the AI chose those names, and what you can do about it.

How does AI pick a "best near me" answer?

AI doesn't have its own list of good tradies. It reads what's already out there about you and your rivals, and makes a call. Think of it like a new neighbour asking around the street. They'd check who has a sign on their ute. They'd ask who people have used. They'd look at what's said about them. AI does much the same thing, just faster and across hundreds of sources at once.

When it answers, it's trying to be safe. It wants to name businesses it can be sure are real, are local, do that job, and have happy customers. The more proof it can find, the more likely you are to make the cut.

The five signals AI checks

Here's what AI looks at, in rough order of weight.

1. Your Google Business Profile. This is often the first source AI checks for local businesses. Gemini and Google's AI Overviews read it directly. Other tools often pick up data that started there. Your category, services, hours and reviews all count. (We explain this more in [Does my Google Business Profile affect my AI search visibility?](LINK: article 2))

2. Your reviews. How many you have, how good they are, and how recent they are. What the reviews actually say matters too. A review that says "Tom fixed our burst pipe in Carindale within an hour" tells AI a lot. A review that says "great job" tells it very little. (See [How much do online reviews affect whether AI recommends my business?](LINK: article 4))

3. The same details everywhere. Your business name, address and phone number are often called your NAP. They should match on your website, your Google profile, Facebook, hipages, Yellow Pages and anywhere else you're listed. If one site says "Smith Plumbing" and another says "Smith & Sons Plumbing Pty Ltd" with a different number, AI gets less sure you're one business.

4. Clear service and location pages. AI needs to know what you do and where you do it. A website with one "Services" page that lists fifteen jobs in a single line doesn't help much. A page about emergency plumbing that names the suburbs you cover helps a lot.

5. Mentions on other sites. Being named by a local news site, a sports club you sponsor, a supplier, or an industry body all adds up. It tells AI that other people know you exist.

No single signal wins it on its own. It's the mix that matters.

So what does "best" actually mean to AI?

This is the bit most business owners get wrong. They think "best" means the highest star rating. It doesn't, not on its own. A business with a 5.0 rating from six reviews looks weaker than one with 4.8 from 180 reviews. That's because AI, like people, trusts a big sample more.

Recency matters as well. If your last review was 14 months ago, AI may wonder if you're still trading.

And wording matters. When someone asks for the "best emergency electrician", AI looks for signs you do emergency work. Reviews that say "came out at midnight" and a service page called "24/7 Emergency Electrician" are both signs. If neither exists, you're a weaker match, even if you do that work every week.

So "best" to AI really means: lots of recent, specific proof that you do this job, in this place, and do it well.

Test it yourself: prompts to try tonight

Before you change anything, find out where you stand. Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and ask each one the same questions. Use your real trade and suburb.

Try these:

• "Who is the best [trade] in [suburb]?"

• "Can you recommend a [trade] near [suburb] for [common job]?"

• "Which [trade] in [city] has the best reviews?"

• "I need an emergency [trade] in [suburb] tonight. Who should I call?"

• "What do people say about [your business name]?"

Write down what comes back. Note who gets named, and in what order. Note if you appear at all. And note anything wrong the AI says about you. Do this once a month. It takes 15 minutes, and it shows you if your work is paying off. One tip: log out, or use a private window, before you test. AI tools can remember what you've asked before, and that can skew the answers.

You don't need to do everything at once. Here's a simple month that covers the basics.

Week 1: Clean up your details

• Check your business name, address and phone number on your website, Google profile, Facebook and your top three directories.

• Fix anything that doesn't match. Use the exact same wording every time.

• Make sure your opening hours are correct everywhere.

Week 2: Fix your Google Business Profile

• Choose the most specific main category you can.

• List every service you offer, with a short plain-English line for each.

• Add ten real photos of your work, your team and your vehicles.

• (Our step-by-step guide to [optimising your Google Business Profile for AI search](LINK: article 3) goes deeper.)

Week 3: Ask for reviews

• Make a list of your last 20 happy customers.

• Send each one a short, friendly text with your review link.

• Ask them to mention the job and the suburb if they're happy to. Don't write it for them.

• Reply to every new review, good or bad.

Week 4: Build proof on your website

• Make sure your top three services each have their own page.

• Add the suburbs you cover, with a real job example from at least two of them.

• (See [How do I get mentioned for a specific suburb in AI answers?](LINK: article 5) for more on this.)

• Run the same test prompts from above again. Compare with week one.

At the end of 30 days, you won't be done. But you'll have fixed the things that most often keep tradies off the list.

What if a bigger business keeps getting named instead?

It happens. A company with 40 vans and 900 reviews will often be named first. But AI answers change based on the exact question. Ask for "the best plumber in Brisbane" and the big firm wins. Ask for "a plumber who can fix a hot water system in Wynnum today" and a smaller local business with the right proof can beat them.

That's your opening. Be the clearest, most proven answer for the jobs and suburbs you really want. You don't have to be the biggest. You have to be the best match.

Does AI use Google rankings to choose "best near me" businesses? Partly. Google's own AI tools lean on Google data, including your Business Profile and search rankings. ChatGPT and Perplexity use their own web searches, which often use Bing. Strong basics help you in all of them.

Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT? No. There's no paid spot in ChatGPT's normal answers today. You get named by having strong, consistent proof online.

How long does it take to start showing up? It varies. Some changes, like fixing your Google profile, can show up in weeks. Others, like building reviews and mentions, take a few months to build up.

Do I need a website to be recommended by AI? It helps a lot. Without one, AI has to rely only on listings and reviews. A website with clear service and suburb pages gives it much more to work with.

Why does AI name different businesses each time I ask? AI answers aren't fixed. Small changes in wording, location or timing can change the result. That's why it's worth testing a few versions of the question each month.

Want to know where you stand?

At Proficlix, we run AI visibility audits for Australian businesses. We check how ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity talk about you, who they recommend instead, and what's holding you back. We also offer AI readiness audits and wider AI assessments if you want the full picture.

Book a chat about your business and we'll talk through what's going on and where to start.