[Articles]AI search
How local businesses can show up when customers ask ChatGPT
More customers ask an AI assistant who to call. No one can promise what it will say, but you can make your business easy to find and easy to describe.
“Who’s a good electrician near me?” used to go straight to a search engine. Now some people type it into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity instead. These assistants answer from what they can find and read about your business on the web.
No one can guarantee what an AI assistant will say, and anyone who promises a placement is guessing. What you can do is make sure the facts about your business are clear, consistent and easy for software to read.
How assistants learn about a business
Assistants that search the web read the same public sources people do: your website, your Google Business Profile, directory listings, review sites and local news. When those sources agree with each other and state the basics plainly, it’s easier for an assistant to describe you correctly.
Five things that help
1. Say the basics in plain text on your site
What you do, the towns you serve, your hours, your phone number and your address. Write them as text, not only inside images, so software can read them.
2. Add structured business data
Structured data is a small block of code, written in the schema.org vocabulary, that labels your name, address, phone, hours and services so machines don’t have to guess. Search engines already use it, and it doesn’t change how your page looks.
3. Keep your listings consistent
Your business name, address and phone number should match everywhere: your site, Google Business Profile, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing and the directories for your industry. Old addresses and second phone numbers confuse people and software alike.
4. Give each main service its own page
A page about panel upgrades answers “who does panel upgrades in Your Town?” far better than one line in a long list.
5. Keep it current
Update hours, services and prices when they change. Stale information is a common reason an answer about a business comes out wrong.
What doesn’t help
Stuffing pages with keywords, publishing pages about towns you don’t serve, and buying or writing fake reviews. Fake reviews also break the FTC’s rules.
Check what assistants say about you
Once a month, ask two or three assistants the questions your customers ask, such as “Who’s a good plumber in Your Town?” and “What are Sample Co.’s hours?”. Note what’s wrong, and fix it at the source: your site or the listing it came from.
Where Hyperdesk fits. Every site we build states the basics in plain text. Our AI search add-on, +$40 a month, adds structured business data to every page, keeps your listings matching across directories, and checks every month what AI assistants say about you.