How to Get Your Local Business Recommended by ChatGPT
More customers now ask an AI assistant which local business to use. Nobody can place you in those answers. But you can build the evidence they rely on.
Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity to recommend a dentist or a roofer in your city and you'll get a short list of names. Those names aren't paid placements. When an assistant searches the web, it builds its answer from what it finds: reviews, directory listings, local news and 'best of' articles, and businesses' own websites.
What you can't do
You can't buy a spot in an AI answer, and no agency can put you there directly. Be wary of anyone promising it. What you can do is make sure there's clear, consistent and credible information about your business wherever an assistant is likely to look.
What helps
- Consistent listings. Assistants cross-check sources; matching name, address and phone make you easier to trust.
- Recent, detailed reviews. Reviews that mention specific services and places give an assistant something concrete to cite.
- A website that states the obvious. What you do, where, for whom, your hours and how to contact you, in plain text, not only images.
- Structured data. LocalBusiness markup gives machines your details directly.
- Third-party mentions. Local directories, associations, suppliers and community sites that mention you by name.
- Pages that answer real questions. The questions customers ask you on the phone are the questions they ask assistants.
How to measure it
Pick the questions your customers actually ask ('best family dentist in Laval', 'emergency plumber open now Surrey') and check regularly whether you're named, and why or why not. One check tells you little; a weekly trend tells you whether the work is paying off.
Hespor runs these checks every week for your trade and city, in English or French, and shows the reasoning behind each result.
See AI search optimization →