How to get your business mentioned by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity
AI assistants are becoming a second search engine. Here's what we know about how they choose which businesses to mention, and what you can do about it.
More people now ask an AI assistant "who's a good accountant in Leeds?" or "what's the best tool for X?" instead of searching Google. When the assistant answers, it names a handful of businesses. Being one of them is the new version of ranking on page one.
Nobody outside these companies knows exactly how each assistant picks its answers, and anyone who promises guaranteed AI rankings is guessing. But the broad mechanics are clear enough to act on.
Where the answers come from
Assistants draw on two things: what the model learned during training, and, for many questions, a live web search it runs while answering. For anything recent or local, that live search does most of the work. The assistant reads the pages it finds and summarises them.
That means the basics of regular SEO still apply. If your site can't be found by a search engine, it mostly can't be found by an assistant either.
What tends to get a business mentioned
Clear, quotable pages. Assistants lift facts from pages that state them plainly: what you do, where, for whom, at what price. A services page that says "We install heat pumps in Bristol and Bath, from £8,000 including installation" is far easier to cite than one full of slogans.
Being mentioned elsewhere. Assistants lean on sources they trust: directories, review sites, local news, comparison articles, Reddit threads. A business that shows up consistently across those sources looks more established than one that only exists on its own website.
Reviews and reputation. For "best X near me" questions, review counts and ratings on Google and industry sites often shape the answer.
Answering real questions. Pages that answer the questions customers actually ask ("how long does a loft conversion take?", "is X worth it for a small team?") give assistants something to quote, with your name attached.
Practical steps this month
- Search for your own business and main service in ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. Note who gets mentioned and which sources they cite.
- Make sure your homepage and service pages state the plain facts in the first few lines.
- Get listed, accurately, in the directories and review sites that show up in those citations.
- Write one page for each question customers ask you on the phone.
- Keep your Google Business Profile complete. Some assistants pull local data from map sources.
What about llms.txt?
You may have heard of llms.txt, a file that summarises your site for AI tools. It's cheap to add and doesn't hurt, but it's a proposed convention, not a guarantee of anything. We explain it in what llms.txt is and whether you need one.