How to get your business cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers

More of your future customers are asking an AI tool instead of scrolling a page of search results. “Who does commercial HVAC in Halifax?” “Which bookkeepers near Truro work with farms?” ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews answer with a short list of names, sometimes with links. If your business is not on that list, the customer may never see you at all.

There is no secret formula for getting on it, and anyone promising guaranteed placement in AI answers is overselling. But these tools are not mysterious either. They recommend businesses they can find, read clearly, and cross-check against other sources. Most of the work is making that easy.

What answer engines actually read

The details vary by product and change often, but the broad pattern is consistent. AI search tools combine a few kinds of source:

• Your own website, read by their crawlers or fetched live when someone asks about you.
• A regular search index, such as Google’s or Bing’s, which many AI tools draw on behind the scenes.
• Third-party sources: business directories, review sites, maps listings, local news, industry associations, and forum discussions.

When the sources agree, the tool can state facts about you with confidence. When they conflict, or when there is too little to go on, it tends to leave you out or hedge. Everything below is about giving these systems clear, consistent, verifiable information.

Step 1: Make sure they can reach you

None of the rest matters if AI crawlers cannot read your site. Check your robots.txt (yoursite.com/robots.txt) and confirm you are not blocking the search and answer-engine crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. Also check whether your host, CDN, or website builder has an AI-bot blocking setting switched on; some do, and they can block the useful bots along with the ones you meant to stop. We covered the trade-offs in should your business block or welcome AI crawlers.

Also make sure your important content is in the page itself, not only inside images, PDFs, or elements that appear after heavy scripts run. If a page shows nothing useful with scripts turned off, some crawlers will see nothing useful either.

Step 2: Write clear, factual pages

AI tools answer questions, so give them pages that answer questions plainly.

• One page per core service. Say what you do, who it is for, and where. “We install and service heat pumps for homes and small commercial buildings in Halifax Regional Municipality” beats a paragraph about passion and excellence.
• Location and service area, stated in text. Your address, the towns you cover, and whether you travel. A map embed alone is not enough.
• Prices, or how you price. You do not have to publish a rate card. “Most kitchen renovations fall between X and Y” or “we quote a fixed price after a free site visit” gives a tool something concrete to repeat. Pages with no pricing information at all leave the question unanswered.
• An FAQ that reflects real questions. The questions customers actually ask you on the phone, answered in a sentence or two each.
• Who you are. An about page with your team, how long you have been operating, and any licences or certifications that apply.

Put the direct answer near the top of the page. Answer engines tend to lift a clean sentence rather than piece one together from scattered paragraphs.

Step 3: Keep your name, address, and phone consistent

Local search has long relied on consistent NAP (name, address, phone), and AI tools benefit from the same consistency. Your business name, address, and contact details should match exactly across your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, industry directories, and social profiles.

Small differences add up: “St.” in one place and “Street” in another is minor, but an old address on a directory, or a trading name that differs from your legal name without explanation, gives a tool a reason to doubt which record is right. Pick one canonical version and update everything to match. Our guide to local SEO in Nova Scotia covers the profiles worth claiming.

Step 4: Add structured data

Structured data is a block of code in your pages, using the schema.org vocabulary, that states facts in a format machines read directly: your business name, type, address, hours, services, and how your pages relate to each other. Search engines have used it for years, and it helps AI tools resolve your business as one consistent entity instead of guessing from prose.

For most local businesses, the useful starting point is a LocalBusiness (or more specific type) entry with your name, address, hours, and website, plus FAQ markup on your FAQ page where it matches visible content. Most website platforms support this through settings or a plugin. Keep it accurate; structured data that contradicts the visible page does more harm than none.

Step 5: Earn mentions and reviews elsewhere

AI tools weigh what other people say about you, not only what you say about yourself. Reviews on Google and relevant industry sites, listings in local business associations and chambers of commerce, mentions in local news, and supplier or partner pages that link to you all give a tool independent confirmation that you exist and do what you claim.

There is no shortcut here. Ask satisfied customers for reviews, respond to the reviews you get, join the associations that matter in your field, and say yes when a local outlet or partner wants to feature your work.

Step 6: Consider llms.txt, honestly

llms.txt is a proposed standard: a plain text file at your site’s root that summarizes who you are and links to your most important pages, written for AI tools to read. It is cheap to create and does no harm, and we publish one ourselves.

Be realistic about it, though. It is still emerging, the major AI tools have not committed to using it, and there is no good evidence that having one improves how often you are cited. Treat it as low-cost tidiness, not a ranking lever. If you only have an afternoon, spend it on steps 1 to 5.

How to tell whether it is working

Measurement is still rough, so combine a few signals.

• Ask the tools. Every month or two, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google the questions your customers would ask, and note whether you appear and what they say. Answers vary between sessions, so look for trends rather than single results.
• Check your referral traffic. When someone clicks a link in an AI answer, the visit often arrives with a referrer such as chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai. Many analytics setups lump these into “direct” or generic referral traffic by default. On our own site we group them into a separate channel labelled ai-search, so they are easy to see. A web developer can set up something similar for you.
• Ask new customers. “How did you hear about us?” now needs “an AI assistant” as an option.

What not to do

• Do not publish pages stuffed with keywords or city names. Answer engines favour clear answers, and search engines have long treated this as spam.
• Do not fake reviews or buy them. It breaks the terms of every major platform and can be illegal. It also undermines the independent confirmation you are trying to earn.
• Do not publish anything you would not want quoted. An outdated price or a service you no longer offer will be repeated back to customers. Keep pages current.
• Do not pay for guaranteed AI placement. Nobody controls what these tools say.

A short checklist

• AI search and answer-engine crawlers are allowed in robots.txt and at your host or CDN
• Key content is in page text, not only images or PDFs
• One clear page per core service, with location and service area stated
• Prices, or a plain explanation of how you price
• An FAQ built from real customer questions
• Name, address, and contact details identical across your site and every profile
• LocalBusiness structured data that matches the visible page
• An active effort to collect reviews and earn local mentions
• An optional llms.txt, treated as tidiness rather than strategy
• A monthly check of AI answers and AI referral traffic

Where to start

Our free AI-readiness audit checks your site’s crawler policy, structured data, and the other signals answer engines read, and emails you a checklist of what to fix first. For the more technical side, see making your website agent-ready and how we approach agent-ready websites for clients.

If you would like help with any of it, send us a short brief about your business and your website, and we will reply in writing within one business day.