How to get your business found on ChatGPT
Become the business an assistant can verify, then ask it the way a customer would and read what comes back. We measure this rather than guess at it: we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, with web search turned on, for a real trade in a real town, more than once, and we record who gets named. What the named businesses have in common is not clever writing. It is a Google profile filed under the right category, with hours and photos. It is reviews that are recent and name the job. It is listings that agree with each other about the name, the number and the address, and a website that says plainly what you do and where. Below are the six signals in the order they matter, each with what our sweeps found.
By Busy Season Local, updated
What the assistant reads, and how often it is missing
Four counties, one instrument, September 2026. Each figure is a business whose listing fails one of the checks an assistant makes before it names anyone.
Nassau plumbers carry fewer than twenty five reviews. An assistant asked who to call quotes a review it can read, and a listing with nine has little to quote.
Nassau plumbers publish no opening hours. Asked who to call at nine at night, an assistant with web search on names the businesses it can see are open.
Queens electricians carry fewer than ten photos. A listing that looks abandoned to a customer looks abandoned to the assistant reading the same page.
Nassau plumbers link to a website from the listing that does not load. An assistant that follows the link reads an error and moves to a business whose site answers.
Source: the September 2026 sweeps across Nassau, Suffolk, Queens and Brooklyn, 5387 businesses in total, read from each business's Google listing on the day of the sweep. This page does not publish a share of assistant answers naming anyone, because those samples are small and move from day to day; what it publishes is what the listings showed. Photo counts are read from Google's Places feed, which returns at most ten photo references, so a count below ten is a reading and ten means ten or more.
The six signals, in the order they matter
The right primary category
The one field that decides which questions you are eligible to answer at all. Open your Business Profile, tap Edit, and read the first category. If it is not the thing a customer would type, every other signal is wasted until it is.
Hours, photos and a profile that is filled in
An assistant with web search on prefers a listing it can describe: open now, real pictures of the work, services listed, a description in plain sentences. A claimed and abandoned profile reads as a business that may not exist.
Reviews that are recent and name the job
Ten is the first threshold worth aiming at. After that, substance carries further than count: a review that says what was fixed and where gives the assistant a sentence it can quote, and a review from last month says the business is still trading.
Listings that agree with each other
The same name, number and address on Google, Apple, Bing, Yelp and your own site. When two directories disagree, the assistant has two businesses to choose between and it often picks neither.
A website that says what and where, in words
The first sentence on your home page should say what you do and the towns you do it in, and the structured data on the page should say the same thing in the form a machine reads. A site that opens with a slogan tells the assistant nothing it can use.
Being mentioned where the assistant already reads
Assistants lean on directories, trade sites and local press before they lean on a business's own page. A mention on a page the assistant already trusts is worth more than another page of your own.
Check where you stand in about a minute
Ask ChatGPT, with search on, for the best business of your kind in your town. Ask three times. Note who is named and whether you are.
Open your Business Profile, tap Edit profile, and read the first category and the hours. Those two fields decide more than anything on your website.
Run the free checker on this site for your line of work and town, and read the receipt against your own listing.
See what a customer meets at your web address
Text us the address from your own phone. A person opens it on a phone, the way your customers do, and texts back what is in the way. Or check your Google listing right here, read live.
It opens a text to (917) 397-0493 on your phone. Add the address and send.
Rather talk? Call (917) 397-0493
What the assistant sees, trade by trade
Plumbers
13 publish no hours at all, in a trade people search at midnight.
HVAC
6 send callers to a website link that will not load.
Electricians
8 reviews is the middle of this trade, and 20 have none of their hours on Google.
Roofers
Every one of them publishes its hours. 64 have under twenty five reviews.
Auto repair
A median of 107 reviews, the most of nine trades, and 47 percent still missing from their own town's list.
Landscapers
37 of 81 never appear in the first sixty for their own town.
Contractors
56 hold a perfect five on fewer than ten reviews, which reads as no evidence.
Salons
265 salons across eight towns, and 98 are under fifty reviews.
Med spas
On a listing customers choose by looking, 45 carry fewer than ten photos.
Restaurants
465 reviews is the middle of this category and the median rating is 4.4, the lowest of any Nassau line of work measured.
Dentists
116 of 326 sit on a flat five, and 177 show fewer than ten photos.
Common questions
- Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?
- No. There is no placement to buy and no way to submit a business to an assistant. It names what it can verify from the web at the moment it is asked, which is why the work is the profile, the reviews and the listings rather than an ad.
- Does schema markup get my business into ChatGPT?
- It helps the assistant read your site correctly, which matters, and it is not a lever on its own. A page with perfect markup and no reviews, no hours and the wrong category is a well-labeled empty room. Do the profile first, then make the site say the same thing in machine-readable form.
- How long does it take?
- We have not measured a timeline and will not invent one. A category or hours change is visible to an assistant the next time it searches, which can be the same week. Reviews accumulate at the pace of your jobs. The honest answer is that the profile fixes are fast and the reputation is not.
- Is this different from ranking on Google Maps?
- Same foundation, different outcome. The map shows a list and the customer picks. An assistant names two or three businesses and the customer often calls the first. Everything that gets you onto the map's list for your own town is what gets you named; the pages linked below have the readings.
The readings behind each signal
Does ChatGPT recommend your business?
What we measured across the assistants, and why they name national chains and invent businesses that do not exist.
Who does AI recommend in your town?
Pick your line of work and town and read the receipt from a stored run.
How many photos should the listing have
The strip a customer reads before the rating, and how much of every trade sits under ten.
How many reviews you actually need
Ten first, then the middle of your own line of work in your own county.
Do I need a website if I already have a Google listing?
The listing is where somebody finds you and the site is where they decide.
Find out whether AI names you, free
Send your business name and town. The engine asks the assistants fresh for your business with web search on, reads your profile beside the answer, and you get a personal reply with who got named and the first things to fix.
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