Do people really use ChatGPT to find local businesses?
More and more. In BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey, 45% of people said they'd used ChatGPT or another AI tool for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before. Google is still the most common place to start.
Where does ChatGPT get information about local businesses?
Mostly from the open web. ChatGPT searches, reads the pages it finds, and pulls from listings and review sites. It doesn't read your Google Business Profile the way Google Maps does, so a strong Google profile doesn't cover you on its own.
Sources that tend to show up: your own website, Bing Places, Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, local news and “best of” lists, and directories for your trade.
Can AI tools read my website?
Check two things: whether your site lets in the bots AI tools send to read websites (called crawlers), and whether your words are in the page itself.
- Bot access. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt, a short file that tells bots which pages they can read. OpenAI says sites that want to appear in ChatGPT search should allow its search bot,
OAI-SearchBot. Perplexity's isPerplexityBot. Some hosting and security settings block AI bots, so check instead of assuming. - Training is a separate switch. Blocking
GPTBot, the bot OpenAI uses to collect pages for training its AI, doesn't keep you out of ChatGPT search. OpenAI treats the two separately. - Words the bots can see. Some site builders load your text after the page opens, and some AI bots don't wait for it. Vercel, a web hosting company, found that OpenAI's and Anthropic's bots skip that step. Quick test: open your site on a computer, press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac), and search for your phone number. If it isn't there, those bots may not see it either. The same goes for details that only appear in images.
What should my website say?
Answer the questions customers actually ask, in their words, with the answer in the first sentence.
- What you do, service by service, not just a slogan
- Where you work: the towns or neighborhoods you cover
- Prices, or at least a starting price
- Hours, phone number, and how to book
- Short FAQs like “Do you do same-day repairs?” with direct answers
Ask whoever built your site to add LocalBusiness schema too. It's hidden code that labels your name, address, phone, and hours so Google and AI tools don't have to guess.
Does it matter where else I'm listed?
Yes. When your name, phone number, and hours match on Google, Bing Places, Yelp, and your own site, there's less for an AI tool to get wrong.
Claim your Bing Places listing if you haven't. It's free, and you can import your Google profile to set it up. Then ask for reviews in more than one place, since AI answers often sum up what reviewers say.
Can anyone guarantee ChatGPT will recommend me?
No. AI answers change from one ask to the next and from one person to another. Be wary of anyone who promises you a top spot.