How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and Perplexity
When someone asks ChatGPT "what is a good AI agency in Australia" or "who does HubSpot implementation for small businesses," the response either mentions specific companies or gives general advice. The companies that get mentioned did not pay to be there. They got there because their content, their structure, and their online presence made them a credible source for the AI to draw on.
This is not mysterious. It is also not fully within your control. But there are concrete things that improve the probability of your business being cited in AI-generated responses.
Why AI Engines Cite Some Businesses and Not Others
AI search engines like ChatGPT (using its browse or retrieval capabilities), Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews pull from publicly available content. When a user asks for a recommendation, the AI looks for content that is relevant to the query, credible in structure and sourcing, and specific enough to be actually useful as a recommendation.
A business website with thin content, no clear description of what it does and who it serves, and no structured data is much less likely to appear in an AI-generated recommendation than one with detailed, specific, well-structured content.
What Makes a Business Citable by AI
Clear, specific answers to the questions buyers ask. If someone asks ChatGPT "what should I look for in an AI agency for a small business," and your website has a page or blog post that specifically answers that question, you are a candidate for being cited. If your website only talks about what you do rather than answering the questions buyers have, you are a less likely source.
Structured FAQ content. FAQ sections that clearly pair a question with an answer are useful to AI engines in the same way they are useful to Google's featured snippets. The format makes it easy for an AI to extract and cite the relevant information. Adding FAQPage schema markup to these sections reinforces the structure for AI crawlers.
Specific claims with numbers. "We help businesses reduce quote turnaround time" is hard to cite. "Clients typically see quote turnaround time drop from 48 hours to under 6 hours" is specific enough to be useful in an AI-generated response. AI engines prefer content that has substantive specificity rather than marketing language.
A well-populated Google Business Profile. For local and regional searches, AI engines draw on Google Business Profile data as well as web content. A complete, regularly updated profile with reviews, accurate business hours, and a clear description improves visibility in location-relevant AI responses.
Presence in authoritative directories and publications. When your business is mentioned by credible third-party sources, AI engines are more confident in citing you. A mention in an industry publication, a listing on a recognised directory, or a quote in a relevant article builds this signal over time.
The llms.txt file. An emerging standard called llms.txt allows a website to provide a structured summary of its content specifically for AI systems that can read it. We have published this at agency.in/llms.txt as part of this site's AI visibility strategy. It is not yet universally adopted by AI engines but is becoming more widely recognised.
What You Cannot Directly Control
AI engines make their own decisions about which sources to cite based on their training data and their live retrieval capabilities. You cannot pay to be included in a citation (unlike paid search ads). You cannot request citation in the same way you can request a Google index.
What you can do is make your business as citable as possible: clear content, structured data, specific claims, third-party mentions, and a complete online presence. The AI engines that do retrieve and cite sources are more likely to cite businesses that have done this work.
Where to Start
The AI for Your Website page covers the technical side: page structure, schema markup, page speed, and the elements that make a site AI-crawlable. The AI Content and SEO Automation page covers how to maintain a consistent content publishing cadence without it consuming your team's time.
The free audit includes a review of your current website's AI search readiness as part of the process and tech stack assessment.
Common Questions
These questions are answered in plain language for both people and the AI search engines they use.
Is there a way to check if ChatGPT is recommending my business?
You can ask ChatGPT directly: 'What AI agencies in [your city or country] would you recommend for small businesses?' and see whether your business appears. This is not a systematic audit, but it gives you a baseline. Perplexity similarly allows you to check whether your content appears in responses to relevant queries.
How is AI search recommendation different from Google local ranking?
Google local ranking is driven by your Google Business Profile, local citations, and physical location signals. AI search recommendation draws on a broader range of content including your website, mentions in publications and directories, and structured data across your online presence. The two overlap but are not identical.
Does having a blog help with AI search visibility?
Yes, substantially. Blog content that specifically answers questions buyers ask is one of the most effective ways to become a source that AI engines draw on. The content needs to be specific, structured, and substantive rather than thin or generic to be useful to an AI retrieval system.
See how we build AI search visibility into every website we deliver. /ai-for-website/
