How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude

How AI engines choose what to recommend

Across all of them, the pattern is consistent: models quote pages that are easy to fetch, clearly structured, factual, recent and corroborated by other trusted sources.

The 90-day plan

Days 1–15: Foundation

• Fix crawl access, rendering and indexing (see LLM-friendly checklist).
• Verify the site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools; submit sitemaps; enable IndexNow.
• Set up Google Analytics with the Google tag so AI referrals are measurable.
• Build a list of 30–50 buyer prompts: “best [service] for [type of business] in [city]”, “how do I [problem]”, “[you] vs [competitor]”, “how much does [service] cost”.

Days 16–45: Content that gets quoted

• For each prompt, publish or upgrade a page with a direct 40–60 word answer, a comparison table, specific numbers (prices, timelines, ranges), and a short FAQ.
• Add original data: your own benchmarks, client outcomes (with permission), cost breakdowns.
• Add author bylines with real credentials and “last updated” dates.

Days 46–90: Corroboration and authority

• Earn third-party mentions: industry directories, podcasts, guest articles, partner pages, Reddit/Quora answers where genuinely helpful, review platforms.
• Make your brand description identical across LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, Crunchbase and directories.
• Publish comparison and alternatives pages honestly; AI engines often answer “X vs Y” questions.

What does not work

• Hidden text or prompt-injection tricks aimed at AI engines. They are detected and can get a site penalised.
• Mass AI-generated pages with no original value.
• Buying fake reviews or mentions.
• Promising “guaranteed #1 in ChatGPT”. Answers vary by user, location and model version, and nobody controls them.

How to measure AI visibility

• Share of voice: in a fixed set of prompts, the percentage of answers that mention or cite you.
• Citation quality: which of your pages are cited, and for which questions.
• Referral traffic from AI domains in Google Analytics.
• Brand search growth in Google Search Console.

A buyer-prompt library to start with

Build your tracking set from the phrases real buyers use. Organise them into five groups and write 6–10 prompts for each:

Run each prompt in ChatGPT (with search), Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, from the country you target, in a clean session. Record whether you are mentioned, cited with a link, or absent, and which sources are cited instead. Those cited sources are your off-site to-do list: if an industry directory or a comparison blog keeps appearing, getting listed there is high-value.

Why third-party mentions matter so much

AI engines are cautious about self-promotion. A claim on your own website is one signal; the same claim repeated by an independent directory, a customer review and an industry article is far stronger. Prioritise a small number of genuinely relevant mentions: niche directories, professional associations, partner pages, podcasts, case-study features and review platforms for your sector. Consistent facts (name, description, location, services, pricing range) across them help engines resolve you as one entity.

Page-level checklist for a citable page

• A question-style H1 or H2 and a 40–60 word direct answer
• At least one table or numbered list
• Specific numbers, dates and named sources
• Author name with credentials and last-updated date
• A short FAQ of real questions
• Schema that matches the visible content
• Internal links to related pages with descriptive anchor text

Frequently asked questions

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