How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT

Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot to find, understand and recommend. It is not a replacement for SEO. Most AI assistants look things up on the live web when someone asks for a recommendation, so the businesses they suggest are usually the ones that already show up well in search, have clear information on their website and have a solid trail of reviews and listings. AEO is mostly good SEO, written so a machine can quote it.

How does ChatGPT decide which businesses to recommend?

When someone asks an AI assistant "who is a good web designer in Marietta" or "best roofer near Buford", the assistant usually runs a web search behind the scenes, reads a handful of the results, and writes an answer from what it found. That means three things decide whether your name comes up:

1. Whether you appear in the search results it reads. If your site is on page four of Google or Bing, the assistant will rarely see it.
2. Whether your pages answer the question plainly. AI tools pull short, direct statements. A page that says "We build websites for small businesses in Marietta, starting at $500" is easier to quote than one full of slogans.
3. What other sources say about you. Reviews, your Google Business Profile, directory listings and articles that mention you all count as evidence that you are real and well regarded.

What can a small business actually do?

1. Get the regular SEO basics right first

Correct page titles and descriptions, one page per service, a page for each area you serve, fast load times and a clean sitemap. If search engines cannot find and trust your site, AI assistants that rely on them cannot either.

2. Answer real questions in the first sentence

Write the way customers ask. Use questions as headings ("How much does a new roof cost in Gwinnett County?") and answer each one in the first sentence or two underneath, before any extra detail. This is the single biggest change most sites can make, and it helps with Google's featured answers too.

3. Add structured data

Structured data (often called schema) is a small block of code that tells machines exactly what a page is: a business, a service, a price, a set of frequently asked questions, a review rating. Visitors never see it, but search engines and AI tools read it. Every site we build ships with it on every page.

4. Publish an llms.txt file

An llms.txt file is a plain summary of your business, written for AI tools, that lives at yoursite.com/llms.txt. It is a newer, proposed standard, and not every AI company says it reads the file yet, so treat it as cheap insurance rather than a magic switch. It takes an hour to write and costs nothing to host.

5. Do not block AI crawlers by accident

Your site's robots.txt file tells automated visitors what they may read. Some security plugins and hosting setups block AI crawlers such as OpenAI's by default. If you want to be recommended, make sure the tools you want to be found by are allowed in.

6. Keep your business details identical everywhere

Your business name, phone number and service area should match exactly on your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook, Yelp and any industry directories. Mismatched details make it harder for any system, human or AI, to be sure all of those listings are the same business.

7. Earn reviews steadily

Reviews are one of the strongest public signals that a business is real and does good work. A steady trickle of honest reviews on your Google Business Profile helps your map listing, your search results and what AI assistants say about you, all at once.

How is AEO different from SEO?

Can anyone guarantee you a spot in ChatGPT's answers?

No. Nobody controls what an AI assistant says, and the answers change from one question to the next. If someone emails you promising guaranteed placement in ChatGPT, treat it the same way you would treat a promise of a guaranteed number one spot on Google: as a sales line, not a plan. What you can do is make your business the easiest, clearest and best-documented answer available, and then measure whether it is working.

How do you know if it is working?

Google Analytics records visits that come from AI assistants. In GA4, look at Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, and check for sources such as chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai. Our own site started receiving visits from ChatGPT in 2026, a couple each month so far. Small numbers, but they are people who were told about us by an AI assistant and then came to look. You can also simply ask the assistants yourself, the way a customer would, and see who they name.

What's the bottom line?

AEO is not a separate project bolted on top of your website. It is the result of a site that search engines can read, that answers customers' questions in plain language, and that the rest of the internet vouches for. Get those right and you are giving AI assistants every reason to mention you. If you want help with the search side, see our local SEO services, or start with a free website audit.