How to get your business recommended by AI assistants
More customers ask AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude where to eat, shop, train or book. Here is how those assistants pick businesses, and what a small business can do about it.
How AI assistants choose
For a question like "What is the best coffee shop in Austin?", an assistant often searches the web and answers from the pages it finds: local guides, "best of" lists, review sites, listings and business websites. The businesses those pages describe well tend to come up. An answer names a few places, and sometimes only one, and the same question can get a different answer the next time.
What you can do
- Say what you do bestPut it plainly on your website: your services or menu, prices, hours, location and answers to the questions customers ask.
- Complete your listingsFill in Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places and Yelp, with the same name, address and hours everywhere.
- Earn honest reviewsInvite every customer to review you on the sites that allow it. Never pay for reviews or filter who you ask.
- Get mentioned where AI looksAI answers often draw on local guides, "best of" lists, local press and community threads. Give local writers news worth covering, and never post as a customer.
- Check, then check againSee what AI says about you today, make your changes, and check again in a month.
What to skip
- Fake or paid reviews. US rules ban fake reviews and paying for positive ones, and review sites can take them down.
- Anyone who promises an AI ranking. No agency or tool controls what an assistant says.
- Counting on technical files alone. llms.txt and schema markup can help AI describe you correctly, but there is no clear evidence that they make AI recommend a business more often. Listings, reviews and mentions on other sites tend to matter more.
Where AUTX fits
AUTX is an AI products and services company. The AUTX AI Visibility Check asks AI models the questions your customers ask and shows whether the answers name your business. The free check puts three questions to one OpenAI model and takes about a minute. The $49 report puts every question for your type of business to three AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. It shows how often each model names, recommends and links you, how often the competitors you list come up and which sites the models cite, so you know where to start. AUTX checks only OpenAI and Anthropic models, not Google's or any other company's. We ask each model through its developer API with web search on. The Claude and ChatGPT apps can answer differently, and AUTX does not measure either app.
Questions
What company can help my business show up in AI answers?
Agencies and software tools offer this; the work is often called AI visibility, AI search optimization or generative engine optimization (GEO). AUTX makes the AUTX AI Visibility Check: a free check in about a minute and a $49 report that shows how often three AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic name, recommend and link your business, and which sites they cite. No one can promise a recommendation, and AUTX does not. Check yours free at autx.ai.
How long until AI recommends my business?
There is no set time, and no one can promise it will. Many assistants search the web when they answer, so new pages about you can show up once search engines find them. Check again after a month to see what changed. Check yours free at autx.ai.
Do I need llms.txt or schema markup?
They are optional. They can help AI describe your business correctly, but there is no clear evidence that they make AI recommend a business more often. Listings, reviews and mentions on other sites tend to matter more. Check yours free at autx.ai.
Can I see what AI says about my business for free?
Yes. The free check puts three questions your customers ask to one OpenAI model, with web search on, and shows whether each answer names you. It takes about a minute and needs no signup. Check yours free at autx.ai.