These days, a lot of people don’t Google for a plumber or a roofer any more. They ask ChatGPT.
They’ll type something like “who’s a good electrician near me” or “I need my boiler sorted in Leeds, who should I call,” and the AI hands them back a name or two. No list of ten links. No scrolling past the ads. Just a recommendation, more or less the way a mate would give you one.
So here’s a question worth sitting with for a second. When someone asks ChatGPT for what you do, in your town, does your business come up? Or does someone else’s?
Most owners have honestly never checked. There’s a quick way to find out, and I’ll show you near the bottom. But if you want to be the business that gets named, this is how you do it. None of it’s complicated, and you don’t need to be technical or know how to code.
First, why does being recommended matter so much
When the AI gives someone a name, it doesn’t feel like an advert. It feels like advice. People trust a recommendation that’s been handed to them far more than a link they’ve had to dig out for themselves.
So getting mentioned by ChatGPT is basically the new version of ranking number one on Google. Except it comes with a little nod of approval built in. You’re not just visible. You’ve been vouched for. And once one of these tools decides you’re the business it trusts in your area, it tends to keep recommending you. So there’s a real prize for getting in early, while most of your competitors are still asleep on it.
Right, here’s the actual how.
1. Sort your Google Business Profile out properly
This is still the single most important thing you’ve got, and ChatGPT and the rest lean on it heavily. Think of your profile as a fact sheet about your business that the AI reads to work out who you are.
The trouble is, most profiles are half finished. And when there’s a gap, AI has a nasty habit of filling it in with a guess, which isn’t always right.
So fill in everything. Your categories. Every service you offer, each with its own proper description. Your service areas. Opening hours, including bank holidays. Phone number, website, photos, the lot. The more complete and clear it is, the easier you are to recommend.
2. Answer the questions your customers actually ask
Here’s the bit that does a lot of the heavy lifting. ChatGPT builds its answers from content it can find on the web. If your website doesn’t say much, there’s nothing for it to pull from, and you’ve got no real chance of being mentioned.
But it’s not just any content. The stuff that gets used is the stuff that answers a genuine question. Things like:
- “How much does a new bathroom cost in [your town]?”
- “How long does a boiler service usually take?”
- “Do I need planning permission for a loft conversion?”
Write proper, honest answers to those. Use real numbers where you can, because local prices beat vague national averages every time. When the AI needs a figure, it reaches for the page that actually gives it one. A good cost guide for your area will get you mentioned where a bland “our services” page never would.
3. Keep your details the same everywhere
Before any of these tools will confidently recommend you, they cross-check you across the web. They want to see the same business showing up, saying the same thing, in lots of places.
So your name, address and phone number need to match exactly. On your website, your Google profile, Checkatrade, Yell, Facebook, every directory you’re listed on. Even little differences, like an old phone number here or a slightly different business name there, chip away at how trustworthy you look. It’s boring, fiddly work. It’s also one of those things that quietly makes a big difference.
4. Get reviews, and keep them coming
AI leans on reviews to work out whether you’re any good, the same way a person would. But it’s not just about having a big number sat there. What matters is that the reviews are recent, and that you actually reply to them.
The simplest fix is to ask every customer for a review within a day of finishing the job, while you’re still fresh in their mind. Then reply to the ones you get. Even the so-so ones. A calm, decent reply to a lukewarm review says a lot. A steady flow of recent reviews tells both people and AI that you’re a real, busy, active business. Which is exactly what gets you recommended.
5. Get other people talking about you
This is one a lot of owners miss. AI puts more weight on what other people say about you than on what you say about yourself. Makes sense, really. It’s the same as word of mouth.
So a mention in your local paper, the regional business pages, or the trade press carries proper weight. Getting listed and talked about on other respected sites does too. A bit of local PR has gone from “nice to have” to something genuinely worth a small slice of budget.
6. Add a little structure to your website
This is the only slightly technical one, and it’s really a job for whoever looks after your site. There’s a thing called schema markup, FAQ and LocalBusiness schema in particular, which is basically a tidy way of labelling your information so AI can read it without guessing.
Pages with FAQ schema get used as a source more often, because you’re more or less handing the AI a ready-made answer it can lift straight off the page. It’s not a big job, but it’s well worth doing.
The five-minute test you can do right now
Here’s the bit I promised. Open ChatGPT (and Gemini and Perplexity too, if you fancy). Ask each one to recommend a business in your trade, in your town. “Best [your trade] in [your town],” that sort of thing.
See if you come up. See who does.
Because whoever the AI names, that’s your real competition now. And that list often looks nothing like your Google rankings. It can be a slightly humbling five minutes. But it tells you exactly where you stand, and what you’re up against.
So, where does that leave you?
None of this is magic. AI is trying to do one fairly sensible thing: recommend businesses it can clearly understand, check and trust. Make yourself easy to understand, check and trust, and you tend to get picked.
The catch is that it all takes a bit of time and a proper system to stay on top of. The profile, the content, the reviews, the consistency, the structure. Most owners simply haven’t got the hours. That’s the gap. And it’s wide open right now, which is exactly why this is the best time to get ahead of it.
At BucketServe, that’s the whole job. We build the lead generation system that gets you found, on Google and in AI, turns that into enquiries, and makes sure not a single one slips through. If you’d like to know whether AI is already recommending your competitors instead of you, book a free call and we’ll show you where you stand.