How Local Businesses Get Recommended by ChatGPT, Google and Siri

Each AI assistant answers “who’s the best [service] near me?” from a different local database. Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini lean on your Google Business Profile and Maps reviews; ChatGPT draws on Yelp’s licensed data plus the directories and “best X in [city]” pages it finds through search; Siri reads Apple Maps, which you now manage in Apple Business; and Copilot sits on Bing. So most of the work happens off your website: complete, identical listings on all four, a steady flow of recent reviews, and a place on the specific city pages each assistant cites, while your own site stays readable by their crawlers. Nobody can guarantee a recommendation, and anyone who promises one is selling something.

This guide covers where each assistant gets its local data (with the primary sources), what we found when we read the big directories’ crawler rules on 13 October 2026, and a seven-step playbook for owners and the agencies that serve them.

Where each assistant gets its local data

The table separates what each company documents from what rests on third-party research. “Official” means the company says it in its own documentation, product pages or financial filings.

Where appropriate, generative AI responses can include product listings, product information, and information about local businesses. Using products like Merchant Center (such as Merchant Center feeds) and Google Business Profiles can help your products and services to be visible in both AI responses and other Google Search results.

Why ranking on Google Maps doesn’t carry over

Owners keep reporting the same thing: page one on Google, hundreds of good reviews, and ChatGPT still names three competitors. The data backs them up. SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index looked at more than 350,000 locations across 2,751 multi-location brands and found that “ChatGPT recommends just 1.2% of brand locations, compared to an average 35.9% appearance rate in Google’s local 3-Pack.” In retail it found only 45% overlap between the brands most visible in classic local search and those AI platforms recommended most often.

Treat those figures as directional. SOCi sells local-marketing software, its sample is chains rather than independents, and the analysis is correlational. But the pattern repeats elsewhere: the assistants don’t share a source list. In CLM Sequoia’s July 2026 study of 3,200 law-firm questions per platform across 100 US metros, ChatGPT and Claude named no firm in common in 59.2% of cases, and each leaned on different directories.

So “AI visibility” is several separate problems. Fixing your Google Business Profile helps Google’s AI. It does little for ChatGPT unless the pages ChatGPT reads also list you. For a full diagnosis of why a rival gets named instead of you, see why ChatGPT recommends your competitor.

What the directories let AI crawlers read (checked 13 October 2026)

We wanted to know whether ChatGPT reads Yelp by crawling it or only through the licence. So we fetched the live robots.txt files of directories that come up often in local AI answers and read what each allows the main AI search crawlers to fetch. robots.txt is the file every well-behaved crawler reads before requesting a page.

Yelp is the row that matters. Its file disallows OAI-SearchBot everywhere except two sections, so ChatGPT’s search crawler isn’t permitted to fetch Yelp business pages at all. Yet Yelp says its ratings and reviews now power ChatGPT’s local experience. The data travels through the commercial licence, not the open web. For owners that means two things: your Yelp profile can reach ChatGPT even though ChatGPT can’t crawl it, and no crawler log or audit tool will show you that pipeline. It also fits the law-firm study above, where ChatGPT cited Yelp in 0.0% of answers: Yelp’s filing says the licence applies in “relevant categories”, not everywhere.

Five other sites we tried (Angi, Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Justia and Thumbtack) refused our request for robots.txt or returned an unusual status, so we couldn’t read their rules from outside. That is common on heavily protected sites and isn’t evidence either way. Treat the table as a one-day snapshot taken with a simulated user agent; directories change these files without notice.

The local playbook, step by step

Work through these in order. Steps 1–4 happen off your website and matter most. Steps 5–6 are the part a site audit can check. Step 7 tells you whether any of it worked.

1. Claim and complete the four listings that feed the assistants

• Google Business Profile feeds AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini and Ask Maps. Fill every field: primary and secondary categories, services, hours including holiday hours, attributes, photos, and a plain-language description.
• Apple Business at business.apple.com feeds Apple Maps place cards, which Apple says display “across Apple Maps, Safari, Spotlight, and more.” Add photos and hours, and set a custom action such as “order” or “reserve” that links to your site.
• Bing Places at bing.com/forbusiness feeds Bing search and Bing Maps. Microsoft rebuilt it in October 2025 with a Google import, so this takes minutes if your Google profile is already right.
• Yelp: claim the free business page. Even if you never advertise there, it is the dataset OpenAI licensed for ChatGPT’s local answers.

Use exactly the same business name, address, phone number, hours and categories everywhere, including your website footer. Conflicting listings give every system a reason to prefer someone else, and wrong hours are one of the most common complaints about AI answers.

2. Earn recent reviews, and reply to all of them

Reviews behave more like a threshold than a ranking factor. Locations ChatGPT recommended averaged 4.3 stars in SOCi’s data, and BrightLocal’s 2026 survey reports a sharp increase in consumers who only use businesses rated 4.5 stars or higher. Aim for a steady flow rather than a burst: Google first, then the one platform your industry relies on (Yelp for restaurants, Healthgrades or Zocdoc for clinics, Avvo for lawyers). Reply to every review; 80% of consumers in the same survey said they are likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews. Never buy reviews: it breaks every platform’s rules and puts the listing itself at risk.

3. Find the pages the assistants actually cite for your city

Most guides skip this step, and it is where most of the gains are. Write down 10–20 questions a real customer would ask (“best emergency plumber in Leeds”, “dentist open Saturday near Brookline”). Ask each one in ChatGPT with search on, in Perplexity, in Google AI Mode and in Gemini, logged out or in a private window, from your own area, on at least three different days. Record every page each answer cites. The same few directories, “best of” lists and local news pages will keep appearing. Those pages are your outreach list: get listed, reviewed or mentioned on them.

Expect the answers to move. In SparkToro’s test of 2,961 runs, there was less than a 1-in-100 chance that ChatGPT or Google’s AI returned the same list of brands twice. Look for sources that recur, not for one good screenshot. How to measure AI visibility covers how many runs you need and how to log them.

4. Earn genuine local mentions

Whitespark’s May 2026 guide to AI Mode says Google’s AI Mode is “depending heavily” on unstructured citations for local answers: mentions on blogs, local news, community sites, sponsorship pages and industry publications. The usual local-PR moves apply: sponsor a youth team, join the trade association, give a local journalist a useful quote, get into the chamber of commerce directory. Google’s own guide warns that “seeking inauthentic ‘mentions’ across the web isn’t as helpful as it might seem”, so skip paid link schemes and fake forum posts.

5. Put the facts AI gets wrong on your own site, in plain HTML

When an assistant can’t find a fact, it guesses or borrows one from a directory. Publish the facts customers ask about on your own pages: opening hours, service area by town, starting prices or price ranges, booking and cancellation policy, accessibility, parking, walk-ins. Put them in the page’s HTML, not only in an image, a PDF or a widget that loads with JavaScript; Vercel and MERJ’s analysis of crawler traffic found that ChatGPT’s and Claude’s crawlers don’t execute JavaScript. Semantic HTML for AI crawlers explains the structure that survives extraction.

6. Don’t block the crawlers that feed local answers

Check that your robots.txt and your CDN let in OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Googlebot, Bingbot and Applebot. Two details trip up local sites. Apple says that if your robots.txt doesn’t mention Applebot but does mention Googlebot, Applebot follows the Googlebot rules, so a stray Googlebot block hides you from Siri too. And Cloudflare’s stricter “Block” setting for AI training now stops “Applebot, Bingbot, and Googlebot from reaching your site — search included.” GPTBot vs OAI-SearchBot has a working robots.txt, and our free AI crawler checker tests the live response.

Also leave nosnippet off your service pages unless you mean it. Apple uses it as the opt-out from Siri’s broad world knowledge answers, and Google says it “will also prevent the content from being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode.”

7. Measure what actually reaches you

Add “ChatGPT or another AI assistant” as an option in your “How did you hear about us?” field and booking form; across the owner and agency threads we reviewed, it is the proof recommended most often. Then use the free first-party data: the GA4 AI Assistant channel (ChatGPT links carry utm_source=chatgpt.com), Search Console’s generative AI report for AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions, and Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report, which shows citations and the “grounding queries” behind them. Apple Business adds location insights on Maps searches, views and taps.

Notes by business type

Restaurants and cafés

Yelp matters more than it has in years, because its content now feeds ChatGPT’s local answers. Keep the menu on your own site as text with prices, not a PDF or photo. Set an Apple Business custom action for reservations or ordering, and update holiday hours on Google, Apple, Bing and Yelp on the same day.

Dentists, doctors and clinics

Claim the profession directories patients use (Healthgrades and Zocdoc in the US, the NHS service finder in the UK). On your own site, list practitioners with credentials, the treatments you offer, insurance or payment options and how to book, in plain text. These are high-stakes topics, so leaving gaps invites an assistant to fill them from someone else’s data.

Lawyers and other professionals

The law-firm data above is the clearest evidence that each assistant has favourite directories. Claim and complete Avvo, Justia, Martindale, Super Lawyers and FindLaw, with identical names, practice areas and bar details. Build one page per practice area and city with real attorney bios.

Trades and home services

Quote-request platforms are moving into the assistants: Yelp’s August 2026 filing said a Request-a-Quote integration with ChatGPT was expected “in the coming weeks”. Keep your Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack and BBB profiles current (HomeStars in Canada), publish a page per town you serve, and put licence and insurance details in plain text.

What not to spend money on

• “Submit your business to ChatGPT” services. There is no submission form for local businesses. OpenAI documents its crawler as the way into ChatGPT search, and its local data comes from partners such as Yelp. Product feeds for retailers are a different matter; see getting products into ChatGPT shopping.
• llms.txt files and FAQ schema sold as AI fixes. Google says its Search ignores llms.txt, and a controlled test found adding schema didn’t lift AI citations. GEO myths, graded has the evidence for both.
• Bought reviews and seeded Reddit threads. Reddit says its own AI now catches about 25,000 spammy posts a day.
• Monthly “AI rank” reports built on single screenshots. Answers vary by run, by location and by account.

What our audit checks, and what it can’t

A free SEO·AEO·GEO audit checks the part you control on your own site: whether OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot and the search engines can fetch your pages, whether your hours and services are in the raw HTML, whether your CDN turns crawlers away, and whether snippet controls keep you out of AI answers. It can’t see your Google, Apple, Bing or Yelp listings, your reviews, or which directories cite you. Those are steps 1–4, and they matter more. The broader evidence-graded checklist is in how to get ChatGPT to recommend your business.