AI assistants recommend businesses they can clearly understand and trust. Make sure AI crawlers can read your site, publish a clear page for each service that answers real customer questions, keep your Google Business Profile complete with fresh reviews, get mentioned on other trusted sites, and add structured data. Nobody can guarantee a recommendation, but these steps raise your chances.
How AI assistants pick businesses
When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for a recommendation, the assistant often searches the web, reads several sources and summarizes them. Businesses that appear in those sources, with consistent details and good reviews, are the ones that get named. This work is called GEO, generative engine optimization.
Step by step
- Let AI crawlers in. Check that your robots.txt does not block bots like OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, PerplexityBot or Google’s crawlers, and that your hosting or firewall does not block them either.
- One clear page per service. State what you do, for whom and where, in plain words. Start each page with a direct answer to the question a customer would ask.
- Add FAQs. Real questions with short, factual answers are easy for AI to quote.
- Structured data. Add schema markup for your organization, services and FAQs so machines read your details without guessing.
- Google Business Profile. Complete categories, services, photos and hours, and reply to every review. Gemini and Google’s AI features lean on this data.
- Reviews. A steady flow of genuine reviews on Google and other platforms builds trust.
- Mentions elsewhere. Listings in respected directories, interviews, guest articles and social profiles that describe you the same way.
- Be findable on Bing too. ChatGPT search uses several sources, and submitting your site to Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow helps it get discovered.
- Keep details consistent. Same name, phone, address or service area, and description everywhere.
Then test monthly: ask the assistants the questions your customers ask and note whether, and how, you appear.
How long it takes
Technical fixes are picked up within days or weeks. Being mentioned in AI answers usually builds over two to six months, faster for specific questions (for example a niche service in a city) and slower for broad ones like “best agency”.
How Balabot does it for you
Balabot runs AI search visibility (GEO) and SEO for businesses worldwide: technical fixes, service pages, FAQs, structured data, Google Business Profile and reviews, plus a monthly report where we ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity your customers’ questions and show you where you appear.
Common questions
Can I pay ChatGPT to recommend my business?
Not inside the answer itself. Where AI assistants show ads, they are labeled separately. The recommendations in the answer come from the information the assistant finds and trusts about you.
Does SEO still matter if people use AI?
Yes. AI assistants often read search results and well ranked pages, so good SEO and GEO work together.
What is llms.txt?
It is a simple text file at the root of a website that summarizes who you are and links to your key pages, written for AI systems. It is new and not used by every assistant, but it is quick to add.