Getting found in ChatGPT as a local business

How AI assistants pick a business

For a question like "good installer in Almelo", ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude look for sources they trust: business websites, directories, reviews and business profiles. They often name only a handful of businesses. If you're not among them, you simply don't exist for that customer at that moment.

How ChatGPT reads your website

When ChatGPT searches the web, it uses its own search crawler for that: OAI-SearchBot. According to the company behind ChatGPT, you need to allow that crawler in your robots.txt to be able to appear in ChatGPT's search results. If you block it, your site won't come back in answers with search results, although a plain link to your site may sometimes still appear. According to the same company, a change takes effect after about 24 hours.

There's also a second crawler, GPTBot. It collects text that may be used to train the company's AI models. You can allow or block that one separately; it's unrelated to the search crawler. What you choose is up to you, but in any case make sure OAI-SearchBot can get in. Check it yourself at yoursite.nl/robots.txt, or ask your web developer to take a look.

Five things that help

• The same details everywhere. Name, town and phone number exactly the same on your site, Google Business Profile and other listings.
• Answers to real questions. A Q&A page where every answer starts with the answer itself.
• Clear about what you do and where. A dedicated section for each service and area.
• Reviews, and replies to them. Plenty of recent reviews, all answered.
• Technically sound. A site that bots are allowed to read, with structured data.

Write the way customers ask

People ask an AI assistant whole questions, not loose keywords: "Who can fix my leaking tap in Almelo this week, and roughly what will it cost?" A page that answers a question like that directly is easier for an AI assistant to use. A few tips:

• Start every answer with the answer itself, in one or two sentences. Explain it afterwards.
• Name your towns and service area, not just "in the region".
• Give a from-price or a price indication where you can; questions about price are very common.
• Put a date on your articles and keep them up to date.
• Use your customers' words alongside your trade terms.

What doesn't work

• Made-up reviews or fake listings. That's misleading and sooner or later it gets noticed.
• Pages stuffed with repeated keywords and town names. An AI assistant is looking for a clear answer, not a list.
• Doing something once and then leaving it. AI assistants' answers change; keep checking where you stand.

How to tell if it's working

Ask a few questions your customers would ask, each time in a new conversation, and repeat them a few times: the answers differ from one try to the next and between assistants. Try it in Gemini and Perplexity too, and look at which sources are listed under the answer. So ask ChatGPT, or try our free SEO & GEO scan, where we measure ten questions from your trade and area. With Visibility we measure it every week, with concrete improvements.