How to Get Your Small Business Cited in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity

Something new is happening to the way people find businesses online — and most small business owners haven’t noticed yet.

Your potential customers aren’t just typing into Google anymore. They’re asking ChatGPT “What’s the best HVAC company in Columbus?” They’re asking Perplexity “Which local accountants specialize in small business taxes?” They’re asking Google Gemini “Who should I hire to redesign my restaurant website?”

And when those AI engines answer, they recommend specific businesses by name.

The question is: is that business yours?

The Rise of AI Search (And Why It Matters Now)

This isn’t a future trend — it’s already happening at scale. ChatGPT now reaches over 800 million weekly users, while Google’s Gemini app has surpassed 750 million monthly users. AI Overviews — Google’s AI-generated summaries at the top of search results — appear in at least 16% of all queries, and that percentage climbs even higher for product comparisons and high-intent searches.

For small businesses, the opportunity is real. AI referral traffic to small and mid-sized business websites jumped 123% in a matter of months, and when AI engines do send visitors your way, those visitors tend to convert at higher rates than traditional search traffic. They arrive with more context, more intent, and more trust because an AI they rely on just vouched for you.

And yet most small businesses haven’t taken a single step to show up in these results. That’s your competitive window.

This practice — optimizing your business to get cited in AI-generated answers — is called Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. Here’s how to do it without a big budget or a specialized agency.

GEO vs. SEO: What’s the Difference?

Traditional SEO is about ranking your website in a list of search results so people can click through to your site. GEO is about getting your business mentioned inside an AI-generated answer — even when there’s no list at all.

The good news: if you’ve been doing SEO, you’re already partway there. GEO builds on the same foundation — content quality, authority signals, and technical health. But it shifts the emphasis in a few important ways.

Traditional SEO optimizes for rankings. GEO optimizes for citations and entity trust.

AI engines don’t rank websites the same way Google does. They look for verifiable, trustworthy entities they can safely reference. As Search Engine Land explains, brands that consistently show up in AI answers share specific structural characteristics: entity clarity, content extractability, and multi-platform presence.

In plain English: AI engines need to know who you are before they’ll recommend you to anyone.

Step 1: Establish Your Entity

The single biggest GEO mistake small businesses make is inconsistency. If your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) appear differently across your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Facebook — even small differences like “St.” vs. “Street” — AI systems struggle to verify you’re a real, trustworthy entity.

What to do:

• Audit every directory listing where your business appears (Google Business Profile, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, local chamber directories)
• Standardize your NAP exactly: same business name, same address format, same phone number
• Make sure your website’s contact page, footer, and schema markup all match

Think of it like this: AI engines are doing background checks. The more consistent and corroborated your identity is across the web, the more comfortable they are referring you.

Step 2: Optimize Your Google Business Profile (Seriously)

Your Google Business Profile is one of the most powerful GEO signals you have — and most businesses treat it like an afterthought. Businesses with complete profiles experience significantly higher engagement, and Google’s AI now feeds directly from GBP data when generating local answers.

Research shows that businesses with photos see 45% more direction requests and 31% more website clicks than businesses without them. One 2025 report found that 48% of local-intent searches led to a GBP interaction within 24 hours — meaning your profile often gets the visit before your website does.

What to do:

• Complete every single field: business description, services, attributes, hours, categories
• Upload high-quality photos regularly (Google’s Vision AI reads images to categorize your services)
• Respond to every review — positive and negative — within 48 hours
• Answer every question in your Q&A section
• Post updates at least twice a month using Google Posts
• Use the same service language in your GBP that you use on your website

Step 3: Create Content That AI Can Actually Extract

AI engines need to read your content, understand it, and pull specific answers from it. That requires a writing style quite different from traditional blog content.

Vague, meandering blog posts don’t get cited. Specific, well-structured content that directly answers questions does.

According to HubSpot’s GEO research, the content formats most likely to get cited by AI engines include:

• FAQ pages that directly answer the questions your customers type into AI chat
• How-to guides with clear, numbered steps
• Definition pages that explain what you do in plain language
• Comparison pages that help users choose between options
• Local guides that include neighborhood-specific information

The key is writing the way people ask questions, not the way old-school SEO told you to write. Instead of targeting “HVAC services Columbus,” think about what someone would actually type into ChatGPT: “Who are the most trusted HVAC companies in Columbus for older homes?” Write content that answers that question clearly and completely.

One practical move: Go into ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini and ask the questions your best customers ask. Note who gets cited and why. Then model your own content structure after what’s working.

Step 4: Build Third-Party Mentions and Credibility Signals

AI engines don’t just look at your website. They look at what the rest of the internet says about you. This is why sites with strong authority are significantly more likely to be cited by ChatGPT than sites with thin link profiles.

For small businesses, this doesn’t mean chasing backlinks from national publications. It means building credibility in your local ecosystem:

• Local press coverage — even a mention in your local newspaper’s online edition is a signal
• Industry directory listings — get listed in industry-specific directories (contractors in Houzz, accountants in CPAdirectory, etc.)
• Guest posts on local blogs — chamber of commerce blogs, local business publications, regional news sites
• Customer reviews on multiple platforms — Google, Yelp, Facebook, and industry-specific review sites all contribute to your credibility footprint
• Podcast appearances and interviews — even local or niche podcasts can generate citations AI engines recognize

The goal is to create a web of corroborating evidence that you’re a real, trusted business in your field.

Step 5: Use Schema Markup to Help AI Understand You

Schema markup is code you add to your website that explicitly tells search engines (and AI crawlers) what kind of business you are, what services you offer, where you’re located, and what your customers think of you.

For small businesses, the most important schema types are:

• LocalBusiness schema — identifies your business type, location, and contact info
• Service schema — describes the specific services you offer
• Review schema — surfaces your star ratings in AI answers
• FAQ schema — allows AI to pull your Q&A content directly

If your website is on WordPress, plugins like Rank Math or Yoast SEO can handle schema markup without any coding. On Webflow or Squarespace, you may need to add it manually or work with your web developer.

Getting this right can make a measurable difference in whether AI systems understand and trust your business enough to cite it.

Step 6: Track Your AI Visibility

Here’s something most small business owners don’t realize: you can actually measure how often your business gets mentioned in AI search results.

AI Overviews now appear in at least 16% of all searches, and that number is growing. Free tools like HubSpot’s AEO Grader let you check how your content performs across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Paid tools like Semrush and Ahrefs now include AI visibility tracking dashboards.

For a low-budget approach: once a week, manually search for your business category + location in ChatGPT and Perplexity. Note whether you appear. Note who does appear. That competitive intelligence is worth more than most paid tools.

The Local Business Advantage

Here’s the thing most national brands haven’t figured out yet: local businesses have a natural GEO advantage.

AI engines are particularly good at answering local queries — “best plumber in [city],” “family dentist near [neighborhood]” — and they rely heavily on Google Business Profile data, local reviews, and geographic signals to answer them. A well-optimized local business can outperform a national brand in AI answers for geographic-specific queries.

Local businesses have a particular advantage since they can dominate geographic-specific queries more easily than national competitors. Your local focus, which used to feel like a limitation, is actually a GEO superpower.

The key is making sure AI systems can clearly identify: what you do, where you do it, who you serve, and what customers say about you. Get those four things right and you’re ahead of most of your competition.

What to Do This Week

You don’t need to implement everything at once. Here’s a practical starting point:

1. Audit your NAP consistency — Google your business name and check the top 10 listing sites for any discrepancies. Fix them.
2. Spend 30 minutes on your Google Business Profile — fill in any missing fields, upload 5 new photos, respond to your most recent reviews
3. Write one FAQ page for your most common customer questions — aim for 8-10 questions with direct, specific answers
4. Test your AI visibility — ask ChatGPT and Perplexity who they’d recommend for your service in your city. Note the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

GEO is still early. Most of your competitors haven’t started. The businesses that build their AI presence now will be the ones customers see when they ask AI engines who to trust.

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Ready to show up where your customers are searching? Whether you need help with schema markup, Google Business Profile optimization, or a complete digital strategy built for the AI era, we can help. Get started here →