How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and Google’s AI.

When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot or Google’s AI Mode “who is a good electrician in Ottawa?”, the answer names a handful of businesses. Those tools do not pick at random. They search the web, read business listings and reviews, and quote pages that answer the question clearly. Everything below is about making your business one of the obvious choices. This work is usually called GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization).

1. Check what AI says about you today

Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot the questions your customers would ask: “best [your service] in [your area]”, “who does [specific job] near [neighbourhood]”, and your business name on its own. Write down who is named, which websites are cited, and whether anything said about you is wrong. That list is your starting point, and the sites being cited are the ones to get onto.

2. Make sure AI can read your website

• Do not block AI crawlers. Check your robots.txt file. GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot and Google-Extended should not be disallowed unless you mean it.
• Get indexed by Bing as well as Google. Several AI tools lean on Bing’s index. Submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console.
• Keep the words in the page. Text that only appears after scripts run, inside images or in PDFs is easy for crawlers to miss.

3. Be the same business everywhere

AI tools cross-check what different sources say. If your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook page and directory listings disagree on your name, phone number, hours or what you do, you look less certain, and less certain businesses get left out. Pick one name and one short description, and use them everywhere. If another company shares your name, say clearly on your About page who you are and where you are based.

4. Finish your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile feeds Google Maps, the map pack and Google’s AI answers directly. Choose accurate categories, describe every service, list your service areas and hours, add a booking link and real photos, and post updates. An incomplete profile is one of the most common reasons a good local business is missing from AI answers.

5. Collect genuine reviews, steadily

Reviews are one of the clearest signals of trust, and AI tools often summarise what reviewers say. Ask every happy customer, with a direct review link, soon after the job. A steady flow of recent reviews that mention the specific service (“fixed our furnace the same day”) is worth more than a burst of five-word ones. Reply to every review. Never buy reviews or ask family to post them; platforms remove them, and they can put your profile at risk.

6. Answer questions directly on your pages

Give each service its own page. Near the top, answer the obvious questions in one or two plain sentences: what it is, who it is for, where you do it, how long it takes, what happens next. Add a short FAQ built from questions customers actually ask on the phone, with FAQ structured data. AI tools quote pages that answer cleanly, and skip ones that make them dig.

7. Add structured data

Structured data (schema markup) is code that states facts in a format machines read reliably: your business name, type, address, phone, service area, services, social profiles and FAQs. It does not guarantee anything, but it removes guesswork about who you are and what you do.

8. Get mentioned on the sites AI cites

Go back to the list from step 1. The directories, “best of” lists and local sites that AI tools cite for your kind of business are where you want to be listed, accurately. Local news, suppliers, trade associations and community groups that mention you by name all help as well.

9. Check again every month

Ask the same questions of the same tools each month and record the answers. Tools that search the web live can pick up changes within weeks; the knowledge built into a model changes more slowly. What gets measured gets fixed.

What does not work

• Hidden text or keyword stuffing. Search engines penalise it, and AI tools read pages much the way search engines do.
• Fake or family reviews. They get removed and can put your profile at risk.
• Hundreds of near-identical “city” pages. Thin pages are ignored, or treated as spam.
• Anyone promising you will be “guaranteed in ChatGPT”. Nobody controls what an AI tool says.

Want it done for you?

AdVelocity is a digital marketing agency in Ottawa. We do this work for local businesses as part of SEO and GEO and AEO, and we check the main AI tools each month to see whether it is working. A free strategy call is the easiest way to find out what AI says about your business today.