How does an AI assistant decide which businesses to name?
It searches, reads a handful of pages, and writes an answer from what those pages say. So the question is not 'how do I rank' but 'which pages does it read, and is my business on them'. Usually those pages are directories, reviews and round-ups rather than your own site.
What happens between the question and the answer?
The assistant turns the question into searches, fetches the results, keeps the passages that look relevant, and composes an answer from them. Businesses named in those passages get named in the answer. Businesses absent from them cannot appear.
This is why the work looks different from search marketing. You are not persuading a ranking algorithm; you are trying to be present, clearly described, and easy to quote on the specific pages the assistant happens to read.
Which sources do they actually read for local questions?
Directories and review sites, far more than business websites. In the largest published analysis, Yelp alone drew 512,680 AI citations in a single quarter, about 3.4 times the next platform, and 91-97% of those came from category questions.
Since mid-2026 this is more direct still: OpenAI and Yelp signed an agreement putting Yelp's reviews, ratings, photos and business details inside ChatGPT's answers. A half-finished Yelp page is now a half-finished entry in ChatGPT.
| Source type | Why it gets quoted | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Review directories | Structured, current, full of third-party opinion | A complete, claimed profile is worth more than a page of your own copy |
| Round-ups and 'best of' lists | Already shaped like the answer being written | Being added to one is often the highest-leverage single action |
| Community threads | Real people saying who actually turned up | Slow, unfakeable, and cited more than its size suggests |
| Your own website | Authoritative on what you sell and where | Necessary, rarely sufficient on its own |
| Local press | Trusted and specific to the town | One good story goes a long way |
How much do reviews matter?
More than any other single signal in local answers. Perplexity has been observed drawing on reviews in effectively every local response and ChatGPT in roughly 58%. What appears to count is that they keep arriving, not the lifetime total.
A business gaining eight or ten reviews a month reads very differently from one with two hundred that stopped three years ago. The words inside them matter too, because those words are the material the answer is written from.
Does anything on my own site still matter?
Yes -- it is where a model confirms what you are, where you are, and what you charge. It just cannot be the only place you exist. The most common fatal problem is a site whose words are not in the HTML at all.
- Crawlers must be allowed to fetch it. A blocked crawler cannot quote you at any price.
- The words must be served in the HTML. None of the AI crawlers run JavaScript; in one study of over 500 million fetches, GPTBot downloaded JavaScript around 11.5% of the time and executed it never.
- The address and town must be text, not a map widget.
- Structured data should state the business type, location and services rather than leaving them to be inferred.
Common questions
Can I pay to be included in AI answers?
Not in the organic answer, no. You can pay for advertising placements some platforms sell, but the businesses named in the answer itself are there because of what the sources say.
If I am not on Yelp at all, is that a problem?
For most local trades, yes -- it is the single heaviest-cited source in local AI answers, and since 2026 its data feeds ChatGPT directly.
Sources
- Foundation Marketing and AirOps, 28 million AI responses, Q4 2025
- OpenAI and Yelp partnership, reported July 2026
- Whitespark, review sources ChatGPT surfaces via Bing Places
Where a figure here comes from one study we say so, because one study is one study. Where something rests on practice rather than published work, we say that instead.
If this answered one question, these answer the next ones.
Which AI assistants matter for a local business?
Four worth knowing: ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. They read different sources and name different businesses, which is why a result from one says little about the others.
What is generative engine optimisation?
Generative engine optimisation is the work of getting a business named in the answers AI assistants write. Where search returns a page of links to choose from, an assistant writes a paragraph and names a handful of businesses in it. GEO is about being one of them.
How can I check whether AI recommends my business?
Open ChatGPT, ask the questions your customers would ask, and write down who gets named. Do it several times, because the list changes. Ten minutes gets you an honest picture of whether this is a problem worth spending money on.