Does ChatGPT recommend local businesses?

ChatGPT search is the part of ChatGPT that answers from the web, and OpenAI says websites that block its crawler, OAI-SearchBot, are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. Your own website is the one source you control completely, and ChatGPT search will not show it in its answers if your robots.txt blocks that crawler.

OpenAI has not said whether ChatGPT reads Google Business Profiles or Google reviews. Google is clearer about its own products: it lists keeping your Business Profile up to date among the SEO basics that still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, and its Business Profile help says more reviews and positive ratings can help your ranking in Google's local results. A complete and accurate profile makes you more likely to show up in local search whatever ChatGPT reads, and the profile fixes to make this week are in Google Business Profile and AI search.

OpenAI, Microsoft and Yelp each describe their part in their own documents. OpenAI's help page on ChatGPT search says ChatGPT may share your location with third-party providers of local information, such as nearby business listings, without naming them, and that reservation search may show a restaurant's availability from OpenTable, Resy or Yelp; of the three, only OpenTable's reservations are available in the UK. OpenAI is also testing restaurant booking plugins and quote plugins for local services with approved partners, both in beta. A partner sends ChatGPT a feed of local business records, and a business's card in ChatGPT can then show a Reserve or Get Quote button. For restaurants, OpenAI says it treats the feed "as a search index", matched on name and location; for local services, each record carries the business's name, address, phone number and website.

Microsoft describes its Web IQ retrieval service as the same infrastructure powering Copilot, ChatGPT and enterprise systems. Yelp said in its second-quarter results on 6 August 2026 that its content is powering local discovery for ChatGPT and other AI partners. Neither company says which details about a business ChatGPT uses.

In Discoverable's UK AI Shortlist Study, ChatGPT did not name the business ranked first on Google in 72.5% of eligible answers to the same question (1,183 of 1,632). Every comparison counted was one where Google's first result was classified as the business's own website; directories, publishers, marketplaces and retailers in first place were left out. The questions covered 25 categories of software, services and products, such as payroll software and coffee beans. It was not a study of local trades, and the study says its findings should not be treated as estimates for all searches.

The study gives some context for the gap. Google shows a list of links, while ChatGPT may give a short selection or ask a follow-up question first, and an answer that names no business can still count in the figure; in one of the study's worked examples, one of ChatGPT's three answers asked the shopper for their location. Even when ChatGPT named at least one business from Google's top ten, it left out Google's number one in 54.0% of those answers (528 of 977).

The study did not measure why. Assistants tend to name the businesses that several independent pages agree on, as set out in how ChatGPT decides which businesses to recommend, and your own website is one voice among them however well it ranks. For a local business the other voices are local: listings, reviews, the town's news site and the best-of articles that rank for your trade.

Most of these cost nothing but time. Start at the top.

1. Let ChatGPT's crawler in. Check that your robots.txt does not block OAI-SearchBot. The free AI crawler checker reads the file for you and shows which AI crawlers it blocks.

2. Say where you work, in words. Put the towns you cover, your address, opening hours and services on your website as text. A map or a photo of your price list carries no words a search can match to "plumber in Hove".

3. Complete your Google Business Profile, then Bing Places. Google names an up-to-date profile as a basic for its own AI answers. Bing Places for Business is Microsoft's free listing for Bing search and Bing Maps, and it can import your Google listing. Whether ChatGPT reads it is not on record.

4. Claim your Yelp page. Yelp says its content feeds local discovery in ChatGPT, so check that its page about you has your current name, address, phone number and opening hours.

5. Ask for reviews that name the job and the place. A review such as "fixed our boiler in Hove the same morning" answers a local question in words an assistant can reuse, and a star rating alone has none. More in which review sites AI reads.

6. Get onto the local pages that rank. Search Google for "best [your trade] in [your town]" and list the articles, directories and local news pages on the first page. Those pages already answer the question your customers ask. Ask to be included where you fit, with the facts that make you worth including.

Ask ChatGPT what your customers ask, in a private browser window without logging in, so your own chats do not colour the answer. Use your trade and town ("emergency plumber in Hove"), the job in plain words ("who can fix a leaking boiler in Hove") and a neighbouring town you cover. Ask each question twice, because answers vary, and write down which businesses are named and which pages are cited. The cited pages are your list for task 6.

For a sample without writing the questions, check if your business is on ChatGPT with Discoverable's free checker. It reads your website, writes 3 questions a customer would ask about your kind of business and puts them to ChatGPT in a logged-out session, then shows whether each answer named you, a short quote around your name where it did and the pages it cited. If you are not named, why ChatGPT doesn't mention your business ranks the usual causes.

Three answers are a sample. On a plan you list the towns you work in, the prompts Discoverable writes for a local business name those towns, and your 10 tracked prompts are checked every week on ChatGPT and every other AI service the plan measures. See plans and prices, or AI visibility for local businesses if you work across several towns or countries.