To get your local business recommended by ChatGPT, publish a page for each question locals ask about your service in your city, and put your name, address, phone and hours on your site where ChatGPT can read them. Then ask those questions again after the pages go live and check whether ChatGPT names you.
Say you run a plumbing company in north Austin. A homeowner in Round Rock asks ChatGPT who to call about a leaking water heater. When ChatGPT searches the web for that question, it reads the pages it can reach and names a few businesses. OpenAI's crawler documentation, read on 29 September 2026, is plain about the gate: "Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers." This guide is about being one of the pages ChatGPT can read, and the one it can quote.
How ChatGPT picks a local business to name
ChatGPT answers in one of two ways. It answers from the web, by searching when someone asks and reading the pages it finds. Or it answers from its memory, from what its model learned in training. Either way, it can only name a business it can read about: your own pages, and the other places your business is described.
For a local question, ChatGPT needs four facts about you:
- What you do. The service, named the way customers name it. "Water heater replacement", not "hot water solutions".
- Where you do it. Your city and the neighborhoods you serve, written in words.
- How to reach you. A phone number and a way to book.
- Who vouches for you. Reviews it can find and point to.
Your website is the one place where you control all four. Directories and review sites describe you too, and ChatGPT can read them. When their facts match your site, it has one version of you to repeat. When they disagree, it has to pick.
How to get your local business recommended by ChatGPT
Five steps, in order. Each one removes a guess from the next.
Step 1: List the questions locals ask
Write down the questions a customer in your area asks before they know your name. Local questions have a shape: a service, a place and a need. Rankli drafts a local business's questions from shapes like these:
- "Who is the best plumber in Austin?"
- "Which plumbing services in Austin are best for older homes?"
- "How much does a water heater replacement cost in Austin?"
- "[your business] reviews: are they any good?"
- "[your business] vs [a rival]: which should I hire?"
Then add the questions that come with your trade and your city. In Austin, a hard freeze brings its own: "What should I do if my pipes freeze?" and "Who can fix a burst pipe tonight in south Austin?" Add the suburbs you serve, such as Round Rock, Pflugerville and Cedar Park, where customers name them in the question.
Aim for 10 to 20 questions. That is enough to see a pattern and few enough to track by hand.
Step 2: Ask ChatGPT each question and write down who it names
Ask every question the way a customer would, with the city in it, so the answer does not depend on where you happen to be sitting. For each answer, record whether you were named, who was named instead, which pages were linked and the date.
Ask each question more than once, on different days. Answers change from one ask to the next. A business that is named in most of your asks is ahead on that question. A business named once is noise.
The questions where a rival is named and you are not are the questions you are losing. They are your list for step 4.
Step 3: Put the facts where ChatGPT can read them
This step decides whether the rest can work.
Your name, address and phone, printed and matching. Put them on your site as text, the same way on every page and in every listing. A different phone number on a directory gives an assistant two numbers to choose from.
Labels that tell AI your prices, hours and products. Your site can carry labels that state your business type, address, phone and opening hours in a form software reads directly. Developers call this LocalBusiness structured data. Your web developer, your site builder or a plugin can add it.
A way to call or book from the homepage. A tap-to-call number or a booking link, in the page text, not only inside an image.
Reviews an assistant can find. Link to your reviews from your site, so a reader of your pages can reach them.
Settings that let AI visit your site. OpenAI's documentation recommends "allowing OAI-SearchBot in your site's robots.txt file." A rule that blocks every bot you have not named blocks it too.
Rankli's free check reads your site the way an AI visitor does, with no JavaScript. It checks your settings for AI visitors by name, the words AI can see on your pages and the labels on your homepage. It asks no AI assistant anything, so it is free and needs no account. Inside the app, Rankli's readiness check adds four local checks: the labels with your address, hours and phone; your name, address and phone printed and matching those labels; a way to call or book from the homepage; and reviews an agent can find. To see who ChatGPT names in your town today, the free AI visibility checker asks it three customer questions, and the free tools page has a checker for your trade.
Step 4: Publish a page for each question you are losing
For each question from step 2 where a rival was named, publish one page that answers it. Three kinds of page fit local questions:
- Service guides. "Water heater replacement in Austin: what it involves and what to expect."
- "What to do when" guides. "What to do when a pipe bursts in Austin, before the plumber arrives."
- Local cost guides. "How much water heater replacement costs in Austin." State your own prices or ranges, and say what moves the price.
Build every page the same way. Put the answer in the first two sentences. Name the city and the neighborhoods you serve. Add your phone number and booking link. Keep the facts identical to your other pages, and show the date.
Step 5: Ask again after the pages go live
A week after a page goes live, ask its question again, a few times, and compare with what you recorded in step 2. Then ask once more a week later.
Two checks after publishing, set against the answers from before, show whether the page changed anything. Rankli runs the same schedule: 7 and 14 days after an article goes live, it asks the article's question again, 3 times on each assistant your plan tracks, and shows before and after on the article.
The facts ChatGPT has to find, and where to put them
| What ChatGPT needs | Where to put it on your site |
|---|---|
| What you do | A page per service, with the service in the title |
| Where you work | Your city and the neighborhoods you serve, in the page text |
| How to reach you | Your phone number and a booking link on the homepage |
| When you are open | Your hours, printed on the page and in your labels |
| Who vouches for you | A link to your reviews |
Every row is a fact a page can state in plain words. None of them needs a new design or a new site. Most of the work is writing down what you already know, in the places an assistant reads.
What not to do
Do not let your details drift. An old phone number on a directory, or a moved address still on your contact page, gives ChatGPT two versions of you.
Do not stamp out a page per suburb. Twenty pages that swap "Round Rock" for "Pflugerville" and change nothing else read as filler to a person. Write about the areas you serve, and say what differs in each.
Do not hide your phone number in an image. A picture of a phone number is invisible to a crawler that reads text.
Do not judge on one answer. Ask each question several times, on different days, before you decide where you stand.
Do not block OpenAI's search crawler. Check your robots.txt file, or run the free check, before you rewrite anything.
How Rankli runs these steps for a local business
Rankli runs this loop every week, in four steps:
- Ask. Every week, Rankli asks ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions your customers ask. Perplexity too, on Scale and Agency.
- See what you're losing. You see each question where AI recommends someone else, and who it picks instead.
- Publish the answers. Rankli writes an article aimed at each question you're losing and publishes it to WordPress, Webflow, Shopify or the other connected platforms.
- Re-ask and show what moved. 7 and 14 days after each article goes live, Rankli asks its questions again and shows you before and after.
For a local business, Rankli drafts your questions with your city and services in them, and plans service guides, "what to do when" guides and local cost guides. Rankli for local businesses shows how it fits a local service business, and the questions and articles in each plan are on the pricing page.
Rankli starts with a 7-day free trial. A card starts it, and starting it runs your first analysis: your questions put to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, with the ones you are losing listed. On day 8 it becomes your plan unless you cancel, which is one click in the app. Cancel during the trial and nothing is charged.
Questions
How does ChatGPT know where my business is?
From what it can read: your pages, the labels on them and the other sites that describe you. Put your address, service area and phone number in the text and the labels on your site, and Rankli's readiness check confirms they match.
Do I need a page for every neighborhood?
No. Write about the areas you serve and what differs in each, rather than copying one page per suburb. Rankli plans local pages from the questions your customers ask, so each page answers a real question.
Which questions should a local business track?
Questions that name your service and your city: who to call, what it costs, what to do when something breaks, and your name next to a rival's. Rankli drafts questions in those shapes from your site, and you can add your own and remove any you do not want.
How soon will ChatGPT name my business?
It depends on when ChatGPT next reads your pages and on what your rivals publish. Rankli asks each article's question again 7 and 14 days after it goes live and shows you before and after, so you see what changed.