How do ChatGPT and Google's AI decide which businesses to recommend?

Where the answer comes from

Think of the assistant as a very fast researcher. It takes the customer's question, runs its own searches, reads what comes back, and writes a short answer with links to where it read it. OpenAI says ChatGPT rewrites a question into one or more searches and can use a rough location for local results. Google says its AI Overviews link to pages that are already in Google Search.

So the AI is only as good as its sources. Step through it:

What a South African business can control

None of this is new or exotic. It is the same groundwork that gets you found on Google, done properly and kept up to date.

A website that says it plainly

What you do, in which towns or suburbs, and how to reach you, as normal text on the page. One page per main service helps. An AI cannot recommend you for work it cannot see you do.

The same details everywhere

Your business name, address and phone number should match on your website, Google, Facebook and every directory. If one listing says Centurion and another says Pretoria, the AI has to guess.

Google Business Profile

Your free listing on Google Maps and Search. Claim it, verify it, choose the right category and keep your hours current. Google says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and how well known you are.

Reviews

Ask every happy customer, and reply to every review. Google lists review count, rating and replies among the things that help a business stand out.

Mentions on other sites

Your trade body, local directories, suppliers, the local paper. Each credible page that names you and your area is one more source saying the same thing.

Structured data

A small block of code on your site that labels your business name, address, hours and services for machines. Visitors never see it. It must match what the page says.

Let the crawlers in

A crawler is the program that reads websites for a search engine or AI. If your site blocks Googlebot, Bingbot or OpenAI’s search crawler (OAI-SearchBot), you can’t be found there.

One local note: if your business lives only on Facebook or WhatsApp, there is very little of your own for an assistant to read. A simple website with your services and areas written out fixes that, and a light, fast one is kinder to customers paying for mobile data too.

Test it yourself in 5 minutes

You don't need a tool or an agency for this. You need the questions your customers ask.

1. Write down three questions a customer would ask, the way they would ask it. “Who does aircon installs in Durban North?” Not your business name.
2. Ask each one in ChatGPT, in Gemini and in Google (look for the AI Overview at the top, if one shows). Use a private browser window so your own history matters less.
3. Note who gets named, and open the sources each assistant links to. Those are the pages it trusted.
4. Check those sources for your own business. Missing from a directory your competitors are on? Wrong number on an old listing? That is your to-do list.
5. Repeat it once a month, with the same questions, and keep the notes. One run means little; a trend over a few months tells you something.

What nobody can promise you

Nobody can guarantee that an AI will recommend your business. Not Google, not OpenAI, not me. The answers change from one run to the next, from one phone to the next, and every time the tools are updated. Google says plainly that even a page that meets every requirement is not guaranteed to be shown.

Be careful of anyone selling “AI ranking” as a monthly package with promised results. What you can do is make sure that when an assistant goes looking, everything it finds about you is clear, consistent and true. That same work helps you in normal Google search too, so none of it is wasted. If you want to see what a site from us costs, it is all on the pricing page.

Quick questions