TL;DR

 

You can’t force ChatGPT or another AI system to recommend your business. But you can improve the signals that help AI understand who you are, what you offer, who you serve, where you operate, and why your business is relevant. Start with clear website content, consistent business information, useful answers to customer questions, credible third-party mentions, genuine reviews, structured data, and regular testing of how AI represents your business.

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If someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or another AI tool to recommend a business like yours, how do you make sure your company gets considered?

You can’t submit your business to ChatGPT and ask it to recommend you. There is no switch you can turn on that guarantees an AI recommendation.

What you can do is make your business easier to understand, easier to verify, and more relevant to the searches your potential customers are making. That means having clear information on your website, keeping your business details consistent, answering real customer questions, building credible third-party mentions and reviews, demonstrating expertise, and testing what AI systems currently say about your business.

And if your real question is, “How can I get ChatGPT to recommend my business?“, the same principle applies.

You don’t optimize for a guaranteed recommendation. You build the signals that can make your business a relevant and credible answer.

 

How Can I Get ChatGPT to Recommend My Business?

 

The short answer is: you can’t directly control whether ChatGPT recommends your business.

But you can improve the information available about your business and how clearly that information connects your company with the products, services, problems, audiences, and locations you want to be known for.

This matters because ChatGPT can use web search to retrieve current information when a question calls for it. When search is used, ChatGPT can return links to sources that support its response.

So if someone asks:

“What are the best laser hair removal clinics in Limoges?”

or:

“Which SEO agencies help small businesses in Nigeria?”

the answer isn’t necessarily based on one ranking factor.

The system needs enough information to understand the businesses it is considering and determine which information is relevant to the user’s request.

That means your job isn’t to convince ChatGPT that you’re “the best.”

It’s to make it clear:

• What your business does
• Who you serve
• Where you operate
• What problems you solve
• What products or services you offer
• What experience or expertise you have
• What other credible sources say about your business

That’s a much more realistic way to think about AI recommendation visibility. [Download Florens Kairos Digitals AI Visibility Health Checklist ]

Can You Actually Control Which Business ChatGPT Recommends?

 

No. And that’s an important distinction.

You control your own website, business information, content, customer experience, reviews you receive, and the profiles you manage.

You can influence the amount and quality of information available about your business across the web.

But you don’t control:

• The exact question someone asks ChatGPT
• Whether ChatGPT searches the web for that question
• Which businesses appear in the available sources
• Which sources the system uses
• How competitors are represented
• How an AI system interprets the available information
• Whether a particular response changes tomorrow

OpenAI itself notes that ChatGPT search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect.

So be careful with anyone promising that a particular schema implementation, number of backlinks, review count, or AI SEO tactic will make ChatGPT recommend your company.

There are too many variables involved.

A better goal is to increase the likelihood that your business is understood and considered when it is relevant to the user’s request.

 

Read: Digital Marketing in 2026: How Brands Win Visibility When Search, Social, and AI Collide

How Does AI Decide Which Businesses to Recommend?

 

There isn’t a public, universal checklist that tells us exactly how every AI system selects a business recommendation.

Different systems can use different technologies, sources, and retrieval processes.

But from an optimization perspective, there are several practical questions worth asking.

 

Can AI identify your business?

 

Is your business clearly established online?

Can a system distinguish your company from another business with a similar name?

Does your website clearly identify your organization, location, services, people, and other important entities?

 

Does AI understand what you actually do?

 

If someone asked an AI system what your business does, would the answer be obvious?

Or would it have to piece together information from several pages?

 

Does AI understand who you serve?

 

For example, are you:

• A B2B agency for SMEs?
• A cosmetic clinic serving a particular region?
• A law firm serving businesses?
• An e-commerce store selling skincare products?

The more clearly your business is positioned, the easier it is for systems to connect it with relevant questions.

Can the information be verified?

 

Your website is important, but it isn’t the only place where your business can be represented.

Reviews, directories, publications, associations, interviews, industry websites and other credible sources can provide additional information.

Is your business relevant to the specific request?

 

This is easy to overlook.

A business can be highly credible but still be the wrong recommendation for a particular query.

A clinic in Limoges may be a relevant answer for someone looking for a treatment in Limoges but a much less relevant answer for someone specifically looking for a clinic located in another city with many comparable providers.

 

Is there enough supporting evidence?

 

This is where expertise, reputation, reviews, useful content and third-party mentions become important.

None of these guarantees a recommendation.

Together, however, they can help create a clearer picture of what your business is and where it fits.

 

8 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Recommended by AI

 

1. Make It Obvious What Your Business Does

 

Start with the basics.

Your homepage and important service pages should make it easy to answer:

What do you do?

Who do you help?

Where do you operate?

What problems do you solve?

What makes you different?

A visitor shouldn’t need to read five pages to figure this out.

The same principle matters when you’re creating content that needs to be understood by machines.

For example, a vague statement like:

“We deliver innovative digital solutions for modern businesses.”

doesn’t tell a potential customer very much.

Compare that with:

“We help small and medium-sized businesses improve their visibility through SEO, paid advertising, email marketing and conversion-focused websites.”

The second statement gives much more useful information.

This doesn’t mean stuffing every page with keywords. It means being clear.

Think of your website as a business brief. Someone unfamiliar with your company should be able to understand what you do, who you serve, where you operate and what you are known for without having to guess.

 

2. Build Clear Pages Around Your Products and Services

 

Your important products and services should have enough information for someone to understand what they are and whether they are relevant to them.

A service page might answer:

 

• What is the service?
• Who is it for?
• What problem does it solve?
• What does the process involve?
• Where is it available?
• What does it include?
• What questions do customers usually ask?
• What evidence demonstrates your experience?

This is useful for people first.

It also creates clearer information for search engines and AI systems to work with.

And this is where traditional SEO still matters.

Google’s current guidance for AI Overviews and AI Mode says the same foundational SEO practices remain relevant. There are no additional technical requirements specifically for appearing in those AI features.

In other words, don’t throw away your SEO foundation because AI search exists.

Build on it.

 

3. Answer the Questions Your Customers Actually Ask

 

This is one of the simplest changes you can make.

Listen to the questions customers ask your sales team, customer service team, reception desk, or business owner.

Then turn those questions into useful content.

For example:

• How much does this service cost?
• How long does it take?
• Is this service right for me?
• What happens during the process?
• What should I do before the appointment?
• What is the difference between X and Y?
• Which option should I choose?
• Do you serve my area?

You can also use search data to find the questions people are already asking.

This is where SEO and AEO work together.

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is about answering questions clearly and directly. Generative engine optimization (GEO) builds on that by looking at the questions people actually ask AI tools and making sure your content addresses those questions clearly, starting with the answer.

For example, imagine you run a local SEO agency. You publish an article answering the question, “How much does local SEO cost for a small business?” An AEO approach would make sure the article answers that question directly near the beginning, before going into more detail about pricing.

With a GEO approach, you might first ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity questions related to local SEO and discover that people ask things like:

• “How much does local SEO cost for a small business?”
• “What does a local SEO agency do?”
• “Is local SEO worth it for a small business?”
• “How long does local SEO take to work?”
• “How do I choose a local SEO agency?”

Now you know that people are looking for information about several parts of the same subject: local SEO services for small businesses. You can create or structure your content around those specific questions, answer each one clearly, and show how they relate to the same subject.

That is the practical difference: AEO focuses on giving a clear answer to a question. GEO looks at the questions people are asking AI about a subject, then uses those questions to guide the information you provide and how you structure it.

A simple structure works well:

Question → direct answer → explanation → examples → supporting evidence

Don’t make the reader work for the answer.

 

4. Keep Your Business Information Consistent Everywhere

 

Imagine your website says your business is called:

ABC Marketing Ltd.

 

Your Google Business Profile says:

ABC Marketing

 

LinkedIn says:

ABC Digital Marketing

 

A directory lists an old phone number.

 

Another profile has an old address.

None of these differences automatically prevents an AI recommendation. But inconsistent information makes your online presence harder to interpret and maintain accurately.

For local businesses, this includes your:

• Business name
• Address
• Phone number
• Website
• Opening hours
• Services
• Locations

For businesses that don’t depend on a physical location, consistency still matters across company descriptions, services, leadership information, and other important business details.

Forbes specifically recommends auditing business information across platforms and keeping core details consistent.

It’s not exciting work.

It is still worth doing.

 

5. Build Evidence Beyond Your Own Website

 

This is one of the biggest areas where businesses often think about AI visibility too narrowly.

Your website is where you describe your business.

But what exists elsewhere can provide additional context.

Depending on your industry, relevant sources might include:

• Industry publications
• Local publications
• Professional associations
• Relevant directories
• Interviews
• Podcasts
• Original research
• Case studies
• Customer reviews
• Industry events
• Relevant third-party websites

This doesn’t mean you need to chase hundreds of mentions.

In fact, I would avoid that mindset.

A relevant mention on a respected industry website can be more meaningful than dozens of low-quality listings that nobody uses.

This is also where traditional off-page SEO and digital PR can overlap with AI visibility.

The goal isn’t simply to have your brand name appear somewhere.

The stronger opportunity is to have your business meaningfully associated with the things you want to be known for.

For example:

FKD → SEO for SMEs

is more useful context than:

FKD → random website mention

The first tells the reader and potentially other systems something about the relationship between the business and its expertise.

 

 

6. Build and Maintain a Strong Review Reputation

 

Reviews give potential customers another source of information about your business.

They can describe:

• Customer experience
• Service quality
• Specific products or treatments
• Staff interactions
• Locations
• Results
• Common strengths or problems

Forbes argues that both review volume and recency matter and recommends maintaining a steady flow of genuine reviews rather than relying on occasional bursts.

I’d add an important qualification:

Don’t treat reviews as an AI ranking trick.

The goal should be to deliver an experience worth reviewing and make it easy for genuine customers to share their experience.

And don’t manufacture reviews.

A fake reputation isn’t a sustainable SEO or AI visibility strategy.

 

 

7. Make Your Business Easy for Machines to Understand

 

This is where structured data becomes useful.

Schema markup can describe entities and relationships on your website in a machine-readable format.

Depending on the business and page, that could include:

• Organization
• LocalBusiness
• Person
• Service
• Article
• Product
• Review-related information where appropriate

Structured data can help machines interpret information on a page. But it is important not to turn schema into an AI recommendation hack.

Adding schema doesn’t mean:

“ChatGPT will now recommend my business.”

It doesn’t work that way.

Think of structured data as one part of making your website easier for machines to interpret.

Your content, business information, authority and relevance still matter.

Google’s guidance similarly says there are no special technical requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being eligible for normal Search, while foundational SEO practices remain important.

 

8. Test What ChatGPT Says About Your Business

 

This may be the most useful step in the entire process.

Don’t assume your AI visibility is good because you’ve implemented schema or published 100 blog posts.

Ask.

Try prompts such as:

Brand understanding

What do you know about [Business Name]?

 

Local recommendation

What are the best [service] providers in [location]?

 

Problem-based recommendation

Which businesses can help [type of customer] solve [specific problem]?

 

Commercial recommendation

Which [type of business] would you recommend for someone looking for [service] in [location]?

 

Comparison

Compare [Your Business] with [Competitor].

 

Then record what happens.

 

What To Check	What You’re Looking For
Is your business mentioned?	Basic visibility
Which competitors appear?	Competitive landscape
What does AI say about you?	How your business is understood
Which sources are cited?	Supporting information
Is anything inaccurate?	Information gaps
What information is missing?	Content or entity gaps
What makes competitors stand out?	Potential authority or relevance gaps
Does the answer change by location?	Geographic relevance

Don’t run the test once and declare victory.

AI-generated answers can change. ChatGPT’s search results can also be incomplete or incorrect, so the sources behind an answer should be reviewed rather than taken at face value.

The point is to establish a baseline.

Then improve what you can.

Then test again.

 

Read: The Ultimate GEO Guide 2025: How to Win in Generative Search

 

What If ChatGPT Recommends Your Competitors Instead?

 

This is where AI recommendation testing becomes particularly useful.

Suppose you ask:

“What are the best SEO agencies for small businesses in Toronto?”

Three competitors appear.

Your business doesn’t.

Don’t immediately conclude that you need “more AI SEO.”

Start asking better questions.

 

If ChatGPT doesn’t know your business

Look at:

• Business information
• Website clarity
• Service pages
• Business profiles
• Third-party mentions
• Entity information
• Technical accessibility

 

 

If ChatGPT knows your business but doesn’t recommend it

Look at:

• Relevance to the specific query
• Location
• Service fit
• Evidence of expertise
• Reviews
• Third-party authority
• Competitor visibility

If the same competitors appear repeatedly

 

Study them.

Ask:

“What sources did you use to recommend these businesses?”

Then investigate those sources.

What are the competitors being associated with?

Which publications mention them?

Which services?

Which locations?

Which customer problems?

Which evidence of expertise?

This doesn’t mean copying them.

It means understanding the information environment in which the recommendation is being made.

If ChatGPT gets your business wrong

 

Check your own information first.

Then check:

• Google Business Profile
• Business directories
• Social profiles
• Industry listings
• Old articles
• Third-party websites

You may discover that an old address, outdated service or incorrect description is still being published somewhere.

You can’t control every external source.

But you can correct the information you control and work to establish more accurate information elsewhere.

What We Learned From Getting a Local Business Recommended by AI

 

Our experience with a medical aesthetic clinic in Ontario gave us an interesting look at how traditional SEO and AI visibility can overlap.

We weren’t initially running an “AI recommendation campaign.”

The clinic was already undergoing traditional SEO work.

We had worked on its treatment pages, location pages, internal linking, Google Business Profile, site structure, schema and supporting content. We were also targeting specific treatment-and-location searches rather than relying on broad treatment terms.

Later, while checking local visibility, we noticed something unexpected.

When we searched ChatGPT for “laser hair removal in Limoges,” the clinic was recommended.

Limoges was the clinic’s primary location, so that result made sense.

But we wanted to see whether the visibility extended beyond the clinic’s physical location.

So we tested another local treatment query:

“sun damage treatment in Embrun.”

The clinic appeared alongside other businesses serving Embrun, even though the clinic itself was located in Limoges.

That was interesting because Embrun wasn’t an accidental location target.

We had deliberately created location relevance around several nearby areas the clinic wanted to serve, including Embrun, Russell, Casselman and Ottawa.

That experience reinforced something important for us:

A business can build relevance around the areas it serves without physically being located in every one of those places. But that doesn’t mean it will automatically become the preferred recommendation for every location-based search.

We saw that limitation when testing other locations with stronger local competition. There were many clinics offering similar services in those areas, and the client’s physical distance from those markets made the competitive situation different.

We also later noticed the clinic appearing in Google AI Overviews.

We didn’t record exactly when this began, so we wouldn’t claim that a specific optimization caused it.

What we did notice was that the clinic appeared for a range of longer, question-based searches, particularly informational and educational queries.

One thing we had been doing consistently was publishing blog content based on the actual questions people were searching for.

That gave us a useful lesson.

We didn’t need a completely separate AI content strategy to start seeing AI visibility.

The traditional SEO foundation was already there.

We were creating useful content, targeting real search questions and building topical relevance around the clinic’s treatments and locations.

That doesn’t prove that any one of those activities caused the AI visibility. We didn’t run a controlled experiment that could establish that.

But it did show us that the line between traditional SEO and AI visibility isn’t as clean as some discussions make it sound.

If we were starting the campaign today, we’d keep that foundation and put more emphasis on something we hadn’t fully explored at the time: off-page authority building.

That would include relevant digital PR, useful third-party mentions and guest contributions where they made strategic sense.

The point isn’t to collect mentions for the sake of collecting them.

It’s to strengthen the information and authority surrounding the business.

 

How to Build an AI Recommendation Strategy for Your Business

 

If you want to approach this systematically, start here.

 

Step 1: Find the searches that matter

 

Don’t begin with:

“How do I get AI to recommend me?”

Begin with:

“What would my potential customer ask if they were looking for a business like mine?”

Find the important:

• Service searches
• Product searches
• Local searches
• Problem-based searches
• Comparison searches
• Informational questions

This is also where traditional keyword research matters. The FKD SEO framework emphasizes search intent, traffic potential, business potential and analysis of the pages already ranking for a topic.

 

Step 2: Test those queries in ChatGPT

 

Run your real customer questions through ChatGPT.

Don’t only test your brand name.

Test the searches where you’d actually want to be discovered.

 

Step 3: Record who gets recommended

 

Create a simple spreadsheet.

Track:

• Query
• Location
• Date
• AI platform
• Businesses recommended
• Sources cited
• Your business mentioned?
• Notes

Step 4: Study the competitors that appear

 

Look for patterns.

What makes them relevant to the query?

What information exists about them?

Where are they mentioned?

What does their website communicate?

What do customers say?

Step 5: Audit your own business

 

Look for gaps in:

• Business information
• Services
• Locations
• Content
• Reviews
• Expertise
• Third-party mentions
• Structured data
• Internal linking
• Technical SEO

Step 6: Fix the biggest clarity gaps first

 

Don’t immediately launch a huge PR campaign if your homepage doesn’t clearly explain what you do.

Fix the foundation first.

Step 7: Build useful supporting evidence

 

Once the foundation is clear, strengthen the wider presence of the business through relevant content, reviews, industry mentions, digital PR and other appropriate authority-building activities.

Step 8: Test again

 

AI recommendation visibility isn’t something you check once.

Run the important queries again periodically.

You may find that the answer changes.

That’s not necessarily a failure. AI search systems and their underlying sources can change over time.

 

 

 

Does Traditional SEO Still Matter for AI Recommendations?

 

Yes.

In fact, I would be cautious about anyone presenting AI visibility as a replacement for SEO.

Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode continue to rely on the same foundational SEO practices used for Google Search. Pages still need to meet normal technical requirements and be eligible for Search.

And ChatGPT can search the web for current information and provide links to sources.

So your SEO foundation still matters.

Technical accessibility matters.

Useful content matters.

Search intent matters.

Topical relevance matters.

Internal linking matters.

Local relevance matters.

Authority matters.

The difference is that AI search can change how the information is presented to the user.

Instead of giving someone ten blue links and asking them to investigate each business, an AI system may summarize options and provide a smaller set of recommendations.

That creates another layer of visibility to think about.

 

How AI Recommendation Differs From Google Rankings

 

Traditional Search	AI Recommendation
Your page ranks for a query	Your business may be mentioned or recommended in an answer
Users often compare multiple results	AI may summarize several options or highlight particular businesses
Page relevance is central	Business and entity relevance can also matter
Rankings can be tracked through traditional SEO tools	AI visibility often requires prompt-based testing and additional monitoring
Search results are generally structured around pages	AI answers can combine information from multiple sources
Clicks and impressions are common visibility metrics	Mentions, citations and referrals can provide additional signals

This doesn’t mean Google rankings no longer matter.

It means being visible in search and being represented in an AI-generated answer are related but different outcomes.

 

How Do You Measure AI Recommendation Visibility?

Start simple.

You don’t need an elaborate dashboard on day one.

Track:

Mention Share

How often is your business mentioned when relevant queries are tested?

Recommendation Share

How often does your business appear among the businesses recommended for your target queries?

Citation Share

How often does your website or other important source get cited?

Entity Visibility

How accurately and consistently does AI understand your business?

AI Referral Visibility

If your analytics setup allows you to identify AI referrals, how much traffic is coming from AI platforms?

The important thing is consistency.

Run the same meaningful prompts over time.

Record the results.

Look for patterns rather than obsessing over one answer.

And remember that AI search results can change. OpenAI’s own guidance warns that search results and citations may sometimes be incomplete, outdated or incorrect.

 

How Long Does It Take to Get Recommended by AI?

 

There isn’t a reliable universal timeline.

It depends on the business, the existing information available about it, the competitiveness of the market, the query, the location, the platform, and the work being done to improve its online presence.

More importantly, don’t treat AI recommendation as a campaign with a guaranteed finish line.

The better approach is to establish a baseline, improve the areas you can influence, and test again.

 

Final Takeaway

 

So, how can you get ChatGPT to recommend your business?

You can’t guarantee that it will.

What you can do is make your business easier to understand, relevant to the searches your customers make, and supported by credible information.

Start with the basics:

• Make it obvious what your business does.
• Build clear product and service pages.
• Answer the questions customers actually ask.
• Keep important business information consistent.
• Demonstrate real expertise and experience.
• Build genuine reviews and third-party mentions.
• Use structured data where it makes sense.
• Test what ChatGPT and other AI systems say about your business.

Then look at the businesses that are being recommended.

Don’t just ask, “Why aren’t we there?”

Ask:

“What information is helping these businesses become relevant to this particular recommendation, and what are we missing?”

That’s a much more useful question.

Because AI recommendation isn’t about finding a secret button that makes ChatGPT choose your business.

It’s about building a business presence that is clear enough to understand, credible enough to verify, and relevant enough to recommend when the right customer is asking the right question.