What ChatGPT looks at when it picks a local business to recommend, what we found in our own tests, and the steps that matter most for contractors.
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ChatGPT recommends the local businesses it can find good information about in a lot of places. For a home service business, that mostly comes down to three things. You need a Google Business Profile with plenty of recent reviews. Your business details need to match everywhere you're listed. And your website needs a clear page for each service you offer. This post goes through each one in the order we'd work on them. It's based on what we've seen when we test these tools for our clients and for our own business.
When someone asks ChatGPT who to hire, it usually runs a web search in the background. It reads the pages near the top and then writes a short answer that names a few businesses. Google's AI Overviews, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot work in a similar way. Our guide to what AEO is explains this in more detail.
On October 31, 2026 we asked ChatGPT for the best web design and SEO company for contractors in Bergen County, New Jersey. ChatGPT named six companies and put each one's Google rating and review count right next to its name. The two companies it listed first had 25 and 146 Google reviews. In that answer, the review count clearly carried a lot of weight.
The answers also change from one try to the next. In a 2026 report, Webflow said the odds of getting the same list of recommendations twice in a row are less than 1 in 100. One test only tells you so much. It's better to check the same questions every month and watch the trend.
Reviews are the first thing we'd work on. ChatGPT and Google's AI both read your rating, your review count and the words people use in their reviews. A review that says "they soft washed our house in Ramsey and the green streaks are gone" tells the AI what you do and where you do it. A review that only says "great job" doesn't tell it much.
Our post on how to get more Google reviews has wording you can copy for texts and emails.
AI tools read your Google profile, and they also read other listings. That includes Bing Places, Apple Maps, Yelp, Facebook, Angi, Thumbtack and the BBB. The AI combines what it finds, so an old phone number or address on one listing can end up in its answer. We've seen ChatGPT give out a client's personal cell number in place of the business line. An old listing outside Google still had it.
Check that your business name, address, phone number, website and hours are the same on every listing. Our list of free business listings for contractors shows where to look.
When ChatGPT names a business, it often links to a page on that business's website and quotes from it. In one test for our client Applewood Exterior Cleaning, ChatGPT quoted their starting prices straight from their Pomfret house washing page. The what is AEO guide has the full example.
Near the top of each service page, say what the service is and which towns you do it in. Say who it's for, and give a rough price if you're comfortable sharing one. A short list of common questions with answers at the bottom of the page also helps. Webflow tried this on six of its own pages. It added question and answer sections using information that was already on those pages, plus the matching schema code. Webflow reported more than 330 new AI citations within two weeks.
Keep the important text on the page when it loads. AI tools can have trouble reading information that only shows up after someone clicks a tab or swipes a slider.
The questions people ask you on the phone are the same ones they type into ChatGPT. Write them down for a few weeks. Then answer the most common ones on your website, either on a service page or in a short blog post.
Here's an example from our own site. Bing Webmaster Tools now has a report that shows how often Microsoft's AI tools cite a website. From early October to the start of November 2026, it showed 87 citations for sitehike.com. Of those, 80 went to just two posts. One is on how to tell if a Google Business Profile call is a scam, and the other is on how to add a manager to a Google Business Profile. Both answer one question that business owners ask, in plain steps.
It also helps to keep those pages up to date. Webflow's report cites research from Novastacks AI that 95% of ChatGPT citations point to pages updated within the past 10 months. It's worth going back over your main pages a couple of times a year.
AI tools trust a business more when several sources describe it the same way. We asked ChatGPT about pressure washing companies near Pomfret, Connecticut. It named three companies, and it described two of them using a Thumbtack profile and a Google Maps listing instead of their own websites.
Schema is worth having, and an llms.txt file is fine to add. Neither one will get your business recommended by itself.
Schema is code in the background of your website. It labels your business name, services, service area, hours and common questions so search engines and AI tools can read them directly. Visitors never see it. Webflow, WordPress and most other website builders can add it, so ask whoever built your site whether it's set up. Google's free Rich Results Test shows what schema a page has.
An llms.txt file is a short text file on your website written for AI tools. It lists your main pages with a one line description of each. It's a newer idea. Google has said its search engine doesn't use llms.txt files, and the other big AI companies haven't said whether their tools do.
We add both to the sites we build because they're quick to set up. If your reviews and listings still need work, though, your time will go further there.
If a competitor keeps getting named and you don't, look at the websites the answer links to. That usually shows where the AI is getting its information. It might be their reviews, a directory listing or a page on their site.
You may already get named when you run those questions. If you also have a steady flow of new reviews and your listings are accurate, keep doing what you're doing. Most of the work above is free, and you can do it yourself.
If you'd rather hand it off, AI search visibility is included in every SiteHike plan. Each month we run questions like these for each client and track who gets named. Then we fix whatever is missing or wrong. You can read more on our AI search visibility page, or start with a free audit to see where your business stands today.
Start with a free audit of your site and your Google listing. It costs nothing and you aren't signing up for anything.
