How to Get Recommended by AI When Local Customers Ask Around
How to get recommended by AI, for a local business, is the new version of word of mouth: when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity "who's a good plumber near me?", the engine answers from what it can read about you across the web. Your job is to make that record complete, consistent and easy to find.
This isn't a future concern. Customers are already asking these questions, and the answers are already naming someone.
Customers are asking engines for referrals
The clearest data comes from BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey, published in February 2026 from a survey of 1,002 U.S. consumers. A few findings stand out for local owners:
| Finding (BrightLocal, 2026) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Consumers using ChatGPT and similar AI tools for local recommendations | 45%, up from 6% the year before |
| Consumers who trust AI platforms as much as traditional reviews for local recommendations | 42% |
| Consumers who read AI-generated review summaries | 82% |
| Consumers who still read reviews for local businesses | 97% |
BrightLocal also reports that AI is now the third most popular source of business recommendations, behind Google and Facebook.
Put simply: the referral a neighbor used to give is now often given by an engine. And the engine's answer depends on what it finds.
What an engine reads before it recommends you
No engine publishes a formula for local recommendations, and nobody outside these companies can see one. What we can see is where they get information and what their makers tell site owners.
Your own website
The engines need to be able to crawl it. Perplexity, for example, says its PerplexityBot is "designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity" and asks site owners to allow it in robots.txt. OpenAI and Anthropic publish similar guidance for their own search crawlers. If your site blocks these bots, the engine has to describe you from other sources, or not at all.
Your Google Business Profile
Google's guide to AI features and your website tells businesses to keep their Business Profile information up to date. For many local firms, that profile is the most complete public record of their hours, services and service area.
Reviews and review summaries
BrightLocal found that 71% of consumers use Google for reviews, down from 83% in 2025, and that consumers use an average of six review sites when researching a business. Reviews are spread across more places than they used to be. Engines that summarize reviews draw from whatever they can find, so a neglected profile on a secondary site can shape the summary more than you'd expect.
Everything else people say about you
Local news, association directories, sponsorships and community forums all form part of your public record. They don't need to be glowing. They need to be accurate.
How to get recommended by AI in your town
Here is the practical order of work for a local business.
Fix access first
Ask whoever runs your website to confirm that robots.txt and any firewall allow the search crawlers from OpenAI (OAI-SearchBot), Perplexity (PerplexityBot), Anthropic (Claude-SearchBot) and Google. This is a one-time check that takes little time and affects every engine.
Say plainly what you do, for whom, and where
Your home page and service pages should answer the three questions an engine needs to match you to a request. "Residential and commercial plumbing, including emergency calls, in Boise and Meridian" is matchable. "Quality you can count on" isn't.
- Give each main service its own page.
- List the towns and neighborhoods you serve in text.
- Include licenses and certifications as readable words, not only as badge images.
Clean up your listings
Search your business name and check every listing that appears. Your name, address, phone number, hours and services should match your website exactly. Old addresses and disconnected numbers are more common than most owners think.
Keep reviews coming, honestly
Ask satisfied customers to leave a review where your buyers look. Respond to reviews, including critical ones, calmly and specifically. Never buy or script reviews. Beyond the ethical problem, fake patterns are exactly the kind of thing that erodes trust in any summary built from them.
How to get recommended by AI: what you can and can't control
Be realistic about this. You control your website, your profile and your responses. You partly control reviews and outside mentions. You don't control how each engine weighs them, or which businesses it names on a given day for a given wording.
That's why measurement matters more than guesswork. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews the questions your customers ask, in their words and with your town in them. Note who gets named and what's said about each business. Repeat monthly.
If you want a starting point, Vector Index's guide to getting recommended by AI explains how the audit works and what it checks.
FAQ
Why does ChatGPT recommend a competitor with fewer reviews than me?
Reviews are only part of what engines can read. The competitor may have clearer service pages, more consistent listings or mentions in sources the engine found. Compare the full public record, not just review counts.
Does my Google Business Profile affect ChatGPT or only Google?
Google's guidance ties the profile to its own AI features. Other engines draw on many web sources, and nobody outside those companies can confirm exactly which. Keeping the profile accurate costs little and helps wherever it's read.
Should I respond to negative reviews?
Yes, calmly and specifically. A thoughtful response adds accurate context to the record that customers, and any engine summarizing reviews, will see.
How do I know if an engine is describing my business wrongly?
Ask it. Run your customers' questions in each engine and read what it says about you. Wrong hours, services or locations usually trace back to an outdated page or listing you can fix.
For a local owner, how to get recommended by AI comes down to the same things good word of mouth always needed: be easy to find, be clear about what you do, and make sure everything people read about you is true.