How to show up in ChatGPT: a guide for contractors

To show up in ChatGPT, you need three things: ChatGPT has to be allowed to crawl your website, your business details have to be right everywhere it looks, and your site has to say in plain words what you do and where you've done it. You can't pay for a recommendation. Since November 10, 2026, there is also an official way to claim your business inside ChatGPT, covered below, but OpenAI says plainly that claiming doesn't guarantee you'll be recommended more.

Most of this is the same work that helps you in regular Google search, with a few AI checks on top. At the end there's a 10-minute test you can run today.

How AI assistants find local businesses

An assistant can answer from what it learned in training, which may be months or years old, or it can search the web live and cite its sources. For "who installs heat pumps near me," live search gives the better answer, and that's the part you can influence.

Each vendor runs its own search crawler:

• ChatGPT: OpenAI says OAI-SearchBot surfaces websites in ChatGPT search. It is separate from GPTBot, which collects content that may be used for training. OpenAI's web search help article says placement is not guaranteed.
• Claude: Anthropic's crawler help article says blocking Claude-SearchBot or Claude-User may reduce your visibility in Claude's answers.
• Perplexity: Perplexity says PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in its results and is not used to train models.
• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: Google's AI features and your website says a page only needs to be indexed and eligible for a snippet in regular Search. No special optimization.

If a crawler can't reach your site, or your site doesn't say something in words, the assistant can't use it.

Claim your business in ChatGPT

OpenAI announced Businesses in ChatGPT on November 10, 2026, in beta. Here is what OpenAI's setup guide and product page say:

• Where: sign in to ChatGPT, open Business Hub from the sidebar (or go to chatgpt.com/business-hub), search for your business and pick the matching listing.
• Verify: by business phone, business email, a TXT record on your website's domain, or Shopify. OpenAI reviews the claim by email. To publish changes or see insights, you also complete identity verification with Persona, which may ask for a government ID and business registration details.
• Who can claim: OpenAI says local stores and restaurants can currently claim only an existing U.S. listing, and that claiming is initially available to eligible businesses with a website. Eligibility depends on location and business type.
• What you get: you can update your website, description, category and logo, and see 28 days of mentions and website clicks. For a local business, a mention counts when ChatGPT shows a result for your location.
• What you don't get: OpenAI says claiming "doesn't guarantee increased visibility" and that advertising doesn't influence ChatGPT's independent answers. The chat agents it announced are only for eligible U.S. ecommerce and online service businesses for now.

If you can't find your listing, OpenAI's guide says the option to add a new one is for eligible online businesses, so a local contractor may have to wait. Keep doing the steps below either way. The domain option means you need access to your domain's settings, which is one more reason to make sure you own your website.

Step 1: Let the search crawlers in

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If it blocks everything, or names the search crawlers above in a Disallow rule, get it fixed. Google's introduction to robots.txt explains the file.

• Firewalls count too. OpenAI says your host or CDN must allow traffic from its published search-bot IP addresses, not just robots.txt.
• Training is a separate choice. You can block GPTBot or ClaudeBot and still allow OAI-SearchBot and Claude-SearchBot. Decide on purpose.

Step 2: Get your Google basics right

• Verify your site in Google Search Console to find pages Google can't index. Our 15-minute Search Console check walks through it.
• Keep your Google Business Profile current. Google's AI features page says to keep it up to date: hours, phone, service areas, categories.
• Work the three local factors. Google's page on improving your local ranking lists relevance, distance and prominence.

Step 3: Put the facts in plain text

Assistants read text. A phone number baked into a logo, a services list in a PDF or a page that's mostly a slider gives them little. Your site should say, in words:

• Each service by name ("tankless water heater installation," not just "plumbing")
• The towns and neighborhoods you serve
• Business name, phone and hours, written the same everywhere
• License numbers and insurance, if your trade requires them

Schema.org has trade types like RoofingContractor, Plumber and HVACBusiness under HomeAndConstructionBusiness. Google's LocalBusiness structured data guide says to use the most specific type, and markup should match what's visible on the page.

Step 4: Publish proof of real jobs

When a homeowner asks "who does good deck work near me," the strongest answer points to a business with evidence: real projects, in that area, described in detail. Google's guide to helpful, people-first content asks whether content shows first-hand expertise. A write-up of last Tuesday's job does. "Top 10 reasons to hire a roofer" doesn't.

A good job post says what the customer needed, what you found, what you did and with what, the town or neighborhood (never the house number), and shows a few real photos. More on that in do job photos help local SEO.

Step 5: Show up where assistants read

Assistants also read your Google Business Profile, review sites, directories, manufacturers' dealer locators and local news. Ask happy customers for reviews, keep directory listings identical to your website, get listed in your brands' "find a contractor" tools, and earn local links from sponsorships or the chamber.

What to skip

• Guaranteed AI recommendations. Nobody controls what an assistant says.
• Special AI files for Google. Google says none are needed.
• Hundreds of AI-written city pages. Google's spam policies call this scaled content abuse.

The 10-minute test: do you show up in ChatGPT?

Ask the questions your customers ask. Use a private browser window without signing in, since OpenAI says signed-out visitors can use web search and saved memories can shape results when you're signed in. Put the town in the question: OpenAI's help article says local results otherwise lean on an approximate location from your internet connection.

How to read the answer

1. Are you named? Note your spot in the list, or that you're missing.
2. Is it right? Check the services, towns and phone it gives for you. Wrong details point to a listing to fix.
3. What did it cite? Select Sources. Your website, your Google profile, a directory, Reddit? On a phone, look at the map too.
4. Who got named instead? Open their cited pages. Usually they have something in plain text that you don't: a page for that service, jobs in that town, more reviews.

Run the same three questions in Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. Write down the date, the question, whether you were named and the sources. Repeat monthly. Answers change as new pages get crawled.

Do this this week

• Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and check that OAI-SearchBot isn't blocked
• Search for your business in ChatGPT's Business Hub and claim it if it's listed
• Run the 10-minute test for your trade and save the results
• Add one service your site doesn't name in plain text yet
• Publish one write-up of a job you finished this week

If keeping your site full of real job write-ups is the hard part, GeoUP is built for that: your crew checks in from the job, and the post lands on your own website.

Common questions