How do I make my business show up when people ask ChatGPT for a recommendation?

Topical relevance on your own website had the strongest correlation with being cited in a study of 104,855 local AI citations (Search Atlas). Your own website is also the largest single citation source in BrightLocal's study, at 42% of citations (BrightLocal).

Things that matter less than people think: schema markup alone showed a near-zero correlation (Search Atlas), and llms.txt files are almost never fetched: 97% got zero requests (Ahrefs).

The fixes that matter most

1. A page for every service you sell
   Plain-language pages that answer the questions customers actually ask. Topical relevance on your own site is the strongest measured correlate of being cited. Source
2. Be listed where each assistant looks
   ChatGPT leans on directories such as BBB, Expertise.com and Angi plus Yelp data; Claude cites Yelp heavily; Google's AI leans on your Business Profile. Source
3. Show up on 'best of' lists
   Expert-curated best-of lists ranked as the #1 AI visibility factor in Whitespark's 2026 expert survey. Source
4. A complete Google Business Profile with steady reviews
   Profile completeness, review count and owner replies all correlate positively with being cited. Source
5. Don't block AI crawlers
   If robots.txt blocks OpenAI, Anthropic or Perplexity's search bots, they can't read you. It's a one-line fix. Source

Related questions

• How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?
• What is an AI visibility audit for a local business?
• Who can help my plumbing company show up in AI answers?
• What are the best AI visibility tools for small businesses?
• Is there a service that checks if AI assistants recommend my business?

Updated 2026-10-17. Figures link to their original sources.