Getting named in AI recommendations
Practical answers for local business owners on how AI assistants decide who to recommend, and how to become one of the names they repeat. This is the work we do; here it is in plain language.
How do I show up in ChatGPT recommendations as a local business?
Get the signals AI assistants read into agreement. When someone asks ChatGPT for the best business in your trade and city, it assembles an answer from a handful of sources: structured data (schema) on your website, your Google Business Profile, consistent name/address/phone across the directories it trusts, and pages that directly answer customer questions. The businesses that show up have those lined up; most don't, which is why the same two or three names repeat. Concretely: add LocalBusiness schema to your site, fully complete and verify your Google Business Profile, fix name-address-phone inconsistencies across major directories, and publish a plain-language page for each core service. Then track whether you're actually being named, because these answers change over time.
What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), and how is it different from SEO?
AEO is optimizing to be named inside an AI assistant's answer; SEO is optimizing to rank on a results page. The difference matters because AI answers usually name only two or three businesses instead of showing ten links, so ranking well and being cited are now separate outcomes. A page ranking #4 in Google can be the exact source ChatGPT quotes, and a #1 ranking can be skipped entirely. AEO leans harder on structured data, entity consistency, and content written to answer a specific question in a way a model can lift and attribute. Good SEO helps; it isn't sufficient on its own.
Why isn't my business showing up when people ask AI for recommendations?
Almost always because the signals AI engines read are missing or inconsistent, not because your business isn't good. Common causes: no structured data on your site, an incomplete or unverified Google Business Profile, your name/address/phone listed differently across directories, and no pages that plainly answer the questions customers ask. AI assistants default to the businesses whose information is easiest to verify and quote, and they repeat those names. The fix is mechanical: make your business the easiest one for the model to confirm and cite. Start by asking an AI assistant for the best business in your trade and city, and note whether you're named at all; that's your baseline.
Which AI assistants recommend local businesses, and how do I get cited in them?
The four that matter most for local recommendations are ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews increasingly answer local searches inline. To get cited: publish LocalBusiness schema so engines can read your details unambiguously, keep your Google Business Profile complete and your name-address-phone identical everywhere, earn mentions on the directories and local sources these engines already trust, and answer real customer questions on your own pages. Because each assistant weights those signals differently and answers shift run to run, the only way to know it's working is to track your citation rate across engines over time, not check once.
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