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Getting recommended by ChatGPT: yes, you can work on it.
« Who's the best electrician in Blainville? » That question gets asked in ChatGPT more and more instead of Google. And no, there's no magic button to be recommended: an AI recommends what it can VERIFY. Here's where it looks, and how to be in there.
- ChatGPT doesn't invent its recommendations. It recommends what it can VERIFY across several sources.
- Your Google profile and your reviews: the foundation. That's what it reads first.
- Be in Bing. That's the engine ChatGPT uses. Not in Bing means not in the answers.
- An FAQ on your site that answers the real questions, with numbers and your name in it.
- The same name, town and trade everywhere: directories, Facebook, your trade association.
- Never block the AI crawlers in your site's settings.
01People are shopping inside ChatGPT now
This isn't a prediction anymore, it's a fact: since the summer of 2026, OpenAI officially sells advertising INSIDE ChatGPT answers. A company doesn't sell ads somewhere people aren't shopping. Questions like « who's the best roofer around here », « recommend me an accountant » get asked there, every day.
Being recommended for free in those answers has a name (GEO), and it works with the same tools as your regular search visibility. Nothing magic, only what can be verified.
02How the AI chooses
When someone asks for a local recommendation, the AI doesn't pull a name out of a hat: it cross-checks what it can read. Your Google profile and your reviews. Bing. Your site. Directories. If several independent sources tell the same story (same name, same town, same trade, recent reviews), you're recommendable. If you're nowhere to be found or contradictory, it moves on to the next one.
An AI quotes what it can copy. Every factual, verifiable sentence that exists about you somewhere is a sentence it can hand to someone who's searching.
03The foundation: your profile and your reviews
The factor that shows up most in local AI recommendations is Google reviews: how many, how fresh, and your replies. If you haven't set up your profile properly yet, start there: I have a full guide on it (« Your Google Business Profile, set up right »), and everything in it counts double here.
04Bing: ChatGPT's front door
ChatGPT leans on Bing to search. It's that simple: not indexed in Bing, not in its answers. Signing up takes two minutes (Bing Webmaster Tools imports your Google Search Console in one click), and it's settled for good. The full details are in my guide on indexing.
05Your site: answer the questions, literally
Add a questions-and-answers section to your site that answers WORD FOR WORD the questions people ask AIs:
- « How much does an electrical panel replacement cost in Blainville? » An honest range beats silence.
- « Are you licensed? » Your licence number, written out.
- « What area do you cover? » Your towns, in full.
Short, factual answers, with numbers and your business name in them. That's exactly the kind of text an AI copies into its answer.
And check that your site doesn't block AI crawlers: some settings or plugins ban them by default. Blocking them means disappearing from the answers by choice.
06Consistency: the same story everywhere
Yellow Pages, 411, Apple Maps, your Facebook page, your trade's association or order: every place where your name, your town and your trade appear TOGETHER, spelled the same way, is one more source the AI can cross-check. One hour of work, once, and it keeps paying.
07Measure it yourself
Before you start: ask ChatGPT « who's the best [your trade] in [your town]? ». Take a screenshot. Run the same test a month after doing the things in this guide. Answers vary from one run to the next, so test three times each, but the trend shows.
08The full checklist
- Google profile fully set up, recent reviews, a reply to every one
- Indexed in Bing (Search Console import in one click)
- An FAQ on the site: real questions, answers with numbers, your name in them
- AI crawlers not blocked on your site
- Name, town, trade identical: Yellow Pages, 411, Apple, Facebook, your association
- A ChatGPT screenshot before, another one a month later
Published August 11, 2026