More of your customers now start with a question instead of a search. They ask ChatGPT for “a Tamil caterer near Morningside that does weddings”. Or they read the AI Overview at the top of Google before they ever see a map listing. The answer names two or three businesses and moves on. Google’s own suggestions show owners have noticed: “how to get your business recommended by chatgpt” and “how to show up in google ai overviews” both appear as you type. Here is what these tools actually look at, and what a Scarborough business can do about it this month.

Where AI answers get their information

Neither tool invents a business from nothing. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on Google Search. In fact, Google’s documentation on AI features and your website says the practices that help a page in ordinary search apply here too. No special markup or form buys a place in the answer. ChatGPT’s search, for its part, draws on web results and the pages behind them. Those include your website, your Google profile, review sites, directories, local news and community discussions.

That means the work is familiar. The difference is that an AI answer rewards businesses whose details are consistent and easy to quote. After all, it is stitching together a summary from several sources at once. If those sources disagree about your hours or your address, the safest move for the tool is to recommend someone else.

1. Make your basics impossible to misread

Start with the facts a machine needs before it will name you. These are your business name, street address with the unit number, phone, hours, and the area you serve. In a borough full of plazas, the unit number matters. Suppose your Google profile says “Unit 12”, your website says “#12” and an old directory still lists the previous tenant’s phone number. To a machine, you now look like three different businesses.

  • Write the address the same way everywhere, including the plaza name and nearest intersection.
  • Keep hours current on your Google profile, including holidays.
  • Correct or remove old directory listings that still show outdated details.

Most AI answers lean on your Google profile for local facts, so get it right first. Our Google Business Profile checklist walks through each field, and Google Maps SEO is the service that keeps it accurate.

2. Answer the real questions on your own pages

People ask AI tools full questions. Does this clinic take walk-ins? Which accountant handles small-business returns? Which driving school offers lessons in Tamil? If your website does not answer in plain text, the tool cannot use it. A single “Services” page with a list of bullet points rarely gives it enough.

  • Give each main service its own page. Say what it is, who it suits, roughly what it costs and how long it takes.
  • State the neighbourhoods you serve and the languages your staff speak, in words rather than in an image.
  • Add a short questions section that answers what customers actually ask on the phone.

These are the same pages that help in ordinary search. That is why local SEO and website design work together here. A page that answers one question well is the kind of page an AI answer quotes.

3. Get recommended by ChatGPT through what others say

An AI answer trusts what others say about you more than what you say about yourself. Reviews matter twice: the star rating, and the words in them. Take a review that says “they fixed our furnace the same evening near Kennedy and Lawrence”. It tells both Google and ChatGPT exactly what you do and where. So ask happy customers to mention the service they used. Our guide to getting more 5-star Google reviews covers how to ask without breaking Google’s rules.

Beyond reviews, look for places where Scarborough residents already talk about local businesses. Think of community association pages, local event listings, cultural organizations and neighbourhood discussion threads. A mention on a respected local site carries more weight than dozens of paid directory entries.

4. Let the machines read your site

A website can look fine to a person and still be hard for software to read. Text inside images is one problem. Menus that only load after a script runs are another, and so are pages that take ten seconds on a phone. All of them reduce what the tools pick up.

  • Keep important text as real text, not baked into banners.
  • Make sure your site loads quickly on a phone; speed optimization usually fixes the worst of it.
  • Check that your robots.txt file is not blocking search crawlers by accident after a redesign.
  • Keep plugins and contact forms working. A broken booking page is a dead end for a human and a machine alike, and website maintenance prevents it.

Paid shortcuts that won’t get you recommended by ChatGPT

You will see offers to “list your business in ChatGPT” for a fee. However, no such listing exists for local businesses to buy. Be equally wary of stuffing pages with phrases written for chatbots. The same goes for publishing dozens of near-identical AI-written pages for every neighbourhood. They tend to read badly. Moreover, Google’s spam policies treat mass-produced, low-value pages as a problem whether a person or a machine wrote them.

How to check if you are recommended by ChatGPT

Once a month, ask ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode the questions your customers would ask. Phrase them the way your customers would: “best family dentist near Scarborough Town Centre”, “halal bakery open late in Scarborough”. Note which businesses the answer names and which sources it cites. If a competitor keeps appearing, look at the sources the answer links to. They show you where your own details are missing or out of date. Being recommended by ChatGPT and ranking on the map rest on the same groundwork. We cover the map side in how to rank for “near me” searches in Scarborough.

Every trade gets asked different questions, so the details vary. Customers judge restaurants on menus, hours and dietary options, as our restaurant and café page explains. Meanwhile, firms like law firms and immigration consultants depend on trust signals and clear explanations of fees. Want to know what AI tools currently say about your business? Our free SEO audit includes that check, and our monthly plans cover the ongoing work.