How to optimize for AI search and get your business recommended

1. Where to start if you want AI to recommend your business
2. Why there's no shortcut to ranking in ChatGPT
3. What our recorded answers show about who gets named
4. A step-by-step plan to show up in AI search
5. Questions owners ask
6. How we got these numbers
7. Sources
8. See it on your own website

Where to start if you want AI to recommend your business

More homeowners now ask ChatGPT, Claude or Google's AI Mode to find a plumber, an electrician or a roofer. So owners ask how to “optimize for AI search” or “rank in ChatGPT”. The answer starts with how these assistants work.

None of them keeps a ranked list of local businesses you can climb. Each one searches the web when a customer asks, reads what comes back and writes an answer. ChatGPT rewrites the customer's question into one or more searches that it sends to search providers ¹. Claude runs a search tool and grounds its answer in pages from the live web ². Google says its AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems ³.

So the work is not a separate trick. When an assistant looks for the job a customer needs, in the customer's town, it should find pages and listings that clearly show you do that job there.

So begin small and specific:

1. Pick one job you want more of, such as water heater replacement or roof leak repair, not your whole trade.
2. Pick a town or ZIP code you really serve.
3. Write down the decision the customer is making: who can come soon, who does this exact job, what it will cost and who they can trust.
4. Check what the assistants say when asked that question, and what your own pages say about it.

That gives you one question to watch and one page to improve. Then repeat it for the next job.

Why there's no shortcut to ranking in ChatGPT

There is no single ranking to climb

The same question gets different answers from one day to the next. In nearly 3,000 runs of the same prompts, SparkToro found less than a 1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI gave the same list of brands twice ⁴. In our answers, only 43% of the businesses ChatGPT named for a question were named again the next time. For Claude it was 26%.

So “number one in ChatGPT” is not something anyone can measure, let alone promise. What you can measure is how often you are named across many runs of the same questions ⁴.

Google calls it SEO, not something new

Agencies now sell “AEO” (answer engine optimization) and “GEO” (generative engine optimization). Google's own guide says that, from its point of view, optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO ³. It also warns that no outside tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems ³. ChatGPT and Claude, too, can only use what they can find and read.

More pages is not the answer

A common tactic is to churn out a page for every town and every way a customer might word a question. Google says making content for every variation of a search, mainly to manipulate its rankings or AI answers, breaks its scaled content abuse policy ³. Its spam rules also call pages aimed at specific cities that funnel visitors to one page doorway abuse ⁵.

A page for a town you really serve is fine if it says something true and specific. Fifty near-copies with the town name swapped are not.

Lab tests don't settle what works for a contractor

The best-known study of ways to show up more in AI answers, from 2024, found that some rewriting methods helped in its tests, but the effect varied from subject to subject ⁶. Its questions were general, not homeowners asking for a contractor. Treat any claimed formula as a guess until you check it on your own questions.

Being named is not the same as getting the call

Showing up and winning the job are separate steps. Pew Research Center found that Google users clicked a regular search result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when none did ⁷. A customer may call straight from the answer without visiting your site. Or they visit and leave because the page doesn't say what happens next.

So plan for both: be easy for an assistant to name, and easy to hire once named.

What our recorded answers show about who gets named

Between September 2 and October 14, 2026, we asked ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Mode to recommend a local contractor 47,209 times: ChatGPT 19,577, Claude 16,358 and Google AI Mode 11,274. The questions covered HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing in towns around Tampa Bay, Florida. Of these, 41,561 asked about a specific job, such as AC repair or a panel upgrade, and 5,648 asked for the trade in general.

Each question was asked in a fresh conversation with web search on. These are observations, not experiments: they show what the assistants did, not what causes a recommendation.

Asking about a specific job brings up different businesses

For each trade and town, we listed every business ChatGPT or Claude named when asked for the trade in general, such as “who should I call for a plumber”. That list drew on 56 to 75 general answers for each trade, town and assistant. Then we compared the answers about specific jobs in the same town with that list.

• In 57% of 27,923 job answers that named businesses, at least one had never come up in any of the general answers.
• On average, 30% of the businesses in a job answer were missing from the general list.

We matched names loosely, which leans toward overlap, so the true share of new names is probably a little higher. Google AI Mode isn't included because its answers in our records don't mark business names.

What it suggests for an owner: the general question is not the only way in. A typical ChatGPT answer named only 3 businesses, and a typical Claude answer 4. A business that never makes the short “best plumber in town” list can still be named for a job it clearly does.

Assistants link to service and town pages, not just home pages

ChatGPT and Claude answers included 130,541 links to contractors' own websites. Of those, 81% pointed to a page other than the home page. And 52% pointed to a page whose web address names a town or county in the area, such as a service-area page.

In answers about a specific job, at least 29% of the links to contractors' websites went to a page whose address names that job or its equipment. We found these with word rules, which miss pages named in other ways, so the real share is higher. When we checked a random sample by hand, 19 of 20 were correct.

When an assistant found only a general page, it sometimes said so. These are Claude's words; it most often says what it couldn't confirm:

The page I found is about installation, so ask whether they do repairs.

It lists water heater replacement and tankless installs, but I didn't see repair mentioned, so ask.

Many customers can call you straight from the answer

Of all ChatGPT answers, 98% included at least one phone number, and so did 85% of Claude answers. In Google AI Mode, 74% of answers about a specific job linked to Google's own business listing rather than a website.

Either way, the customer can reach you without opening your site. So the phone number in your listings must be right, and it pays to ask callers how they found you.

What assistants weighed in our earlier study

Before this research, we studied assistant conversations from late July to August 2026 across eight trades. For each business an assistant considered, we recorded the reasons it gave for naming it or leaving it out. Below, the first number is the conversations where a reason came up, and the second is how many of those it cost a business its place.

• How fast the business can come out: 657 and 185.
• How many reviews it has: 569 and 139.
• Whether it serves the area asked about: 554 and 350.
• Whether it clearly does the specific job: 440 and 184.
• Published prices or a stated diagnostic fee: 366 and 49.
• A direct local phone number that a person answers: 290 and 147.
• A license claimed on the business's own site: 314 and 82.
• A license the assistant looked up in an official state record: 142 and 103.

One conversation can involve several reasons, so these counts overlap and should never be added up. They show what assistants said they weighed. They don't prove that fixing one item would change who gets named.

Note the license lines: when an assistant checked the state record, that check often cost a business its place. The counts can't tell us whether the license was missing, expired or just hard to match.

A step-by-step plan to show up in AI search

1. Choose your first jobs and towns

List three to five jobs you want more of and do well. Next to each, list the towns and ZIP codes you really serve.

2. Write the customer's questions and record a starting point

For each job, write two or three questions the way a homeowner would type them. Name the job and the town or ZIP code, and sometimes a time, such as “tonight” or “this week”. OpenAI tells ChatGPT users to include a city, neighborhood or postal code to get better local results ¹.

Ask each question in ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Mode, in a new conversation, on at least three different days. Record the date, the assistant, whether you were named and which pages it linked. Count how often you are named, not where you appear in the list ⁴.

3. Make sure the assistants can read your site

• OpenAI says sites that block its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers ⁸.
• Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce your visibility in Claude's results, and blocking Claude-User stops Claude from reading your pages when a customer asks ⁹.
• Google says a page must be indexed and able to show a text snippet in Google Search to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode ¹⁰.
• Ask whoever runs your website to check your robots.txt file, the file that tells search tools what they may read, and any firewall or bot blocker. Google notes that your hosting setup must allow crawling too ¹⁰. Put important facts in text, not only in images or PDFs.
• You don't need an llms.txt file or special markup for Google. Google says its search ignores them ³.

4. Give each job you want its own clear page

Assistants often landed on service pages, and Claude told customers to call and ask when a page didn't mention the job. For each job you chose, make one page a homeowner could decide from:

• The job's name in the page title, the main heading and the web address, in the words customers use.
• What the job includes and what it doesn't, and the equipment or brands you work on.
• How pricing works: a typical range, a flat fee or the cost of a diagnostic visit, and whether that fee counts toward the repair.
• How soon you can usually come out, and your hours, including nights or weekends if you offer them.
• Your license number, insurance and any warranty, written the same way as on the state record.
• Real details from jobs you've done: photos, what went wrong and how you fixed it.

That last point matters. Google advises writing from first-hand experience rather than restating what others said ³, and its guide to helpful content asks whether a page shows first-hand expertise ¹¹. A page built from your own jobs is also hard to copy.

Timing is the hardest fact to prove on a page, so say plainly how scheduling works and answer the phone. Claude, which says what it couldn't confirm far more often than the others, put it this way:

I only have their websites to go on, so I can't confirm who has a truck free today.

5. Add town pages only where you really work

Our answers often linked to pages built for one town. If you serve a town, a page for it can help when it says something true and local: the jobs you do there, how fast you arrive, the problems you see. Don't publish near-identical pages with only the town name changed. Google treats city pages that funnel people to one place as doorway abuse ⁵.

6. Make your facts match everywhere they appear

Use the same business name, phone number and address on your site, your Google Business Profile and the directories you're listed in. Google asks that your name match what you use on your storefront and website, and that your service area be accurate and precise ¹².

Google also says Business Profiles can help your services show up in its AI responses ³. Show your phone number as text on every page, and fix old listings that still show an old number.

7. Earn real reviews, and never buy them

Reviews came up again and again in our study. Ask every happy customer, and make it easy with a direct link. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking ¹³.

Don't pay for reviews or reward only good ones. A federal rule announced in August 2024 bans buying and selling fake reviews and lets the FTC seek civil penalties ¹⁴. It also bans rewards that depend on a review being positive or negative ¹⁴.

8. Make it easy to turn a mention into a job

Once an assistant names you, the customer still has to choose you. Put a working phone number, your hours and a short request form near the top of each job page, and say what happens after they call. Ask every new customer how they found you, and note it in your job records.

Google Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners. Its Generative AI performance report shows how people find your pages through Google's AI features ³.

9. Change one thing, date it, then check again

Write down the date each change went live. OpenAI says a robots.txt change takes about a day to reach its search ⁸. Google says recrawling a page can take from several days to several months ¹⁰. After a few weeks, ask the same questions again on several days and compare how often you are named.

Watch your calls and form requests too, because that is the result that pays. OpenAI itself warns that ChatGPT's search results can be incomplete, outdated or wrong ¹. Nobody can promise a recommendation; your own records show whether the changes helped.

Questions owners ask

How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?

Make sure ChatGPT can read your website. Then give each job you want its own clear page that names the job, the towns you serve, how pricing works and a phone number. Keep your name, phone and address the same on every listing, and count how often you're named across several days. No one can guarantee a recommendation.

How do I optimize my website for AI search?

Start with the basics that also help on Google: pages that can be crawled and indexed, important facts in plain text and one clear page for each service you want more of. Write from your own jobs, not generic tips. Google says its AI features need no special AI file or markup.

Is AEO or GEO different from SEO?

Google says that, from its point of view, optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO. ChatGPT and Claude run their own web searches, but they also depend on finding and reading your pages. The main difference is measurement: count how often you're named across many answers, not your place in one.

Do I need a separate page for every town I serve?

Only for towns you really serve, and only if each page says something true and specific about your work there. Google's spam rules treat near-identical city pages that funnel visitors to one place as doorway abuse. Listing the towns and ZIP codes you serve on each job page is a good start.

How long does it take to show up in AI answers?

There is no fixed time. OpenAI says a robots.txt change takes about a day to reach its search, and Google can take days to months to recrawl a page. After that, answers still vary from run to run. Date each change and ask the same questions again over several weeks.

Can I pay someone to guarantee an AI recommendation?

No. Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, and it warns that no outside tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems. Be wary of anyone who promises a spot in ChatGPT or Google's AI answers, and spend instead on clear pages, accurate listings and real reviews.

See it on your own website

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Source: Merchant Context: the current website offer · checked 2026-10-14.

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