How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT
More people now ask AI for a recommendation instead of searching. Here is how to be the business it names when they do.
There is a slightly unnerving thought sitting behind all of this. Somewhere right now, someone is asking ChatGPT to recommend a business like yours, and you have no idea whether your name came up.
If that bothers you, good. It should, a little. Because the way people find businesses is quietly shifting under our feet.
Instead of searching and scrolling ten blue links, more of them just ask: "who is good for X near me," "what is the best tool for Y," "recommend me a Z." The AI answers with a short list of names. You want to be on it.
The good news is this is not a dark art. It is mostly about being clear, structured and findable, in a way AI engines can read and trust. People call it GEO, generative engine optimisation, but the idea underneath is simple. I work alongside these tools every day, and the businesses getting named are the ones doing unglamorous basics well.
Understand how AI decides who to name
When you ask ChatGPT for a recommendation, it pulls together what it has read about a topic and surfaces the names that come up consistently, in clear contexts, from sources it considers reliable.
It rewards businesses that have explained, plainly and in writing, who they are, what they do and who they do it for.
So here is the honest test. If an AI read everything publicly written about your business, would it understand you well enough to recommend you with confidence? For a lot of businesses the answer is no, because the information is thin, vague, or trapped in images and PDFs it cannot read.
Write the answers people actually ask
AI engines love content that answers a real question. Not brochure copy. Answers.
"What does a kitchen fitter in Leeds cost." "Best accounting software for a sole trader." "How long does X take." Each clear question and answer you publish is something an AI can quote when someone asks something similar.
Make a list of the ten questions customers ask you most. Answer each one properly on your website, in plain language, with the specifics: prices, areas, timescales, who it suits.
This is the single highest leverage thing most businesses can do. It helps customers, it helps Google, and it is exactly the structured material AI engines pull from.
When ChatGPT answers a live "recommend me a..." question, it often runs Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG): it searches the web, pulls back a handful of pages, and writes its answer from what it just read rather than memory alone. That is why being readable matters so much. Structured data, the schema.org markup behind those FAQ boxes you see in search results, hands engines your facts in a labelled format they can lift cleanly, instead of guessing from prose. Plain text on a real page beats anything locked in an image or a PDF, because the retriever has to be able to read it before it can quote you. And consistency is not just tidiness: when your name, location and specialism match across your site, your listings and a few trusted third parties, the model sees the same facts confirmed from several directions and treats them as reliable enough to repeat.
Be consistent and specific everywhere
Say the same things about yourself, in the same way, across your site, your listings and your profiles. Be specific about location, specialism and who you serve.
Vague businesses are hard to recommend. "We do digital" tells an AI nothing. "We build booking systems for independent salons in the UK" gives it something to hold onto.
Earn mentions from places AI trusts
AI weighs up where information comes from. A mention in a directory, a local press piece, a partner's site or a genuine review carries more than your own claims about yourself.
You do not need hundreds. A handful of credible, consistent mentions does a lot.
None of this is instant, and anyone promising a guaranteed spot in an AI answer is guessing. But the businesses doing the basics well, clear answers, specific positioning, trustworthy mentions, are the ones starting to get named. The rest are invisible to a fast growing way people now search.
If you want to be the business AI recommends, getting your information structured so engines can read and trust it is exactly the kind of work we do.
Book a quick chat →Related: How to research a competitor in 10 minutes with AI.
Common questions
How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my business?
Make sure there is clear, specific, structured information about what you do and who you serve, published in plain text that AI can read. Answer the real questions customers ask, stay consistent everywhere, and earn a few mentions from sources AI trusts.
What is GEO?
GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. It is the practice of structuring your content and information so AI engines like ChatGPT understand your business well enough to mention it when people ask for a recommendation.
Is GEO different from SEO?
They overlap. Good SEO basics still help, but GEO leans harder on clear question and answer content, specific positioning and trustworthy mentions, because AI engines summarise and cite rather than just rank links.
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?
No. You cannot buy a spot in an organic AI recommendation. Anyone guaranteeing one is guessing. You influence it by being clear, specific and credible, not by paying for placement.