How to make ChatGPT recommend your business

"Best dentist near Salt Lake open on Sunday." A growing number of people type that into ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity instead of Google. The answer is a short list of names, and there is no page two. If your business is not in the list, the person never sees you.

We learned how this works the hard way. In October 2026, ChatGPT told us it could not open sunaam.io. Our site was on Google, fast and correct. The problem was that Bing had not indexed it, and ChatGPT's web search leans on Bing's index. Once Bing could see us, ChatGPT could too.

Here is what these assistants read, and what you can do about each.

Where AI assistants get their answers about local businesses

When you ask an assistant a local question, it usually searches the web, reads a handful of pages and listings, and writes a summary. So the question is not "how do I get into the AI" but "are the pages it reads about me correct and convincing?"

Those pages are mostly:

• Map listings - Google Business Profile for Gemini and Google's AI answers, and Bing Places for assistants that use Bing.
• Your reviews and what they say, often summarised in a sentence.
• Directories and listing sites - Justdial, Zomato, Practo, IndiaMART and local directories.
• Your own website, if it has one and it can be read.

1. Be on Bing, not only Google

Most Indian businesses have never heard of Bing Places for Business, which is exactly why it is worth ten minutes. It can import your Google Business Profile, so you do not start from scratch. If you have a website, add it to Bing Webmaster Tools too; it can import your sites from Google Search Console.

This is the single biggest gap we see. A business can be perfect on Google and invisible to any assistant that searches with Bing.

2. Make your Google profile complete

Gemini and Google's AI Overviews draw on Google's own data, and your Business Profile is the most structured description of you Google has. Correct category, hours, phone, website, services, photos, and a description that says plainly what you do and where. Check yours with the free profile checker, and choose your category with the category finder.

3. Same facts everywhere

An assistant that finds your phone number written three different ways across five sites has to guess, and it may skip you for a business it can be sure about. Name, address and phone should be identical everywhere. Our guide to NAP consistency in Indian directories explains the details. Listing in the free Sunaam directory is one more consistent, crawlable page about you.

4. Reviews that say something

Assistants summarise reviews: "known for its biryani and quick delivery, though some mention long waits on weekends." The words in your reviews become the words used to describe you. A stream of recent, specific reviews - and your replies to them - gives an assistant something real to say. Getting more Google reviews is still the foundation.

5. Write your facts in plain text

If you have a website, put the essentials on it as text, not only in images: what you do, the area you serve, opening hours, price range, and the questions customers actually ask ("Do you take walk-ins?", "Is there parking?"). A menu uploaded as a photo is invisible to most crawlers; a menu written as text is not.

6. Do not block the crawlers

If someone built your website, check its robots.txt file. Search crawlers like Bingbot, Googlebot and OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot (which ChatGPT uses for search) should be allowed. OpenAI's GPTBot, which collects training data, is a separate choice; blocking it does not stop ChatGPT search from finding you.

Test it yourself

Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the question your customers would ask: "best [what you do] in [your area]". Then ask directly: "What do you know about [your business name] in [your town]?" Wrong hours or an old phone number in the answer tells you which listing to fix.

What not to expect

Nobody can guarantee an assistant will recommend you. Anyone selling "ChatGPT ranking" as a product is selling a guess. What you can control is whether the information about you is findable, correct and good. That is also exactly what customers who still use Google need, so none of this work is wasted.

Sunaam keeps your Google profile complete, your reviews coming in and answered, and your business listed in a directory that search engines and AI assistants can read.