How Do You Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and AI Search?

To get your business recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, make sure AI crawlers can read your website, publish pages that answer your customers' questions plainly in the first paragraph, describe your business with structured data, keep your name and details consistent everywhere, earn mentions on sites AI tools trust, and rank well in traditional search, because AI answers lean heavily on pages that already rank. Adding an llms.txt file that summarises your site is a small extra step that makes your content easier for AI systems to use.

How AI search finds and recommends businesses

AI assistants answer questions in two broad ways. Some answers come from what the model learned during training. Many answers, especially about businesses, products, prices and recent information, come from live retrieval. The assistant runs searches, reads a handful of pages and writes an answer, often with citations.

Google's AI Overviews work in a similar way, drawing on pages in Google's index. ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude and Microsoft Copilot use their own crawlers and search partners. In practice, this means three things decide whether you are mentioned. Can the AI find and read your pages? Do your pages clearly answer the question? And do other trusted sources agree that you are a good answer?

This discipline is sometimes called generative engine optimisation (GEO), answer engine optimisation (AEO) or AI SEO. The labels differ, but the work overlaps almost entirely with good SEO.

Step 1. Make sure AI crawlers can read your site

If AI crawlers are blocked, you cannot be cited. Check your robots.txt file for rules that block them. The main crawlers include these.

Some website platforms, security plugins and CDNs block these crawlers by default. Decide deliberately which you allow. If you want to be recommended by AI assistants, their search crawlers need access.

Also make sure your important content is in the HTML the server sends. Many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so text that only appears after scripts load can be invisible to them. Our free SEO checker tests whether AI crawlers are blocked, whether your content is readable without JavaScript and whether you have an llms.txt file.

Step 2. Answer questions plainly and early

AI systems extract passages that directly answer the question asked. Pages that bury the answer under introductions and marketing language are less useful to them.

• Use the question as a heading, such as "How much does a kitchen renovation cost in London?"
• Answer in the first one or two sentences under that heading, with specifics like numbers, ranges, steps or names.
• Expand afterwards with detail, examples and caveats.
• Add a short summary at the top of long pages, the way this article starts with "The short version".
• Include an FAQ section for the follow-up questions customers ask.

This is the same structure that wins featured snippets in Google, so it improves both kinds of visibility at once.

Step 3. Describe your business with structured data

Structured data is code that tells machines exactly what a page is about. For AI systems and Google, it removes ambiguity.

• Organization or LocalBusiness markup with your legal name, logo, address, phone, opening hours and links to your official profiles through sameAs.
• Product or Service markup describing what you sell.
• Article or BlogPosting markup with author, publish and update dates.
• FAQPage markup for question and answer sections.
• Review and AggregateRating markup where you display genuine reviews.

Consistent structured data helps AI tools connect your website, your social profiles and mentions of your name elsewhere into one clear picture of your business.

Step 4. Publish an llms.txt file

llms.txt is a proposed convention, introduced in 2024, for giving AI systems a concise, markdown summary of a website. It lives at yourdomain.com/llms.txt and typically includes a one-paragraph description of the business, key facts, and links to your most important pages with a short description of each. Some sites also publish llms-full.txt, containing the full text of their key content.

It is not an official standard, and AI providers do not all say how they use it. It is cheap to create, though, and it gives any system that reads it an accurate, up-to-date summary in your own words. You can see ours at proklisi.com/llms.txt. Keep it updated whenever your services, prices or key pages change.

Step 5. Be consistent everywhere

AI systems assemble answers from many sources. If your website says one thing, your Google Business Profile another and a directory a third, they may describe you inaccurately or not at all. Keep your business name, description, services, address, phone and prices consistent across your website, Google Business Profile, social profiles, directories and marketplaces. Update all of them when something changes.

Step 6. Earn mentions from trusted sources

When AI tools recommend businesses, they lean on what independent sources say. Reviews on Google and industry platforms, coverage in respected publications, listings in "best of" roundups, expert quotes, case studies on partner sites and active discussion in communities all shape the answer. This is classic authority building, and it matters even more for AI because assistants often summarise the consensus.

Step 7. Rank well in traditional search

AI Overviews draw on pages Google already trusts, and many AI assistants use web search results as their starting point. Pages that rank on the first page are far more likely to be read and cited than pages on page five. Everything in our guide on how to improve SEO therefore improves your AI visibility too.

Write passages AI tools want to quote

AI systems tend to lift self-contained passages that answer a question completely in a few sentences. Compare two ways of answering the same question.

The easy-to-quote version names the subject, gives specifics and can stand alone without the paragraphs around it. Write your key answers that way, especially the first paragraph under each heading and every FAQ answer. Include numbers, ranges, names and steps wherever you honestly can, and say when something depends on circumstances, with the factors that decide it.

How to check what AI says about you

Ask the assistants directly, the way customers would. Try "What are the best [your service] in [your city]?", "Who offers [your product] for [your audience]?", "What is [your brand] known for?" and "Compare [your brand] and [competitor]". Note whether you appear, what is said, which sources are cited and what is wrong. Repeat every month. The cited sources show you which pages and sites influence the answer, and the errors show you what to correct on your website and profiles.

What not to do

• Do not stuff pages with keywords or invented questions. AI systems value clear, credible answers, and spammy pages are filtered out by the same systems that filter them from search.
• Do not hide content behind scripts or logins if you want it cited.
• Do not publish inaccurate claims about yourself or competitors. AI tools cross-check sources, and contradictions reduce trust.
• Do not block AI crawlers by accident. Check security and CDN settings after changes.

Measuring AI visibility

Measurement is still young, so combine several signals.

Will AI search replace Google?

AI assistants are changing how people search, especially for research, comparisons and recommendations. Google remains the largest source of website visits for most businesses, and it now shows AI answers itself. The practical approach is to optimise once for both. Clear, fast, well structured, trustworthy pages that answer real questions perform well in Google and get cited by AI tools.

Written by the Proklisi editorial team

Proklisi builds websites and apps, runs SEO, ASO and social media, and creates SI influencers for brands. Everything here comes from work we do for clients every week. About us or talk to the team