How to Get AI to Recommend Your Local Business: 10 Steps

Someone in your area opens ChatGPT and asks for a good plumber, dentist or accountant. The AI names three businesses and yours isn't one of them. That conversation happens every day now. People ask AI tools for local services and the tools build those answers from what they can read about you online. Your visibility now depends on what a machine can find and trust.

I've spent more than 25 years in online marketing and this is the biggest shift I've seen since Google took over search. It already works for some local businesses and against others. Most owners haven't done a thing about it yet. That's good news for you because the field is still mostly empty and the businesses that move first will be the ones the machines learn to recommend.

If you run a trades business, a clinic, a studio or any service that lives in a real suburb, this article is for you. It walks through ten steps that give an AI tool the proof it needs before it will put your name in front of a customer. None of them are tricks and most are things you should be doing anyway. The difference is you'll now do them knowing who's reading.

First, know what "recommended" means

Being mentioned, being named and getting the call are three different results. Each one feeds the next. An AI tool might mention your price guide inside an answer, or it might name you when someone asks for a plumber in your area. Sometimes a person reads your site and rings you direct. A mention can travel without your name on it and a name can travel without a phone call behind it, so your setup needs to back all three jobs at once. A website that only shouts "ring us" gives an AI tool nothing to work with. A site full of useful answers gives it plenty.

Step 1: Let the AI bots read your website

Before anything else, ask your website person to check that search crawlers can read your public pages. Security services, website settings and robots.txt rules can block them by accident and security updates can flip those settings without anyone noticing. That's why you check the whole site and not just the home page. If the bots can't read you, you can't be recommended. It's that simple.

Each tool has its own bots and its own settings, so here's what to check.

PlatformWhat to checkChatGPTAllow OAI-SearchBot to access public content. Search access is separate from the GPTBot training control.ClaudeReview access for Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User. Anthropic keeps these separate from its training crawler, ClaudeBot.GeminiCheck Google indexing and the Google-Extended setting. Google says this controls some Gemini training uses and grounding, which means using web content to inform answers. It does not control ordinary Google Search.

These points come straight from each provider's own help pages (OpenAI Help Center). Letting the bots in gives you a chance to show up but it doesn't promise you a spot and nothing does. Recheck after any site rebuild or big security update too because that's when crawl blocks sneak back in. When you've checked, write down what you found, since crawl problems stay invisible until someone looks.

Action: have your home page, service pages and contact page checked for crawl access and blocks.

Step 2: Say exactly who you help and where

"We're a family-owned business offering quality service" sounds nice and tells an AI tool almost nothing. Quality what, for whom and where? The tool needs plain facts to match you to a question. A better line is a licensed electrician handling switchboard upgrades and air conditioning install for homes in Logan and the southern suburbs. Now the tool knows what you do, where you do it and when to bring you up. The same logic works for any local business. A dentist can name the treatments they focus on and a bookkeeper can name the industries they look after.

Build a proper About page that ties your name, trade history, qualifications and service area together. Google tells businesses to show who they are, what they've done and why they can be trusted (developers.google.com). That's a sound base for any local operator, though it isn't a known ranking factor in every AI tool. Read your page out loud while you're at it. If it could describe a hundred other businesses in your street, keep rewriting until it describes yours.

Action: rewrite your opening About paragraph so it answers what you do, where you do it and why anyone should trust you with it.

Step 3: Give each service its own page

Every service you actually sell needs its own useful page. A real page with room to answer questions, not a single line on a crowded services list. An emergency plumbing page explains what counts as an emergency, how fast you can get there, what the call-out covers and what it roughly costs, while a bathroom renovation page covers the process, the timeline, examples of finished jobs and how the quote works.

My practical tip is to name the pages the way customers talk. "Switchboard upgrades" beats "electrical solutions" every day of the week. Customers don't guess and neither does AI. Link each service page from your main pages too because a machine that can see how your work fits together can describe it better.

Action: improve one commercially important service page so a customer can judge whether you fit their job without ringing you.

Step 4: Answer the questions your phone keeps hearing

You already have these questions. They come from quote requests, texts, job sites and the counter and most businesses throw them away. Start keeping them instead:

• How much should a basic service call actually cost?

• Do I need council approval for a new carport?

• How often should an office air conditioner be serviced?

Keep a running list in a notebook or your phone and add to it every time a customer asks the same thing twice. That list becomes your content plan.

Answer each question clearly, then add your reasoning, examples and limits. Microsoft recommends clear headings, useful FAQs, real proof and depth so AI systems can quote your content the right way (blogs.bing.com). That supports readable answers, but it doesn't mean turning every page into a quiz show.

Action: turn three questions your customers ask again and again into solid, helpful articles, then do the same again next month. Regularity is the key to success.

Step 5: Publish what only your business could have written

A plain article about "choosing the right plumber" competes with millions of lookalikes and most of those were written by machines. A close account of what you found behind a customer's wall last week gives readers something real to learn from and cite. Share your own checklists, real job stories, before-and-after photos and lessons from doing the work because this is where 20 years on the tools beats any content plan.

Don't assume mass-produced AI articles can fool these tools. They've read everything ever published, so sameness is the easiest thing in the world for them to spot.

Google's AI search guidance says it wants useful original views over recycled, lookalike content (developers.google.com). The bar has moved from "publish often" to "publish what's yours" and I think that's a good thing. Real experience always beat bulk content. Now the machines can tell the difference too.

Action: publish one job story covering the problem, what you did, what it cost and what other owners can learn. Name the source of any figures and say where they fall short.

Step 6: Turn your job photos and paperwork into web pages

Your strongest material is probably sitting in your phone gallery, your quotes and your job sheets. If it only lives in a text message you sent a customer, an AI tool can't use it. Publish before-and-after photos, worked cost examples, maintenance checklists and plain-English explanations on public pages, put your business name on them and link to the service they belong to. Keep a photo of the finished job next to the text where it helps.

Google recommends putting key facts in text, backed by images and video where they help (developers.google.com). My version for local business is simple: give your best on-the-job knowledge a home people can read. You don't need to publish it all at once either. One job story a week beats a hundred rushed uploads in a day.

Action: turn one recent job into an article with photos of the work and the advice you gave in plain words.

Step 7: Get mentioned beyond your own website

Your own site is only the start. Go after local paper stories, supplier and trade partner pages, chamber of commerce listings, community sponsorships and industry association profiles and aim for coverage that explains what you know rather than coverage that just repeats your business name.

Ahrefs looked at about 75,000 brands and found that the ones named more often on the web and YouTube also showed up more in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews (ahrefs.com). Two honest cautions before you get excited. This is a pattern, not proof that mentions cause the results. It also wasn't a study of local service businesses. Treat it as a useful signal, not a law of nature.

Start with the places you already know, like the supplier you deal with every week or the local sports club you sponsor. A warm intro beats a cold pitch and your job is to be useful on their turf first.

Action: name five trusted local organisations or websites that serve your customers and build a useful offer for each.

Step 8: Keep your facts the same everywhere

Your website, Google Business Profile, directory listings and social pages all tell your story, so it's worth checking whether they agree. Look at your business name, phone number, address, service area, opening hours and current offers. Old phone numbers and out-of-date trading hours float around for years. The wording can change from place to place but the facts underneath should match.

Microsoft recommends keeping content right, fresh and the same across formats (blogs.bing.com). My read is that mixed-up listings invite outdated or confused notes that then get copied around. Fix the big ones first because your own website and Google Business Profile matter more than a small directory nobody reads.

Action: search your business name and fix the biggest out-of-date listings you find.

Step 9: Use structured data, but keep it in proportion

Structured data is a set of labels that help machines read your pages. Useful types include LocalBusiness for your business, Service for what you sell and Article for written pieces, while your opening hours and contact details can be labelled too. Google documents this markup and Schema.org carries the full list (developers.google.com).

Now for the reality check. Google says there's no special schema just for AI and it also says llms.txt does not help you in Google Search. I've watched people chase technical shortcuts for 25 years and it rarely ends well. Labels help, but content and credible proof do the heavy lifting.

Action: check your markup is right and matches what customers can actually read.

Step 10: Test it and measure what happens

You don't have to guess whether this is working. Build a small, repeatable set of real prompts and test them in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini with web search on where it's offered. Use fresh chats and don't name your own business in the question, then run the same set again over time:

• Suggest licensed electricians in Logan for switchboard upgrades.

• Recommend a good family dentist open Saturdays on the Gold Coast.

• Who could service commercial air conditioning in Brisbane?

Record four things: whether you show up, whether the wording is right, which sources get cited and whether anyone visits or rings. This is a sample of how visible you are, not a ranking, but a small sample still gives a real signal if you repeat it. OpenAI says ChatGPT referral links carry utm_source=chatgpt.com, so you can spot those visits in your stats (OpenAI Help Center).

First action: run the tests once before you change a thing and add "How did you hear about us?" to your phone script and quote form. First Monday of each month, run them again and keep every result dated in one sheet. After three months you'll see which changes helped.

Where to start

No tool can promise an AI recommendation and I'd be wary of anyone selling one. That's rubbish when the agencies say it and it's rubbish when the AI newsletters say it. Algorithms decide what gets quoted and the rules keep moving, so the only thing you truly control is the proof you put in public.

Start small and start this week. Run one baseline test, fix your About page and ask your web person about the bots. Then answer one real question a customer asked you last week. Print the ten steps if it helps and tick one box each week because the whole job is done inside a quarter.

Yes, this takes time, but most things worth doing in business do. Do a little regularly and you'll build something the machines can trust and your customers can use.