How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini

A customer in Koramangala no longer only types "dentist near me" into Google. Some now open ChatGPT or Gemini and ask, "Which dental clinic in Koramangala is good for kids?" If you want to know how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini, the honest answer is this: neither OpenAI nor Google publishes a formula for which businesses their assistants recommend, but both document enough about where their answers come from that you can make your business easy to find, check and describe.

This guide covers what is officially documented, what is only observed by testers, and a practical checklist you can work through this month.

How ChatGPT and Gemini find local businesses

Start with what each company has actually said, because a lot of advice online mixes facts with guesses.

ChatGPT. OpenAI's crawler documentation says its OAI-SearchBot crawler "is for search", and that sites which block OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers", although they can still appear as navigational links. OpenAI does not publish a ranking formula for which local businesses ChatGPT names. Several SEO testers have reported that ChatGPT's local answers draw on web search results and business listing data, but those are observations, not documentation, and they disagree on the details.

Gemini. Google is more open about this. In its November 2025 post on Gemini in Google Maps in India, Google said you can ask Maps questions about a place and Gemini will answer by searching "reviews, photos, and place details, and the web". The same post says these features are grounded in Google's data on about 35 million places in India. Google's Grounding with Google Maps announcement describes connecting Gemini to data from more than 250 million places, including details like opening hours, ratings and user reviews.

Google AI Overviews. Google's Search Central page on AI features and your website says there are no extra requirements or special optimisations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. Its best practices include allowing crawling in robots.txt, keeping important content in text form and "checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date". We cover that feature in detail in our guide on how to appear in Google AI Overviews.

The common thread: these assistants describe your business using information that already exists about it online. Your job is to make that information complete, consistent and easy to read.

Step 1: Make your Google Business Profile complete and accurate

For Gemini and Google's AI features, your Google Business Profile is the most direct source you control. Google's help page on improving your local ranking says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, and that complete, accurate profiles are more likely to show in local results.

Work through this list:

1. Verify the profile. Google says verification makes your business more likely to appear in results.
2. Use your real-world name. Google's guidelines for representing your business say the name should match what you use on your signboard, website and stationery. Adding taglines or extra information to the name is not permitted, so "Smile Dental Clinic", not "Smile Dental Clinic Best Kids Dentist Koramangala".
3. Fill in categories, services and attributes. Gemini answers specific questions ("Does this clinic have parking?", "Is there wheelchair access?"). Attributes such as parking, accessibility and payment options give it a factual answer.
4. Keep regular and special hours current. Wrong hours on a festival day lead to a bad visit and often a bad review.
5. Write a clear description. Google allows up to 750 characters and asks you to focus on what you offer and what makes you different, not prices or promotions, and not to include URLs. Example: "Paediatric and family dental clinic in Koramangala 5th Block, open since 2014. Root canal, braces, aligners and child-friendly check-ups by two paediatric specialists."
6. Add real photos of the storefront, interior, team and work. Gemini in Maps uses photos as one of its sources.

Step 2: Keep your details consistent everywhere

An AI assistant that reads three different phone numbers for your salon has to guess. Consistent name, address and phone number (often called NAP) across the web reduces that guessing. This is general practice rather than a documented AI rule, but it is cheap and also helps human customers.

Check these places first:

• Your website footer and contact page
• Google Business Profile
• Bing Places and Apple Business Connect
• Justdial, Sulekha, Practo (for clinics), Zomato and Swiggy (for restaurants), and industry directories
• Your Instagram and Facebook bios

Say a biryani outlet in Hyderabad moved from Ameerpet to Kukatpally last year. If an old Justdial listing still shows the Ameerpet address, an assistant reading the web may repeat it. Fix or close old listings, not just the main one. Once you have more than a few branches, a single list of every listing and its login saves a lot of time.

Step 3: Let AI crawlers read your website

Your website is where you explain your business in your own words. Make sure assistants can actually read it.

1. Check your robots.txt (yourdomain.com/robots.txt). If it blocks OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI says your pages will not appear in ChatGPT search answers. For Google, the AI features page lists "ensuring that crawling is allowed in robots.txt" as a best practice, so make sure Googlebot is not blocked either.
2. Know the difference between OpenAI's crawlers. OpenAI documents GPTBot as the crawler for content that may be used to train its models, and OAI-SearchBot as the crawler for search. The settings are independent, so you can block GPTBot and still allow OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says it can take about 24 hours for its systems to adjust after you update robots.txt.
3. Check your firewall or hosting security settings. Some security plugins and CDN settings block unfamiliar bots by default. Ask your developer to confirm search crawlers are not being blocked.
4. Put key facts in text, not only in images. A price list or service menu uploaded only as a JPEG is harder for any system to read. Google's AI features page lists "making sure that important content is available in textual form" as a best practice.

A sample robots.txt section that allows ChatGPT search but opts out of model training:

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Whether to block GPTBot is a business decision. It does not control whether you appear in ChatGPT search, according to OpenAI's documentation.

Step 4: Answer the questions customers actually ask

People ask assistants full questions. Your website and profile should answer them plainly. Pick the 10 to 15 questions your front desk hears most and answer each one on your site.

Business	Questions customers ask an assistant	Where to answer
Dental clinic, Indiranagar	"Is there a dentist open on Sunday in Indiranagar?" "Who does clear aligners?"	Hours on profile, a services page per treatment
Gym, HSR Layout	"Gym with a women-only batch in HSR?" "Monthly fees?"	Timetable page, membership page in text
Salon, Andheri West	"Bridal makeup artist in Andheri for a December wedding?"	Bridal services page with packages and booking details
Coaching centre, Baner	"JEE coaching with weekend batches near Baner?"	Course page with batch timings and location

Write each answer in plain sentences that name your area and service. "We are open 10 am to 2 pm on Sundays at our 100 Feet Road clinic" is easy for a person or a machine to quote. "Flexible timings!" is not.

Structured data can help search engines understand your page, as long as it matches the visible text. Google's AI features page says no special schema is needed for AI features, so treat markup as a support for clear content, not a shortcut.

Step 5: Earn reviews and mentions that describe you

Google's local ranking help page says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, and that replying to reviews shows you value feedback. Gemini in Maps also summarises reviews when describing places. So the words customers use matter, not just the star rating.

What helps:

• Ask every happy customer, every time. A QR code at the billing counter or a WhatsApp message after the appointment works well.
• Do not offer discounts or gifts for reviews, and do not ask only happy customers. Google's policy on fake engagement prohibits offering incentives for reviews and selectively asking happy customers for reviews (often called review gating). We explain the rules in how to get more Google reviews.
• Reply to reviews with specifics. "Glad Dr Rao made your son comfortable during his first filling" adds useful context that a generic "Thanks!" does not.
• Get mentioned on local sites. A feature in a city food blog, a listing in a residents' association directory or a local news story gives assistants independent sources that describe you. Earn these honestly; paid fake mentions can damage trust if found out.

How to check if ChatGPT and Gemini recommend you

You cannot see an AI ranking report from OpenAI or Google, so test it yourself.

1. Write 10 to 20 prompts in the words your customers use: "best physiotherapy clinic in Gurgaon Sector 56", "kid-friendly cafe in Bandra with parking", "affordable gym near Baner with personal training".
2. Run them in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google Search (to see AI Overviews). Note whether you are named, what is said about you and which competitors appear instead.
3. Look at the sources cited. If an assistant cites an outdated directory listing or an old blog post, that is the page to fix.
4. Repeat monthly. Answers change with the question wording, the user's location and the assistant's updates, so treat each result as a snapshot, not a fixed rank.
5. Track changes to what is said about you, not only whether you appear. A wrong price, old address or closed branch in an AI answer is worth fixing at the source.

Doing this by hand works for one location. For many branches, AI search visibility tracking runs the same prompts on a schedule and shows mention rate and the sources assistants cite.

Frequently asked questions

Can I pay ChatGPT or Gemini to recommend my business?

Google states plainly that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. We have not seen any OpenAI or Google documentation describing a way to pay to be named inside an assistant's answer, so be wary of anyone selling guaranteed AI recommendations.

Do I need a special file like llms.txt to appear in AI answers?

Not for Google. Google's AI features page says you do not need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. For ChatGPT search, OpenAI's documentation focuses on allowing OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt.

Does blocking GPTBot remove my business from ChatGPT?

According to OpenAI, GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot are controlled separately. Blocking GPTBot signals that your content should not be used for training. Whether you appear in ChatGPT search answers depends on OAI-SearchBot.

How long does it take to start appearing?

There is no published timeline. OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to be picked up for search, but that only affects whether your pages can be read, not whether you will be recommended.

A one-month plan to get your business recommended by ChatGPT

Spend one week on your Google Business Profile, one week cleaning up old listings, one week checking robots.txt and turning your common customer questions into website text, and one week on reviews. Then run your test prompts and note what changed. None of this guarantees a mention, but it gives every assistant accurate, consistent and well-described information to work with, which is the part you control.

If you want to see how you appear on Google Maps and in AI answers across your locations, talk to the RankMonk team.