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Peach & Madison / How to get your business recommended by AI search

How to get your business recommended by AI search

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews recommend businesses they can verify and quote. Make your business consistent everywhere, easy for machines to read, and the clearest answer to your customers' questions, and AI search starts naming you.

How AI search picks

When someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation, it searches the web (ChatGPT and Copilot lean on Bing; Google's AI Overviews use Google's index), reads the pages it finds, and names the businesses it's most confident about. Confidence comes from agreement: the same name, address, services and prices showing up on your site, your listings and other people's sites.

So the goal isn't tricking a model. It's removing every reason for it to doubt you.

The seven steps

  • 1. Be in Bing, not just Google. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap. Much of AI search runs on Bing's index.
  • 2. Make your listings match. Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and Yelp should all say exactly the same thing as your website.
  • 3. Add structured data. Schema markup tells machines your business type, location, hours, services and prices without guessing.
  • 4. Answer questions in the first sentence. Write pages that answer what customers actually ask (price, how long, who it's for) plainly and up front. AI engines quote the clearest answer.
  • 5. Publish your prices. "Starts at" is enough. Assistants skip businesses whose cost they can't state.
  • 6. Let AI crawlers in. Check that robots.txt doesn't block GPTBot, PerplexityBot or ClaudeBot, and add an llms.txt file that summarizes your business.
  • 7. Earn mentions and reviews. Reviews, local press, partner sites and directories are how a model confirms you're real and good.

How to check

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Google the questions your customers would ask, in their words, and write down whether you're named. Do it monthly. That list is your scoreboard, alongside clicks and positions in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

This is the work in our Search and AI visibility service. We run the same program on this site.

Questions

What is AEO?

AEO, answer engine optimization, is the practice of making a business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Overviews to find, verify and recommend. It is also called GEO, generative engine optimization.

Does ChatGPT use Google or Bing?

ChatGPT search draws heavily on Bing's index, and so does Microsoft Copilot. Google AI Overviews use Google's index. A business should be verified in both.

Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?

Not in its regular answers. Being named depends on how clearly and consistently your business is described across the web.

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

Once your listings, site and structured data agree, changes can appear within weeks, because AI search reads the live web. Competitive questions take longer.

Start

Send us the address of your site and what it should be doing that it isn't. We'll reply with what we see, in writing.