How to get your business found in ChatGPT and Google's AI answers

What changed

A few years ago, someone looking for a plumber typed "plumber near me" into Google and got ten blue links. Now they often ask a question instead, and something answers. Google puts an AI summary at the top of the page. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity answer in full sentences and name two or three businesses. If your business is one of the names, you get the call. If it is not, the customer never sees you.

The good news is that these tools do not have a secret list. They read the web, mostly the same pages Google already reads, plus reviews and directory listings, and they pick the businesses that look real, current and easy to describe. Google says as much in its own guidance: there is nothing special to do for its AI features beyond the basics it has always asked for. That means the fixes are things you can do yourself, in an afternoon, for free.

How AI answers pick a business

Understanding this makes every step below obvious. When someone asks "who does emergency boiler repairs in Leeds", the tool looks for pages that clearly say three things: what the business does, where it does it, and why anyone should trust it. Then it prefers pages that are recent, consistent with what other sites say, and written in plain language it can quote.

So a business wins when its name, service and town appear together, in words, in several places that agree with each other. A business loses when its website says one thing, its Google listing says another, and both were last touched in 2021.

Step by step

Step 1: fix your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile is the listing that shows on Maps and on the right of a Google search. It is the most important page about your business that you do not own, and AI tools lean on it heavily for local questions.

Open it at google.com/business and fill in every field. Not most of them. Every one. Your exact services, your opening hours including bank holidays, your service area, your phone number, your website, photos from the last six months, and a description in plain words that says what you do and where. Answer the questions in the Q&A section yourself. Then add one photo or post a month so it never looks abandoned.

Time: one hour. Cost: nothing.

Step 2: write pages that answer real questions

Make a list of the ten questions customers ask you most. "How much does a boiler service cost?" "Do you do weddings?" "Can you come on a Saturday?" Each one becomes a short page on your website with the question as the title and the answer in the first two sentences. Then the detail: prices or ranges, how long it takes, what is included, how to book.

This is exactly the kind of page an AI tool loves to quote, because it can lift a clear answer and name you as the source. Write them the way you would say them out loud to a customer at the door. No jargon, no waffle before the answer.

If you have no website or cannot edit it, a Google Business Profile post and a pinned social media post per question is the next best thing. Time: an hour per page. Cost: nothing.

Step 3: collect reviews and get named elsewhere

AI tools trust a business more when other sites talk about it. The cheapest way to make that happen is reviews. After every job, send the customer your Google review link with one sentence asking for a few words. Reply to every review, good or bad, in a friendly line. Five recent reviews beat fifty old ones.

Then get your name, service and town onto other pages: the free trade directories for your industry, your local chamber of commerce, the community Facebook group, a local news site if you sponsor the under-11s. Every one is another place saying the same thing about you, which is what "consistent" means to a machine.

Time: ten minutes per job for reviews, an afternoon once for directories. Cost: nothing.

Step 4: make sure you are not blocking the robots

Every website has a small file called robots.txt that tells search engines and AI crawlers what they may read. Some website templates and security plugins block AI crawlers by default, which means ChatGPT and friends cannot see your site at all. OpenAI publishes the names of its crawlers, and Google's is the ordinary Googlebot plus one called Google-Extended.

Type your web address followed by /robots.txt into a browser. If you see lines like "Disallow: /" under a user agent such as GPTBot or ClaudeBot, ask whoever built your site to remove them, or turn off the setting in your website tool. While you are there, sign up for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, both free, and submit your site. They will tell you if anything else is stopping you being read.

Time: fifteen minutes. Cost: nothing.

Step 5: ask the tools yourself

Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity the questions from step 2 as a customer would, with your town in them. Note who gets named. If it is not you, look at who it is and what their pages say that yours do not. Then fix that. This ten-minute habit is worth more than any paid report.

What it costs and how long it takes

Everything in this guide is free. The first pass takes one afternoon for steps 1, 2 and 4, then an hour a week for a month to write the question pages and chase reviews. After that, ten minutes a month to check, and a photo or post now and then so nothing looks abandoned.

If you would rather not, keeping a business findable in search and in AI answers is one of the four jobs Humanleap does for small businesses, with a real person checking the work. See what we run.

Mistakes to avoid

A half-filled Google profile. Empty fields read as "not sure this place is still open". Fill every one.

Pages that talk about you instead of answering. "We are a family business with 20 years of experience" is not an answer to "how much does it cost". Answer first, then the story.

Inconsistent details. A different phone number on your website, your listing and a directory looks like three different businesses. Pick one of each and fix the rest.

Blocking the crawlers by accident. Check robots.txt once. It takes a minute.

Checking every day. Changes take days to weeks to show. Look once a month and change one thing at a time so you know what worked.

Start with step 1. It is the one page you are certain the machines are reading, and an hour on it pays back for years.