AI assistants recommend local businesses mostly by reading the web, not by knowing you personally. They pull from search results and from pages they fetch, then summarise what they find. So the practical way to be recommended is to make your business easy to find and easy to quote: clear facts on your own site, honest reviews elsewhere, and no technical barrier stopping their crawlers. No one can guarantee a mention, and anyone who says otherwise is guessing.
How do AI assistants find local businesses?
It helps to separate two things an assistant can draw on. The first is what the underlying model learned in training, which is a snapshot of text from some past period. A small business is unlikely to be well represented there, and the snapshot is out of date by the time anyone uses it. The second is live information: when you ask about a local business, many assistants search the web, open some pages and write an answer from what they read.
Tools such as ChatGPT with search, Perplexity and the AI answers inside Google behave in this second way for many questions. They send a query to a search index, pick a handful of pages, read them and give a summary, often with links to the sources. Each product runs differently, and the companies change how they work often and do not publish every detail. So treat anything that claims to be a precise recipe with suspicion.
What you can rely on is the shape of the process: the assistant needs to find your pages, read them without trouble, and find the same facts confirmed elsewhere. Everything useful you can do fits those three needs.
💡 An assistant can only recommend what it can find, read and check. Your job is to make all three easy.
What should a business website say so AI can quote it?
Imagine a customer asks: “Who is a good emergency electrician in Bristol, and roughly what does a call-out cost?” To answer, an assistant needs a page that states the service, the place and the price in plain sentences. If your site says “Quality electrical solutions for all your needs” and nothing else, there is nothing to quote.
Write facts the way you would tell a customer on the phone:
- 1What you do, in the words customers use: “emergency electrician”, not “power solutions”.
- 2Where you work: the actual towns and neighbourhoods, and how far you will travel.
- 3What it costs: starting prices or typical ranges, and what is included. If a price varies, say what it depends on.
- 4How it works: how to book, how fast you can come, what happens on the day.
- 5Who you are: your name, how long you have traded, any qualifications or registrations you really hold.
- 6When you are open, and how to reach you: phone, email, address or service area.
Put each service and each place on its own page, as you would for ordinary Google search. A page about one thing is easier to match to a question than a page about everything.
Why do FAQ pages and plain answers help?
People ask assistants full questions: “How long does a boiler service take?”, “Do you cover Hackney?”, “How much is a dog groomer in Leeds?” A page that already contains those questions with short, direct answers is easy to pull from. A common-sense FAQ is therefore one of the most useful pages a small business can have.
Write the questions the way customers really ask them. Your own inbox and phone calls are the best source: the questions you answer every week are the ones to publish. Keep each answer short and specific, with real numbers where you can. “Usually 45 to 60 minutes” beats “it depends”. If it genuinely depends, say on what.
| Hard to quote | Easy to quote | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | “Competitive rates” | “Call-out £60, then £45 an hour. Most boiler services take an hour.” |
| Area | “Serving your local area” | “We cover Bristol, Bath and South Gloucestershire.” |
| Speed | “Fast response” | “Same-day for emergencies called before 3pm.” |
| Proof | “Trusted by many” | “Gas Safe registered. Trading since 2012.” |
Only publish claims that are true and that you can stand behind. Assistants and people both check, and a wrong fact repeated in an answer is worse than no answer.
Do reviews on other sites matter for AI recommendations?
Probably yes, in a roundabout way. Assistants that search the web tend to be cautious about a business that only says good things about itself. Mentions and ratings on other sites, such as your Google Business Profile, trade bodies, local directories and news or community pages, give them something independent to check against. We cannot tell you exactly how any one assistant weighs them, because they do not publish it. But the logic is the same as for a person: a business confirmed by several sources is easier to trust.
This is why local search basics and AI visibility overlap so much. Work on a complete Google Business Profile, real reviews and consistent name, address and phone details helps both. We cover those steps in our local search checklist.
Should I allow AI crawlers in my robots.txt?
Your website has a small file called robots.txt that tells automated visitors which parts of the site they may read. Search engines and some AI services each send their own crawler, and each identifies itself by name. If your file blocks them, they cannot read your pages, and a page they cannot read is unlikely to be quoted.
Many sites are blocked by accident. A developer once added a blanket “disallow everything” rule while the site was being built and never removed it, or a security plugin blocks unfamiliar visitors by default. To check, type your web address followed by /robots.txt into a browser. If you see a line reading “Disallow: /” under a general rule, ask whoever manages the site to look at it.
Whether to allow every AI crawler is your choice. Some companies run separate crawlers for building their models and for fetching pages to answer a live question, and their documentation explains which is which. A business that wants to be recommended generally wants the live-answer and search crawlers allowed. If you have concerns about your content being used to train models, read each company’s published guidance and decide per crawler. What matters is that you make the choice on purpose rather than by accident.
Some sites also publish a plain text file called llms.txt, a short summary of the business and its key pages written for language models. It is a proposal that some people use, not a standard that every assistant is known to read, so do not expect it to do much by itself. If it is cheap to add, it does no harm.
Does the technical side of the site matter?
Yes, but mainly in being boringly correct. Crawlers read the text in your page’s code. If your key facts are only inside images, a PDF menu, or content that appears only after clicking, they may be missed. So:
- 1Put your prices, hours and service areas in normal text on the page, not just in an image of a leaflet.
- 2Give every page its own clear title and a heading that says what it is about.
- 3Keep the site fast and working on phones. A page that errors out or takes too long may simply not be read.
- 4Use HTTPS, so the site is secure and does not show browser warnings.
- 5Add structured data, a standard way of labelling your name, address, opening hours and reviews for machines, if your site builder supports it.
- 6Keep the facts current. A page that says you are open on a day you are shut teaches everyone not to trust it.
What can nobody promise you about AI recommendations?
Be careful with anyone who sells “AI ranking” as a guaranteed product. The honest position is:
- 1Assistants give different answers to the same question at different times, and to different people.
- 2The companies change their systems without notice, and do not publish their ranking methods.
- 3There is no verified, public list of exactly which factors make an assistant name your business.
- 4Being clear, accurate and well confirmed across the web is sensible, and also helps ordinary customers, so little is lost by doing it.
It is also worth checking what assistants already say about you. Ask a few of them, in plain words, the questions your customers would ask. Note what is right, what is wrong, and what is missing. Wrong information usually traces back to an outdated listing, and the fix is to correct the listing.
A practical order to do it in
- 1Check your robots.txt so you are not blocking crawlers by accident.
- 2Make sure your Google Business Profile, website and social pages show the same name, address, phone and hours.
- 3Write or rewrite your service pages with clear descriptions, areas and prices.
- 4Add a real FAQ page built from the questions customers ask you.
- 5Ask recent customers for honest reviews.
- 6Ask a few assistants about your business every couple of months and fix anything wrong.
This is the thinking behind how Adyft Sites builds websites. You answer questions on WhatsApp about your services, areas and prices, and we write each page with those facts stated plainly, add the FAQ, keep the site fast and secure, and leave crawlers able to read it. We cannot promise any assistant will name you, but we can make sure there is a clear, correct site to be found.
Questions about AI assistants and local businesses
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT or Perplexity?
Not in the sense of buying a recommendation inside the answer. Some products show clearly labelled sponsored results, and the details change. Organic answers are built from what the assistant finds and judges useful. Be wary of any service that sells a guaranteed mention.
Do I need a website to be recommended by an AI assistant?
A website is not strictly required, since assistants also read directories and review pages. But your own site is the one place where you control the facts, prices and wording, so it gives them the best source to quote. Businesses without one rely on whatever others have written.
What is robots.txt and should I change it?
It is a small file at the root of your website that tells crawlers what they may read. Check it by adding /robots.txt to your address. If it blocks everything, crawlers cannot read your pages. Changes are quick for whoever manages the site.
Is llms.txt necessary?
No. It is a proposed plain text summary file for language models, and it is not known to be read by every assistant. Treat it as optional. Clear page text and open crawler access matter much more.
Why does an assistant give wrong details about my business?
Usually because it found outdated or conflicting information, such as an old phone number on a directory. Update every listing so the facts match, and make sure your own site states them clearly.
How long until an AI assistant picks up my changes?
It varies. Assistants that search live can read a changed page soon after it is indexed, which can take days or weeks. Anything learned during training only updates when the company releases a new model. There is no reliable timetable.
Is this different from normal Google SEO?
It overlaps a great deal. Clear pages, accurate listings, reviews and a fast site help both. The extra pieces for AI are mostly direct question-and-answer content and making sure crawlers are not blocked.
A clear, correct site gives assistants something to quote
Adyft Sites writes your pages from a few WhatsApp answers, with services, areas, prices and an FAQ stated plainly, and hosts, secures and updates the site for you.