Customers now ask ChatGPT who to call. Here is what you can actually control, what the platforms say, what practitioners are finding, and a free check to see how your business shows up.

The short answer

There is no form to submit your business to ChatGPT, and no way to pay for a place in its answers. OpenAI says ChatGPT’s ads, which reached Australia in April 2026, are kept separate and do not influence answers. What you can control: make sure your website is not blocking OpenAI’s search crawler, keep your Google Business Profile and main directory listings complete and consistent, put the details customers ask about on your own website, and keep earning genuine reviews and local mentions. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode need nothing beyond normal Search eligibility, with no special files or markup. Then test with real customer questions a few times, because the answers change from day to day.

Some customers now ask an AI tool for a recommendation before they search. Roy Morgan estimates that 45% of Australians aged 14 and over used ChatGPT in an average four weeks in the March quarter of 2026. If someone asks “who’s a good electrician in Ballarat?”, a few businesses get named and the rest do not.

There is a lot of confident advice about this, much of it from people selling a fix. This guide separates what OpenAI, Google and Microsoft document from what practitioners are finding in their own tests, and from what is still guesswork. It ends with a 20-minute check you can run yourself.

What OpenAI, Google and Microsoft actually say

What the platforms document, as read on 30 October 2026
QuestionWhat is documented
How does ChatGPT find websites?OpenAI’s ChatGPT search help says that to make a website eligible, you allow its crawler, OAI-SearchBot, and make sure your host or content delivery network allows OpenAI’s published IP addresses. There is no submission form. It also says: “Placement is not guaranteed.”
Is appearing in ChatGPT search the same as letting OpenAI train on my site?No. OpenAI’s crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot (search) and GPTBot (training) are controlled separately, and that a site can allow one and block the other.
Where does ChatGPT get local business listings?OpenAI says ChatGPT may share your approximate location with “trusted third-party providers that help provide more local information, such as nearby business listings”. It does not name them. It also says it “sometimes partners with other search providers”, and points to Microsoft’s and Shopify’s privacy policies. It does not say Bing by name.
Can I pay to be recommended?Not in the answer itself. OpenAI’s ads help page says: “Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers.” Ads appear below a response for people on the Free and Go plans, are “clearly labeled”, and are ranked partly on advertiser bids. OpenAI lists Australia as a country where businesses can buy them through its Ads Manager.
What does Google need for AI Overviews and AI Mode?Google’s AI features guide says: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Google also says: “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup.” Its checklist includes keeping your Business Profile up to date.
How does Google rank local results?Google’s Business Profile help says “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity” and “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” The page does not say whether the same factors apply to AI Mode.
Where does Microsoft Copilot get web results?Microsoft says Copilot “may fetch information from the Bing search service” when web search is on. Bing Webmaster Tools now has an AI Performance report showing how often a site is cited in Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries.

OpenAI also warns that “Search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect.” That matters for you as a business, because an AI answer can describe you wrongly, or recommend a competitor that has already closed.

What practitioners are finding in their own tests

Because the platforms say so little about how they pick businesses, the most useful evidence comes from people running repeated tests. Most of it is from the United States, and most of the people below sell marketing software or services, so we have noted their interests. Treat their findings as useful signals, and expect exceptions.

The largest dataset we found comes from BrightLocal, a local SEO software company. Its chief executive, Myles Anderson, presented it in an October 2026 webinar hosted by the website builder Duda: around 200,000 local prompts about roughly 1,300 businesses, across ChatGPT and Google’s AI features. Of the unique websites cited, 93% were individual business websites, although by number of citations business websites made up 42%, because Google Business Profile and Yelp pages were cited again and again. His summary: “your website is absolutely the main data source that AI uses to understand” your business. He also said ChatGPT leans heavily on Yelp for local data. BrightLocal is a Yelp partner, and Anderson himself agreed in the same session that Yelp “doesn’t have even a footprint” in Australia. His suggestion for Australian businesses was to ask the AI tools which review sites matter in your industry and country.

A separate BrightLocal survey of about 1,200 US consumers found that about 8% now start a local search in an AI chat tool, while Google is still where most people start. On reviews, Anderson’s advice was: “don’t just have a Google only strategy because you won’t get into ChatGPT”. Duda, which hosted the session, sells websites, and BrightLocal sells AI visibility tracking.

Chris Panteli, who runs a digital PR agency (so third-party coverage is what he sells), described a test on Ryan Doser’s podcast: 30 local buyer prompts, run in ChatGPT every day for 21 days in a private browser window. The sources ChatGPT used shifted from day to day, but he found that “almost all of that difference is randomness”. In a separate study of US real estate agencies, he found that a business’s own “best in town” pages were read but not repeated unless other sites said similar things. One check of ChatGPT tells you very little, and what other people say about you counts.

A small test by Ranking Academy, a UK local SEO trainer, conflicts with Anderson’s view that ChatGPT does not use Google Business Profile. Call tracking numbers that existed only on some businesses’ Google Business Profiles “showed up in ChatGPT’s results, too”. Its edits to Bing Places listings changed nothing, but those edits added keywords to business names, which Bing’s rules do not allow, so that part proves little. It is a small, undocumented test, but it suggests your Google listing can reach ChatGPT even though OpenAI does not say so. Nobody outside OpenAI knows exactly where its local listings come from, which is a good reason to keep every listing accurate.

Reddit threads show the same pattern from the owner’s side. A landscaper with no website or social media posted that a new customer “said they were referred to me by chat gpt”. A law firm partner in r/DigitalMarketing found ChatGPT recommending newer firms instead of theirs, and one commenter got ChatGPT to admit it had not taken the star ratings it showed from any real source. Another owner’s test turned up a recommended competitor that had closed years earlier.

What is still guesswork

  • An llms.txt file is a text file some people add to help AI tools read a site. Google’s guide to optimising for its generative AI features lists “LLMS.txt files and other “special” markup” among things you can ignore, because “Google Search itself doesn’t use them”. One consultant has reported OpenAI fetching his llms.txt files, but nobody has shown the file changes who gets recommended.
  • Special “AI schema” is often sold as a fix, but Google says no special structured data is needed for its AI features. Some agencies recommend extra markup anyway, but we found no test showing it makes ChatGPT name a business.
  • Nobody can guarantee an AI ranking. OpenAI says placement is not guaranteed, and Google says you cannot pay for a better local ranking.
  • Buying press releases or bulk mentions came up as a cheap fix in a Reddit thread about a business ChatGPT had never heard of. Panteli’s finding was that what counts is independent sites agreeing about you, and paid announcements nobody reads are unlikely to do that.

A 20-minute AI visibility check

This is the check we would run for any small business. It uses only free tools, and it starts with what customers see.

1. Ask like a customer (5 minutes)

Open ChatGPT in a temporary chat or private window, so your own history does not shape the answer. Ask the first four questions the way a customer would, without your business name. The last one checks what it says about you. Do the same in Google’s AI Mode, and in Copilot if your customers use Microsoft products.

• Who is a good [your trade or service] in [your suburb or town]?
• I need [specific job, for example “a blocked drain fixed today”] in [suburb]. Who should I call?
• What does [service] usually cost in [city], and who offers it?
• Which [service] businesses in [area] have the best reviews?
• [Your business name] [suburb]: what do they do and are they any good?

Write down who is named, what is said about you, and which websites are cited. Repeat it on two more days, because one result means little. If the last question gets your details wrong, note exactly what is wrong. That tells you which listing to fix.

2. Check you are not blocking the crawlers (3 minutes)

Open your website’s robots.txt file by adding /robots.txt to your address, for example yourbusiness.com.au/robots.txt. Look for a line naming OAI-SearchBot or Googlebot, or the line “User-agent: *”, followed by “Disallow: /”. Either of those blocks the crawler from your whole site. If you see neither, OpenAI’s search crawler is already allowed and you do not need to add anything for it. If you use Cloudflare, also check its settings for AI crawlers. Ahrefs warns that “if your site is on Cloudflare, you could be blocking AI crawlers without realizing it”. If you are happy to appear in ChatGPT search but would rather OpenAI did not use your content for training, ask your web developer to add this as a separate block at the end of the file:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Do not add a separate “Allow” block for OAI-SearchBot unless your developer has checked it. A crawler named in its own block ignores the general rules, so it could open up pages you had deliberately blocked, such as admin or checkout pages.

OpenAI says robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours to take effect for search.

3. Check your Google Business Profile (4 minutes)

Check that your categories, services, service areas, hours, phone number and website are all correct, and that any old or closed locations are marked. Use your real business name, without extra keywords, because adding them breaks Google’s guidelines and can get a profile suspended. Google says “Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results.”

4. Check your own website (4 minutes)

For each main service, is there a page that says what you do, where you do it, roughly what it costs and how to book? Google says its AI features may run several related searches to answer one question, and OpenAI says ChatGPT search “typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries”. BrightLocal’s Anderson gives examples of the kind of follow-up questions involved, such as “cheapest” or “best value”, and the same goes for things like “open on weekends” or “does emergency call-outs”. If your site does not answer those, it cannot be the source. A clear page for each service and the suburbs you cover is also what a person comparing businesses wants to see.

5. Check the other sites that describe you (4 minutes)

Look at the websites the AI tools cited in step 1. Those are the directories and review sites that matter for your kind of business. Check that you are listed on them, with the same name, address, phone number and description. Asking ChatGPT which sites it relies on can give you more ideas, but treat its answer as a guess about itself. In Australia, sites worth checking for trades and services include hipages, Oneflare, ProductReview and Yellow Pages. That list is our suggestion, not something the platforms publish. Keep asking every customer for an honest review. Our guide on asking for Google reviews covers the rules.

How to tell whether it is working

Analytics tools undercount AI referrals, because some clicks from AI apps arrive without saying where they came from. Ahrefs, which sells SEO software, says in a product video that “whatever number you see in your analytics is almost certainly an undercount.” Three simple measures help:

  1. Add “How did you hear about us?” to your enquiry form and phone script, with “ChatGPT or another AI tool” as an option. In one Reddit discussion about leads from ChatGPT, a marketer describes customers saying they found the business through ChatGPT when analytics showed nothing.
  2. Check Google Search Console. Google says visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in the Performance report under the “Web” search type. They are mixed in with ordinary search, not shown separately.
  3. Set up Bing Webmaster Tools and look at its AI Performance report, still a public preview, for Copilot citations.

Rerun the five questions from step 1 every month or so and keep the results in a spreadsheet. A gradual change over a few months is more meaningful than any single answer. Our 15-minute website enquiry test is also worth running, so the enquiries AI sends you do not get lost.

Should you try ChatGPT ads?

Maybe, as a small test. OpenAI started rolling out ads in Australia on 16 April 2026 for people on the Free and Go plans. Paid plans such as Plus and Business do not show ads. Ads sit below the answer and do not change what ChatGPT recommends. OpenAI also says seeing an ad does not mean it endorses the advertiser. Treat it like any new ad channel. Start with a small budget and track the enquiries it brings separately.

Sources and credits

Platform documentation, read on 30 October 2026:

Tests and discussions we learnt from:

AI search changes quickly. The documentation and tests above were checked on 30 October 2026, and we will update this guide when the platforms change what they publish.

Written by AppliedAgents

Practical thinking on AI, automation and the work behind a business.