How Do You Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT?

To get your business recommended by ChatGPT, you need other websites to talk about you: “best of” lists, reviews and articles that mention your name. A good Google ranking helps, but on its own it doesn’t decide who gets named.

What happens when you ask ChatGPT for the best in your city?

Try it now. Open ChatGPT and type your service and your city, like “best plumber in Austin”. You get a short list of names, and when ChatGPT searches the web, it shows the links behind its answer.

Those links are the real lesson: many aren’t the businesses’ own websites. When Ahrefs tested 20,000 US prompts, only 46.4% of the citations in answers to comparison questions, like “A vs B”, went to official websites. Most came from other sites.

Does ranking on Google get you into AI answers?

Not on its own. Ahrefs asked AI assistants, ChatGPT included, 15,000 questions. Only 12% of the links they cited ranked in Google’s top 10 for the same question, and for ChatGPT it was 8% or less.

Ranking still helps, because AI tools run their own searches in the background. They just don’t always pick the pages you rank for. The data was collected in July 2025, so treat it as a snapshot.

Which pages does ChatGPT use to pick businesses?

Lists, more than any other kind of page. In an Ahrefs study of ChatGPT answers to 750 prompts asking for software, products and agencies, “best X” blog lists made up 43.8% of the page types it cited. Recently updated lists stood out the most, and brands placed high on them were more likely to be recommended. That study didn’t cover local shops, so use it as a guide, not a rule.

ChatGPT also looks for reviews more often. Ahrefs found that in the searches it runs before answering, the word “reviews” went from 2.7% of searches in August 2026 to 3.6% in September.

Do mentions on other sites help?

They’re among the signals most closely tied to AI visibility. In an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, mentions on other websites had a strong link with how often ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews named a brand: 0.66 to 0.71, on a scale where 1 is a perfect match. YouTube mentions scored even higher, at about 0.74. Ahrefs itself warns that a link like this doesn’t prove cause.

A 2026 Ahrefs experiment points the same way. When Ahrefs showed up in AI answers where it hadn’t before, only 6% of those new mentions came from answers citing its own pages. The other 94% came from content on other sites. Ahrefs sells SEO tools, including Brand Radar, the AI tracking tool behind these studies.

Should you publish your own “best of” page?

Only an honest one. In that experiment, Ahrefs published 34 self promotional pages and tracked 9,886 AI answers. The pages helped a new conference get mentioned. But when an AI tool cited one of those pages, it still left the conference out 43% of the time, and most citations came and went. The team’s conclusion: “Fill the gap accurately; don’t manufacture a ranking.”

For a local business, that means pages that help people choose: how to pick a plumber in your city, what a fair price looks like, how you compare with other options. Skip the list where you rank yourself number one.

What do we do at 33 Genesis Road?

Here’s what we do: we run the “best [service] in [city]” test for your business in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and list the sites each answer relies on. Then we work on getting you onto those lists, set up a steady flow of reviews and write honest comparison pages for your site.

Want us to look at your AI search visibility? Get a free audit, in less than 24 hours.

FAQ

Which AI tools should I test?

Start with ChatGPT, then Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Mode. Each one leans on different sources: Ahrefs found that only 14% of the top 50 sources were shared across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews.

Will ChatGPT give the same answer every time?

No. In Ahrefs’ 2026 experiment, most citations came and went over time. Ask the same question on a few different days before you draw conclusions.

Do I still need to rank on Google?

Yes. AI tools search the web before they answer, so your rankings still feed them. They just aren’t the whole job anymore.

Sources: Ahrefs, Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google’s Top 10 for the Original Prompt (August 11, 2025); Ahrefs, How ChatGPT Does Query Fan Out (October 12, 2026); Ahrefs, Do Self Promotional “Best” Lists Boost ChatGPT Visibility? (December 4, 2025); Ahrefs, Top Brand Visibility Factors in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews (December 12, 2025); Ahrefs, Self Promotional Content Works, Until It Backfires (July 6, 2026); Ahrefs, 86% of Top Mentioned Sources Are Not Shared Across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews (June 12, 2025).