You asked ChatGPT to recommend a plumber, a florist or an accountant in your town, mostly out of curiosity, and it named three businesses. None of them was yours. One of them was a firm you have never rated. That is a strange feeling when you have been trading for eleven years and you know the work is better.
Working out how to get cited by ChatGPT is not mysterious, but it is different from ranking on Google, and most of the advice published about it is written by people who have never had to explain it to somebody who fits kitchens for a living. This post is the operational version. What to check, in what order, with the specific pages and profiles a small UK business needs to exist before a model has anything to quote.
Start with a test that takes four minutes and costs nothing. Everything after that depends on what it tells you.
Key takeaways
- Ask ChatGPT for your own service in your own town, then note which businesses it names and which websites it links as sources; that list is your real competitor set.
- For UK local queries, ChatGPT draws mainly on business websites, Google Business Profile data as it appears across the web, review platforms and a small number of trade directories.
- ChatGPT cannot cite a page that does not exist, so most fixes are new service and location pages rather than clever rewrites.
- Check your robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, because a site blocking it will not appear in ChatGPT search results at all.
- Reviews that name the actual job done give a model the phrasing it uses to describe you, so specific reviews beat plentiful ones.
Before you change anything, run the four minute test
Do not start rewriting your homepage. Start by finding out what the model currently believes, because that tells you which of the fixes below you actually need.
The four prompts to type
Open ChatGPT and ask, in the plain words a customer would use, without naming your business:
- "Recommend a [your trade] in [your town]." For example, recommend an emergency plumber in Bury St Edmunds.
- "Who does [your specific service] near [your town]?" The narrower the service, the more revealing the answer.
- "What should I expect to pay for [your service] in [your county]?" This shows whether anyone local has published real numbers.
- "Tell me about [your business name]." This one shows what the model already knows about you, and how much of it is wrong.
What to write down
Screenshot each answer. Then note three things for every answer: which businesses were named, which websites were cited as sources underneath, and what the model said about you when asked directly. That last one is often the shock. Businesses regularly find the model has their old address, a service they stopped offering in 2023, or a confident summary assembled entirely from a directory listing they have never logged into.
The list of cited sources is the most useful output. It shows you exactly which pages currently answer the question in your town, and those pages are what you have to be better than.
Where ChatGPT actually gets its answer about a local business
ChatGPT is not running a fresh Google search and reading the top ten. When it handles a local recommendation question it draws from a mix of what it learned during training and what its search tooling can fetch at the moment of the query. For UK local queries in our experience the material comes from four places, in roughly this order of influence.
First, your own website, which is the only source you control completely. Second, your Google Business Profile information as it appears reproduced across the web, in maps results, aggregator sites and anywhere your details are republished. Third, review platforms: Google reviews, Trustpilot, Checkatrade, Bark and the trade specific ones. Fourth, a small number of directories and local publications that happen to carry a written description of you rather than just a phone number.
Notice what is absent from that list. Social media posts rarely surface. Your Instagram grid is not making you citable. Neither is an advert. The model is looking for prose about your business that it can paraphrase, and a carousel of photographs contains none.
The four reasons ChatGPT has never heard of you
Almost every case we look at comes down to one of four things, and they need different fixes.
| Symptom in the test | Likely cause | What fixes it |
|---|
| Names competitors, never you | No page on your site answers that exact question | Write the service and town page that does |
| Names you but gets facts wrong | Your details disagree across the web | Correct listings and old profiles until they match |
| Says it cannot find information | Crawlers blocked, or a site with almost no text | Check robots.txt, then add real written content |
| Describes you vaguely and generically | Your pages contain no specifics to quote | Add prices, timescales, areas covered, process |
Check the crawlers are allowed in
This one takes two minutes and is worth doing first because it invalidates everything else. Type your domain followed by /robots.txt into a browser. You are looking for lines disallowing OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot or ChatGPT-User. OAI-SearchBot is the crawler that builds the index ChatGPT searches, so blocking it removes you from ChatGPT search results entirely. GPTBot relates to training data and ChatGPT-User to live fetches when a user's question needs a page read in the moment.
A surprising number of sites block all three, usually because a developer added a blanket rule in 2023 when AI scraping was in the news, and nobody has looked since. If you want to be recommended by an assistant, you have to let it read the site.
The pages a Bury St Edmunds plumber actually needs
Here is the part most guidance skips. A model cannot quote a page you have not written. If your website is a homepage, an about page and a contact form, there is nothing for it to work with regardless of how good your plumbing is.
For a plumbing firm working out of Bury St Edmunds and covering the villages, the realistic minimum looks like this:
- One page per real service. Boiler replacement, boiler repair, bathroom installation, emergency callout, power flushing, landlord gas safety certificates. Six pages, not one page with six headings.
- One page per town you genuinely work in. Bury St Edmunds, Stowmarket, Thurston, Woolpit, Mildenhall. Individually written, with the detail that only applies there, not one template with the town name swapped.
- A page with actual numbers on it. What a combi swap in a two bed terrace typically costs, what the callout charge is, what is included. Nobody local publishes this, which is precisely why the model has nothing to say when asked about price.
- A page that answers the awkward questions. How quickly you attend an emergency, whether you charge for quotes, what happens if the part is not in the van.
- Two or three written job stories. A named job with the problem, the fix and the outcome. A model treats a specific account as evidence in a way it does not treat "20 years of experience".
That is fifteen or so pages of genuine writing. It is the same work that wins the ordinary local search results around Bury St Edmunds, which is the point: you are not doing an AI project, you are doing the search work you always needed and getting the AI citations as a consequence. Producing that volume consistently is what our AI content system exists to handle, with a person checking every page before it publishes.
One structural note. Put the answer in the first sentence under each heading, then the detail. A model lifting a passage takes the first thing that looks like an answer, so burying the number in paragraph four means the number never gets quoted.
Reviews and profiles: the half that is not your website
Your website is roughly half the job. The other half is everywhere else your business is described in words.
Google Business Profile first. Complete every field, including the service list and the description, and keep the hours accurate through bank holidays. It is the most republished description of your business on the internet, so whatever it says tends to become what assistants say about you.
Then reviews, and here the wording matters more than the count. A model reading thirty reviews that all say "great service, highly recommend" learns that people like you but learns nothing about what you do. A model reading eighteen reviews where four mention a boiler swap in a Victorian terrace, two mention arriving within the hour in Thurston, and one mentions a landlord certificate turned round the same day, learns your service list and your patch from your customers rather than from your marketing. That is stronger evidence and it reads as independent.
Asking for that kind of review is a system, not a favour. Ask at the moment the job is finished, and ask a question rather than for a review: "would you mind saying what we did and roughly where you are?" Automating that ask is what our review growth system does for £95 a month, though a diligent owner with a saved text message does the same job.
How to get cited by ChatGPT, in order of return
Effort is not evenly rewarded here. This is roughly the return per hour spent.
| Task | Time | Impact |
|---|
| Check robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot | 2 minutes | Total if it was blocking |
| Fix contradictory details across listings | An afternoon | High |
| Complete Google Business Profile properly | An hour | High |
| Publish one price page with real numbers | Half a day | High |
| Add schema markup to key pages | Developer job | Medium and compounding |
| Build out service and town pages | Ongoing | The one that actually wins it |
Schema sits in the middle of that list rather than the top, because it clarifies facts a model can already read but does not create facts that are missing. It is still worth doing properly, and what schema markup does and which types matter is covered separately.
How to check whether it is working
Repeat the four minute test on the first Monday of every month and keep the screenshots in a folder. That is genuinely the primary measurement, because there is no ranking report for a conversation. What you are watching for is a sequence: first the model stops getting your details wrong, then it starts naming you for narrow service questions, then it starts naming you for the broad town question. That progression usually takes three to six months.
Alongside it, watch your website analytics for referrals from chatgpt.com, and listen to what new enquiries say. When someone tells you an assistant suggested you, write down the exact question they asked it. That is better data than any tool sells.
What will not tell you anything useful is a vendor's dashboard promising a citation score. And if someone offers to sell you placements outright, read why paid AI citations are treated as spam before you reply to them.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get cited by ChatGPT as a small business?
Publish pages that answer the specific questions customers ask, keep your business details identical everywhere online, gather reviews that name the actual work done, and make sure your robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot. ChatGPT can only quote text that exists and that it is permitted to read, so most of the work is writing pages rather than optimising existing ones.
Why does ChatGPT not know my business exists?
Usually because there is very little written about your business anywhere it can read. A three page website, an unfinished Google Business Profile and a dozen one line reviews give a model almost nothing to work with. Occasionally the cause is technical, with AI crawlers blocked in robots.txt, which is worth ruling out first because it takes two minutes.
How long does it take to get mentioned in ChatGPT?
Expect three to six months of consistent work before mentions become reliable, and longer if you are starting from a thin website. Corrections to factual errors can appear faster because live search tooling can pick up a fixed listing within weeks. Being named in answers to broad questions such as "best plumber in Ipswich" takes the longest.
Does my Google Business Profile affect ChatGPT?
Yes, strongly, though indirectly. Your profile information is republished across maps results, aggregators and directories, so it becomes one of the most widely repeated descriptions of your business online. Models lean on repeated, agreeing sources. Completing every field, listing your services explicitly and keeping opening hours current is one of the highest return hours you can spend.
Should I block AI crawlers from my website?
Not if you want to be recommended. Blocking OAI-SearchBot removes you from ChatGPT search results without protecting anything of value for a typical local business. Publishers with paid content have a genuine argument for blocking. A plumber, a clinic or a shop that wants to be found has none, and many sites block by accident rather than by decision.
Is getting cited by ChatGPT worth the effort compared to Google?
For most local businesses Google still delivers more enquiries, so this should be an addition rather than a replacement. The work overlaps almost entirely, which is what makes it worth doing: the pages, reviews and consistent details that earn a ChatGPT mention are the same ones that win the map pack. You are not funding two programmes.
Start with the test, not the rewrite
The temptation after reading something like this is to book a rebuild. Resist it for a fortnight. Run the four prompts, check robots.txt, open your Google Business Profile and look honestly at whether the description there would let a stranger explain what you do. Most businesses find at least one obvious problem in that first hour, and fixing an obvious problem beats commissioning a strategy.
Then pick the single service you most want more of, and write the best page in your county about it. Real prices, real timescales, real detail about how the job goes. One page done properly teaches you more about what earns a mention than ten thin ones, and it gives you something to point at when you decide whether to keep going.
The wider theory behind all of this, and the reason the same work pays off across Gemini, Perplexity and Google's own answers, is set out in our guide to answer engine optimisation.
If you would rather hand the whole thing over, tell us what you sell and where you sell it and we will tell you what is missing.
