How to get your UK business recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity

What happens when someone asks AI who to ring

A few years ago, someone in Leeds with a broken boiler typed “boiler repair Leeds” into Google and worked down a page of links. Now plenty of people type the whole question into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity instead: “Who’s a reliable Gas Safe engineer in Headingley who can come out tomorrow?” The answer isn’t ten links. It’s two, three, maybe five names, often with a sentence on why each one was picked. If you’re not one of them, that customer never sees you.

Picture it from your side. Tuesday evening in Chorlton, the fuse box keeps tripping, and someone asks ChatGPT: “Is there an electrician in south Manchester who can come out tomorrow and won’t charge silly money to turn up?” Three names come back; they ring the first. You might have twenty years in the trade and a van two streets away, but if you’re not on that list, the job goes elsewhere and you never know it existed.

The AIs don’t pick names at random. When they search the web live (ChatGPT with search on, Perplexity nearly always, Gemini drawing on Google’s own data), they read listings, reviews and web pages as you ask. When they answer from memory, they rely on what was public on the web when they were trained. Either way, the raw material is the same: what’s written about you online, where, and how consistently.

The good news is that you control, or can influence, most of that material. The industry calls this work AEO (answer engine optimisation), but in practice it’s a list of very ordinary jobs. Here they are, in the order I’d tackle them.

Step 1: Ask the AIs what they say today

Before you change anything, take a snapshot. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity and ask the questions your customers actually ask, with your town or area in them. Not “best solicitor UK”, but the way people really talk: “a conveyancing solicitor in Bristol who won’t take months”, “NHS dentist taking new patients near Didsbury”, “someone to fit a new kitchen in Reading, not too pricey”.

For each AI, note who gets named, the reasons given, and which sites it seems to be drawing on (Perplexity lists its sources, and ChatGPT often does too). Then ask directly: “What do you know about [your business] in [town]?” It’s surprisingly common to find old opening hours, a previous address or a service you stopped offering years ago.

A good note looks something like this, for a Leeds heating engineer. Question: “Gas Safe engineer in Leeds who can do a boiler service on a Saturday?” ChatGPT: names three firms, not me; reason given, reviews about punctuality; sources, Google Maps and Checkatrade. Gemini: names me, but with last year’s hours. Perplexity: doesn’t name me, cites a local news piece. A few lines like that per question, even in a note on your phone, and in a month you’ll see what’s moved.

• Three to five questions per main service, in your customers’ words
• Always include the town or neighbourhood (“in Glasgow’s West End”)
• One direct question about your business name
• Keep the list and repeat it every month so you can see what changes

Step 2: Get your Google Business Profile right

Your Google Business Profile is the panel that appears on Google Maps and in local search. Gemini uses it directly, and the other AIs often pick up the same details as they’re repeated across the web. It’s the first thing to fix.

Choose the most specific primary category you can (“Emergency plumber” or “Cosmetic dentist” rather than a vague catch-all), then add relevant secondary categories. List each service with a line of description, set accurate opening hours (including bank holidays, which are the ones most people forget), add your service area if you go to customers, and upload real, recent photos of your premises and your work. Post an update every week or two: a finished job, a seasonal tip, a new service. An active profile tells AI the business is open and trading.

Write the description the way you’d explain yourself on the phone: “Electrician in south Manchester since 2006. Fuse board upgrades, EV charger installs, fault finding and landlord safety certificates. We cover Chorlton, Didsbury, Withington and Stretford, including Saturday mornings. NICEIC registered; written quote before we start.” Services, areas and one practical detail. Those are the details an AI repeats when it explains its pick.

Step 3: Make your details identical everywhere

AI assistants cross-check sources. If Google says you’re on Station Road, Yell still has your old unit on the industrial estate and your website lists a landline nobody answers, the AI can’t tell which is right, and it tends to name someone easier to verify.

Pick one official version of your business name, address, phone number, website and category, and use it word for word on Google, Bing Places (Bing is one of the search sources behind ChatGPT), Apple Business Connect, Yell, Facebook and every trade or professional directory you’re on. Small differences matter: “J Smith Plumbing & Heating Ltd” and “Smith Plumbers” can look like two businesses to a machine. If you’re a limited company, show your registered company name, number and registered office on your website, as UK rules already require. It also links you to your Companies House record.

Step 4: Recent reviews, and reply to all of them

When AI explains why it recommends someone, it nearly always leans on reviews: “praised for turning up on time”, “patients mention how calm the dentist is”. Volume helps, but freshness and detail matter more. Twenty reviews from this year that mention “combi boiler”, “same-day callout” and “clear quote” are worth more than a hundred vague ones from 2019.

Ask every happy customer, straight after the job, with a direct link by text or WhatsApp. Reply to every review, good and bad, personally and specifically. Never buy reviews or write your own: fake reviews are banned outright under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, platforms remove them, and a profile that suddenly loses a batch of reviews looks far worse than a modest honest one.

Step 5: Website pages that answer real questions

AI quotes pages that answer a question directly, near the top. A homepage that says “Quality and service since 1985” tells it nothing. A page called “Dental implants in Leicester: how long treatment takes and what it costs” gives it something to work with.

Create a page for each main service and, if you cover several areas, say which ones (“we cover Brighton, Hove, Shoreham and Lewes”). On each page, add a short FAQ with the questions people ask you on the phone, answered plainly. If you’re regulated, stay within your rules: solicitors should display the SRA badge and describe services accurately, and healthcare and aesthetics businesses need to follow the advertising codes on claims about treatments. Factual, calm, specific copy happens to be exactly what AI prefers to quote.

• One page per service, with the town or area in the title
• The direct answer in the first two lines, detail afterwards
• FAQs written the way customers ask, not the way a brochure would
• Who you are: names, qualifications, registration numbers, years trading

An example to copy: one FAQ answer done properly

Take a Leeds heating engineer’s page called “Boiler repairs in Leeds”. Here’s the FAQ answer you’ll find on countless sites: “We offer a fast, professional service across the area. Contact us for more information.” It doesn’t say when, where, how quickly or what it might cost. An AI has nothing to repeat.

Here’s a version that works. Question: “Can you come out on a Saturday if my boiler stops working?” Answer: “Yes. On Saturdays from 8am to 1pm we cover Leeds, Horsforth, Pudsey and Morley, usually the same day. When you ring, we’ll ask for the fault code on the boiler display so we can bring the right part. We tell you the callout charge before we set off, and every engineer is Gas Safe registered; our number is on every invoice.”

The second answer gives day, hours, area, timing and how the price works: exactly what an AI can check against your Google profile and quote to someone asking for “a Gas Safe engineer in Leeds who works Saturdays”. The pattern works for any trade, from a lash lift in Bath to an uncontested divorce in Cardiff. One rule: only write what you actually do.

• “Do you come out on [Saturdays, evenings, bank holidays]?”
• “Roughly how much does [service] cost, and do you quote first?”
• “Which towns or postcodes do you cover?”
• “How long from my call to the job being finished?”
• “Do I need to book, or can I just turn up?”

Step 6: Structured data, and let AI read your site

Structured data (often called schema markup) is a small block of code visitors never see. It tells machines, unambiguously: this is a local business, this is its name, address, opening hours and services. The common type is LocalBusiness, with more specific versions such as Dentist, Attorney (used for solicitors), Plumber and Restaurant. On WordPress, plugins like Yoast or Rank Math can add it without code; otherwise ask whoever runs your site.

Also check that your site isn’t blocking AI. The robots.txt file is a small text file at yoursite.co.uk/robots.txt that tells automated programs which pages they may read. Sometimes, by caution or by accident, it shuts out the programs that OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity or Google use to read the web, with names like GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. If they’re blocked, those assistants can’t read your site when they look you up. It’s a five-minute check for your web person.

Your first 30 days

If you want a set order, here’s a plan an owner can fit around the day job, an hour or two a week.

Along the way, watch for the mistakes that come up again and again: the website says one thing and Google another (summer hours never taken down, the address before you moved), service pages that never mention a town, negative reviews left unanswered for months, copy lifted from a supplier’s or franchisor’s site, stock photos instead of your own work. And, after a keen first week, nobody checking again.

• Week 1: ask the four AIs your Step 1 questions and note the answers; fix your Google Business Profile
• Week 2: make your name, address and phone identical on Yell, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Facebook and your trade directories
• Week 3: write or rewrite the pages for your two main services, with the town in the title and five real FAQs
• Week 4: ask recent happy customers for a review, reply to the backlog, and get structured data and robots.txt checked
• Day 30: ask the same AIs the same questions and compare with your Week 1 notes

Step 7: Re-check every month

This isn’t a one-off job. AI answers shift, competitors publish, reviews age. Rerun your Step 1 questions every month and compare: have you appeared? In which AI? For what reason? Assistants that search live, like Perplexity, tend to pick up changes sooner; those answering from memory can take much longer.

If you want to see what ChatGPT says about your business today without doing it all by hand, the free check at alphaa.app/uk asks the four AIs your customers’ questions and shows you, in about 60 seconds, who they name and what you’re missing. Alphaa is an AI Agent that can then do the work in this guide for you, with your approval on every change. But every step above is something you can do yourself, an afternoon at a time.

Questions from UK business owners