Will ChatGPT recommend your business? A practical guide to AI search visibility

More customers now ask an AI assistant before they ask Google: “Who’s a good CA in Gurgaon for a small business?” or “Best tool to track Google Maps rankings?” The answer they get is a short list, not ten blue links — and if you’re not on it, you don’t exist for that customer.

This is often called generative engine optimisation (GEO) or AI search visibility. I work on it for RankMonk, which checks whether ChatGPT and Gemini recommend a business. Here is what actually moves the needle.

How assistants decide

Assistants with web access do roughly three things: search the web for candidates, read the pages they find, and cross-check what those pages say against other sources. Businesses get recommended when they are:

1. Findable — they show up in the searches the assistant runs.
2. Understandable — their pages say plainly what they do, for whom and where.
3. Corroborated — other sources (listings, reviews, directories, articles) say the same thing.

Nothing here is a trick. It’s the same work as good SEO, with more weight on clarity and consistency.

1. Say exactly what you do, in plain sentences

Assistants quote and summarise text. Pages that open with a vague slogan give them nothing to quote. Pages that open with “We are a chartered accountancy firm in Gurgaon handling GST, income tax and audits for small businesses and startups” give them a ready-made answer.

• Put a one-paragraph summary of who you are at the top of your home page and each service page.
• Use one page per service, with the service name in the heading.
• Answer the questions customers actually ask, in the words they use.

2. Make your business details identical everywhere

Name, address, phone number, website, categories and opening hours should match across your website, Google Business Profile, Justdial, LinkedIn, industry directories and anywhere else you’re listed. Inconsistent details make it harder for an assistant to be confident that all those mentions are the same business.

3. Add structured data

Schema.org markup (JSON-LD) labels your page content for machines: Organization or LocalBusiness with your address and contact details, Service for what you offer, FAQPage only where you have a real FAQ, and Article for blog posts. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but it removes ambiguity.

4. Earn reviews and mentions that say something

A review that says “Great service!” helps less than one that says “They sorted our GST notices and set up monthly filing reminders.” Specific reviews and mentions on other sites give assistants the evidence they need to recommend you for specific queries. Ask happy clients to mention what you actually did for them.

5. Keep your site fast and crawlable

Assistants’ crawlers are less patient than browsers. Make sure:

• Your important text is in the HTML, not only rendered by JavaScript after load.
• robots.txt doesn’t block the AI crawlers you want to be found by (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended).
• You have an up-to-date sitemap.xml.
• Optionally, an llms.txt file that summarises your site for language models — cheap to add, and increasingly read.

6. Measure it like a customer would

Every month, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the five questions your customers would ask, from the city your customers are in. Record whether you appear, where, and what’s said about you. Tools like RankMonk automate this, but a spreadsheet works to start.

What not to do

• Don’t stuff pages with keywords or city names. Assistants summarise; spam reads as spam.
• Don’t add FAQ or review schema for content that isn’t on the page.
• Don’t publish dozens of thin AI-written pages. One clear, specific page beats twenty generic ones.

AI visibility is mostly the reward for being clear, consistent and genuinely recommended. If you want help auditing your site and listings, send me a brief — it’s the same work I did for RankMonk’s audit tool.