More of your customers are skipping the search results and asking an AI instead. "Who is the best roofer in Pensacola?" "Which pediatrician near me takes new patients?" ChatGPT answers with a short list and a reason for each name. The customer calls one of them.
So which businesses make that list? Nobody outside OpenAI knows the exact formula, and it changes often. But you do not need the formula to see what matters, because when ChatGPT searches the web it shows its sources. Ask enough local questions and the same patterns keep showing up.
What ChatGPT looks at
1. What other sites say about you
For a local question, ChatGPT searches the web and reads what it finds: listing sites, review sites, local news, association pages, sometimes community threads. A business that shows up in several of those, saying the same thing, is easy to recommend. A business that only exists on its own website is a harder call.
2. Your reviews, and what they say
The number and rating matter, but so do the words. Reviews that mention the job and the town ("replaced our water heater the same day in Gulf Breeze") give AI something specific to repeat. That is often where the reason next to your name comes from.
3. Your own website
Your site is where AI checks the basics: what you do, where you do it, and how to reach you. A homepage that says "quality service you can trust" tells it nothing. A homepage that says "licensed plumber serving Pensacola, Gulf Breeze and Pace since 2014, same-day water heater replacement" tells it exactly what it needs.
4. Whether your details agree
If your Google Business Profile has one phone number, your Yelp page another and your website a third, AI has to guess which business is real. Matching name, address, phone and services across the web is unglamorous work, and it matters more for AI than it ever did for Google.
Why it names someone else
When we run these checks for local businesses, the reasons a business is missing are usually ordinary:
- The website never says plainly what they do and which towns they serve.
- They have few reviews, or the reviews say nothing about the work.
- Their listings disagree, or half of them were never claimed.
- Nobody else on the web mentions them.
- Their site blocks the crawler ChatGPT uses to search, usually by accident.
That last one is worth checking today. OpenAI's search crawler is called OAI-SearchBot, and OpenAI says sites that block it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Some security plugins and firewalls block it without anyone noticing.
Five things you can fix this week
- Ask it yourself. Open ChatGPT and ask the question your customers ask, with your town in it. Write down who it names and which sources it cites. Or run our free AI check, which does this for you.
- Write your facts in plain sentences. Near the top of your homepage: what you do, the towns you serve, how long you have been doing it, your phone number and your hours. One short paragraph is enough.
- Make your listings match. Start with Google Business Profile, then Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp, Facebook and the directories for your trade. Same name, address, phone and service list everywhere.
- Ask for reviews that say something. Ask happy customers to mention the job and the town in their own words. Never script them and never pay for them.
- Check you are not blocking the crawlers. Look at yoursite.com/robots.txt, or ask whoever runs your site, and make sure OAI-SearchBot and Googlebot are not blocked.
What not to believe
Nobody can buy or guarantee a spot in a ChatGPT answer. The answers change from day to day and from one person to the next. If someone sells you a guaranteed AI ranking, they are selling something they do not control.
What does work is being the clearest, most consistent and best documented business in your market. A Birmingham newborn nursing practice we work with went from almost no visibility to being the first name ChatGPT gives when parents ask for a night nurse in the city. Here is how that happened.