Ready to grow?Short answer: You get AI to recommend your business by being the well-documented, well-reviewed, consistent answer across the open web, not by paying. Assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity read your Google Business Profile, your reviews, directories, and what trusted sites say about you, then name a few businesses. Earn those signals and you get named.
A couple in Chicago wanted a wedding photographer. Instead of Google, they opened ChatGPT and asked for the best in the city. It named a few studios. One was Jeremy Glickstein. They inquired, wrote "chatGPT :)" as how they found him, and later signed a $6,500 booking. When Glickstein described what happened, he put it plainly: couples are already asking ChatGPT and Perplexity who to hire, and the assistant does not hand back 50 links. It recommends a few businesses by name. (That account comes from a press release for his consulting service, so treat it as a real-world example, not an endorsement.)
That is the whole game now. Not "rank on page one" but "be one of the three names the assistant says out loud." This post is the checklist for getting there, written for the owner, not the marketer.
Why "who should I hire?" is now an AI question
People are not just Googling anymore. According to BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 45% of consumers used an AI tool like ChatGPT, Google's AI, or Copilot for local business recommendations in the past year. The year before, that number was 6%. AI is now the third most-used source for finding a local business, behind only Google and Facebook, and ahead of Yelp and TripAdvisor.
The scale underneath that is large. Google reported on its 2025 earnings call that AI Overviews, the AI answers at the top of search, reached 2 billion monthly users, and that its AI Mode had crossed 100 million monthly users in the US and India alone. Google also said AI Overviews were driving more than 10% additional searches for the query types that trigger them. AI answers are not shrinking search. They are pulling more questions into it.
So a real customer, right now, is asking an assistant "who should I hire for X near me," and getting a short list of names. Your job is to be on that list. Here is how, in the order that moves the needle.
1. You cannot pay to be the recommendation, so stop looking for the ad slot
Start here because it saves you money. There is no "sponsored recommendation" you can buy your way into.
Yes, ads exist on assistants now. OpenAI began testing ads inside ChatGPT on February 9, 2026, for US users on the Free and Go tiers. But OpenAI states it directly: "Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you," and when an ad shows, it is "clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from the organic answer." The paid ChatGPT tiers show no ads at all. Perplexity went further and removed advertising entirely in February 2026 to protect user trust.
Read that again, because it is the whole strategy. The recommendation itself, the part where the assistant names a business as the answer, is earned, not bought. You get named the same way Glickstein did: by being the most legible, best-documented answer to the question. Everything below is how you build that.
2. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile
This is the base layer, especially for Gemini and Google's AI, which read straight from Google's index.
An assistant asked for the best bakery in Portland does not invent an answer. It pulls from real-time web data and local signals, and your Google Business Profile is the richest single source of those signals: your name, address, hours, category, photos, services, and reviews in one structured place. If it is unclaimed, half-filled, or wrong, you are handing the assistant a reason to skip you.
Claim it. Fill every field. Pick the exact right category. Add photos and a real description of what you do. If you want the step-by-step, our guide to optimizing your Google Business Profile walks through each field. A dentist with a complete profile, current hours, and 80 photos looks like a real, verifiable business to an assistant. An empty profile looks like a maybe.
3. Earn reviews on more than one platform
Reviews do two jobs now. They tell the assistant you are trusted, and they give the customer something to check after the AI names you.
That second job matters more than most owners realize. BrightLocal found that 88% of AI users fact-check the recommendations they get, verifying sources or reading reviews before they act. The assistant naming you is not the finish line. It is the introduction. If the customer then finds six reviews at 4.1 stars, the introduction goes nowhere.
So get reviewed, and not only inside Google. Assistants read the open web, and much of what they can quote sits outside Google's walled garden: your Yelp page, industry review sites, Facebook, Trustpilot, wherever your trade gets rated. A plumber with strong reviews on Google, Yelp, and a trade directory gives an assistant three trusted places that agree. That agreement is exactly what a model looks for. Reviews genuinely help here, and if you want the mechanics, we cover how reviews feed search and AI results separately.
4. Get listed in the directories and "best of" lists AI actually cites
When an assistant answers "best X in [city]," it often leans on pages that already did the ranking work: industry directories, local "best of" roundups, chamber listings, and community threads.
You want to be in those. Find the directories that matter for your trade, the ones a real customer would trust, and get listed with accurate details. Pitch the local "best plumbers in Leeds" roundup. Assistants also frequently cite forum and community discussion like Reddit and niche groups, so being genuinely present and well-regarded in those spaces helps too. Getting your details consistent across all of these is its own task, and our guide to building local citations covers where to list and how to keep them clean.
The pattern to notice: an assistant trusts you more when several independent sources say the same thing about you. One listing is a data point. Ten consistent listings are a fact.
5. Publish content that answers the exact questions customers ask
An assistant can only quote you if you have said something worth quoting.
Write the answers your customers actually search for, in plain words. A wedding photographer who publishes a clear page on "how much does a Chicago wedding photographer cost" and "what happens if it rains on my wedding day" has given the assistant clean, liftable answers with a name attached. A photographer with a gallery and nothing else has given it nothing to say.
This is not blogging for the sake of it. It is answering the real question, once, clearly, on a page the assistant can read. The pages that get quoted lead with the answer and then explain, which is also how you would want a smart friend to talk. When the model needs a source for "who does X and how," you want that source to be you.
6. Get mentioned on trusted sites, with your name and details consistent everywhere
Assistants weigh what other people say about you more than what you say about yourself. That means mentions: local press, a partner's website, a supplier's "where to find us," a niche community that vouches for you.
Two things earn those. Do work worth talking about, and make it easy to talk about you correctly. That second part is where owners quietly lose. If your business is "Rosa's Bakery" on Google, "Rosa's Bakery LLC" on Yelp, and "Rosas Bakery" on Facebook, with three different phone numbers, you have handed the assistant a reason to doubt all three. Keep your name, address, and phone identical everywhere. Consistency is not busywork. It is how a model decides you are one real business and not three sketchy ones.
Having done this work for owner-run businesses, the pattern is almost boringly reliable: the ones that get named are rarely the flashiest. They are the ones whose details line up in every place a model checks, so the assistant never has to guess whether they are legitimate. The plain, consistent footprint wins over the loud, inconsistent one.
7. Test it across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity
You cannot improve what you never check. Once the six steps above are in motion, ask the assistants the questions your customers ask and see whether your name comes up.
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity the same "best X in my city" and "who should I hire for Y" prompts a customer would use. Note who gets named, and where you are missing. Do not over-index on a single result, because answers vary run to run. We built a full walk-through for this so you are not guessing at the method: our guide to checking whether ChatGPT recommends your business covers the prompts to run and how to read what you get back. If you want the deeper picture of what the model is weighing when it chooses, how ChatGPT decides which businesses to recommend breaks down the signals.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay ChatGPT or Google to recommend my business?
No. You can buy labeled ads, but not the organic recommendation. OpenAI says its ChatGPT ads are clearly marked as sponsored and do not influence the answers the assistant gives, and Perplexity removed ads entirely in 2026. The business the assistant names is the one with the best real-world signals, not the biggest budget.
How long does it take to get an AI to recommend my business?
There is no fixed timeline, because assistants pull from live web data and your existing footprint. If your Google Business Profile is already claimed and you have solid reviews, improvements can surface fairly quickly. If you are starting from a thin or inconsistent presence, expect it to track how fast you build reviews, listings, and mentions, the same signals that move traditional local search.
Which AI assistant matters most for local recommendations?
All of them, but for different reasons. Gemini and Google's AI Overviews read Google's index closely, so your Google Business Profile weighs heavily there. ChatGPT and Perplexity search the wider web, so reviews, directories, and third-party mentions matter more. Since BrightLocal found 45% of consumers now use some AI tool for local recommendations, the safe move is to cover the signals all of them share.
Do I still need regular SEO if I want AI recommendations?
Yes, and it is mostly the same work. Assistants lean on traditional local signals: an accurate profile, reviews, consistent listings, and content that answers real questions. Strong local SEO and being AI-recommendable are not two projects. They are one, and the AI layer just raises the reward for doing it well.
The name in the answer
The couple who booked Glickstein never saw a ranking, an ad, or a page of blue links. They saw one name, spoken by an assistant they trusted, and they wrote it down. You cannot buy that spot. You earn it by being the business whose profile is complete, whose reviews check out, and whose details say the same thing everywhere a model looks. Getting all of that consistent across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google, and Perplexity is exactly the grind Fonzy runs for you on autopilot, so the next time someone asks an assistant who to hire, the name it says is yours.
Sources
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026: 45% of consumers used AI for local business recommendations, up from 6%, and 88% fact-check AI picks
- OpenAI, "Testing ads in ChatGPT": ads are labeled, separated, and do not influence the organic answer
- Tom's Guide: Perplexity removed advertising in 2026 to protect user trust
- TechCrunch (Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings): AI Overviews reached 2 billion monthly users and drove 10%+ more searches
- OpenPR: Chicago photographer Jeremy Glickstein booked a $6,500 wedding sourced from a ChatGPT recommendation
