How to Get Your Business Mentioned by ChatGPT

More people are asking ChatGPT for business recommendations than ever before. When someone asks "What's the best marketing agency in Devon?" or "Which company should I use for motorsport sponsorship?", ChatGPT gives them a direct answer. The question is: is your business part of that answer?

Getting mentioned by ChatGPT isn't luck. It's not random. There are specific things that make AI assistants more likely to recommend your business when people ask relevant questions. We've done this ourselves — going from zero AI visibility to market leader in our competitive set — and the principles are surprisingly straightforward.

This guide explains exactly how to get your business appearing in ChatGPT responses, based on what's actually working right now.

ChatGPT doesn't search the web in real-time for every query (though it can with plugins). Instead, it draws on a vast training dataset and uses that knowledge to generate responses. When someone asks for a business recommendation, ChatGPT looks for patterns in what it knows about your business, your industry, and how authoritative your information appears across multiple sources.

The key factors include: how consistently your business information appears across the web, whether your content directly answers the types of questions people ask, how much authoritative content exists about or from your business, the clarity of your entity signals (who you are, what you do, where you're located), and whether trusted sources reference or cite your business.

Understanding this is crucial. You're not trying to game an algorithm — you're building genuine authority and making that authority visible to AI systems.

ChatGPT needs to understand what your business actually is before it can recommend you. This means having clear, consistent information about your business spread across multiple authoritative sources.

Start with your Google Business Profile. This is often the most authoritative source of truth about local businesses. Make sure it's complete: accurate name, address, phone number, business hours, services, and description. Add photos. Collect reviews. Keep it updated.

Claim and complete directory listings. The more places your business information appears consistently, the stronger your entity signals become. Prioritise quality directories that AI systems actually reference: Clutch for agencies, Trustpilot for reviews, industry-specific directories for your sector, and general business directories like Yell, Thomson Local, and Bing Places.

Ensure NAP consistency. Your Name, Address, and Phone number should be identical everywhere. Variations confuse AI systems. If you're "SuperHub" on your website but "Super Hub Ltd" on Clutch and "SuperHub Digital" on LinkedIn, you're fragmenting your entity signals.

Create clear connections. Your business should be clearly connected to your founders, key staff, location, and areas of expertise. Author attributions on content, LinkedIn profiles linked to your company page, and structured data all help establish these relationships.

Schema markup is structured data that tells search engines and AI systems exactly what your business is and does. It's one of the most powerful — and underused — tools for AI visibility.

Organization schema tells AI systems your business name, logo, contact details, social profiles, and founding information. LocalBusiness schema adds location-specific data for businesses serving geographic areas. Service schema describes what you actually offer. FAQPage schema presents common questions and answers in a format AI systems love. Article schema helps your blog content get properly understood and attributed.

Most businesses either don't have schema markup at all, or have minimal implementation that covers only basic information. Comprehensive schema implementation is a genuine competitive advantage because so few businesses do it properly.

We implemented detailed schema across 50+ pages on our site as part of our AI visibility work. The results were dramatic — our visibility scores jumped significantly within days of the changes being indexed.

People interact with ChatGPT by asking questions. If you want to appear in the answers, your content needs to directly address the questions people actually ask.

Think about the questions your ideal customers ask. Not just keywords — actual questions. "How much does motorsport sponsorship cost?" "What should I look for in a Devon marketing agency?" "How do I get my business mentioned by AI assistants?" These are the queries that lead to recommendations.

Create comprehensive answers. Surface-level content won't cut it. When someone asks ChatGPT a question, it looks for authoritative, detailed responses. Your content needs to genuinely answer the question better than other sources — with real expertise, specific examples, and practical detail.

Structure content clearly. Use headings that match question formats. Include FAQ sections on relevant pages. Make it easy for AI systems to extract the answers to specific questions from your content.

Cover the full journey. Some questions are early-stage ("What is SEO?"). Some are decision-stage ("Best SEO agency in Devon"). Create content for both, but don't neglect the high-intent questions where people are actively looking for recommendations.

Not all directories and platforms are equal when it comes to AI visibility. Some platforms appear frequently in AI training data and get referenced regularly. Others don't.

Clutch appears frequently in agency recommendations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI assistants. Having a complete, well-reviewed Clutch profile dramatically increases your chances of appearing in AI recommendations for agency services.

Trustpilot is another platform AI systems reference heavily for review data. Positive reviews here can influence how AI assistants describe your business.

Wikipedia is extremely authoritative to AI systems, but creating a Wikipedia page requires meeting notability guidelines and should only be attempted if your business genuinely qualifies. Don't try to create a page that doesn't belong there.

Industry-specific platforms matter for niche queries. For motorsport, platforms like Motorsport.com and relevant racing directories carry weight. For your industry, identify which specialist platforms AI systems reference and ensure you're present.

News and media coverage provides additional validation. Press releases, interviews, guest articles in trade publications — these create additional authoritative references that strengthen your entity signals.

The businesses that get recommended by AI assistants tend to be the ones with genuine authority in their space. This means creating content that establishes expertise, not just filling pages with keywords.

Publish original research and data. Content that includes unique data, case studies, or analysis gets cited more than generic advice. When we published real motorsport sponsorship costs based on actual deal experience, that content started appearing in AI responses because it offered information not available elsewhere.

Take clear positions. Generic, hedged content doesn't demonstrate expertise. Having informed opinions and being willing to state them clearly signals genuine knowledge.

Show proof of results. Case studies, testimonials, and concrete examples of work you've done create evidence of expertise that AI systems can reference.

Be consistently helpful. Publish regularly. Answer questions comprehensively. Become the go-to resource for your topic. Authority builds over time through consistent demonstration of expertise.

The way people phrase questions to ChatGPT differs from how they type into Google. AI queries tend to be more conversational, longer, and often framed as complete questions.

Instead of optimising only for "Devon marketing agency", also optimise for "What's the best marketing agency in Devon?", "Can you recommend a marketing agency near Exeter?", and "Which marketing agencies in the South West specialise in motorsport?"

This means including natural question-and-answer formats in your content, using conversational language alongside technical terminology, and thinking about the specific ways people might phrase requests for recommendations in your space.

You can't improve what you don't measure. Tools now exist to track how often your business appears in AI responses for relevant queries.

RankZero is one platform that monitors AI visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. You can track which queries you're appearing for, which competitors are getting mentioned instead, and how your visibility changes over time.

Manual testing also works. Periodically ask ChatGPT and other AI assistants questions that potential customers might ask. Note when you appear, when competitors appear, and what information the AI provides. This gives you qualitative insight into how AI systems perceive your business.

We track our AI visibility obsessively. We know we're currently appearing in over 45% of relevant queries in our competitive set — more than double the next nearest competitor. This data drives our content and optimisation strategy.

Before you start, let's be clear about what won't help you get mentioned by ChatGPT.

Keyword stuffing. Loading your site with keywords doesn't help AI visibility and may hurt it. AI systems are looking for authoritative, helpful content, not keyword-optimised filler.

Link schemes. Traditional link building tactics that might work for Google SEO don't translate directly to AI visibility. AI systems care more about entity signals and content quality than backlink quantity.

Quick fixes. AI visibility, like all meaningful marketing, takes time to build. There's no trick to appear in ChatGPT responses overnight. It requires sustained work on content, entity signals, and authority.

Gaming the system. AI systems are surprisingly good at detecting artificial signals. Focus on being genuinely excellent and making that excellence visible, rather than trying to manufacture authority you don't have.

The businesses that act now on AI visibility will have significant advantages over those that wait. Most businesses haven't even heard of AI search optimisation yet. Those who establish authority now will be harder to displace later.

Start with the fundamentals: complete your Google Business Profile, audit your directory listings for consistency, implement comprehensive schema markup, and start creating content that directly answers the questions your customers ask.

If you want help with this, we offer AI visibility audits that show exactly where you stand compared to competitors, identify gaps in your entity signals and content, and provide a prioritised roadmap for improvement. We've done this for our own business — achieving market-leading visibility — and we apply the same strategies for clients.

Book a free consultation and we'll show you your current AI visibility, what competitors are getting mentioned instead of you, and what it would take to start appearing in ChatGPT recommendations. No obligation, just an honest assessment of the opportunity.