How ChatGPT decides which business to name

Ask ChatGPT for "a good accountant for startups in Munich" and you will not get ten blue links. You get a short paragraph with two or three names and a reason for each.

That is a different game from classic search. There is no second page to land on. Either the assistant names you or it does not.

Nobody outside these companies can tell you the exact recipe, and I am wary of anyone who claims to. What we can do is look at which businesses get named, test the same questions every week, and see what changes when we change something. Four signals keep coming up.

1. The assistant can tell exactly what you are

Models are good at reading, but they are cautious. If your site says you "deliver innovative solutions", the assistant has nothing to repeat. If it says you are "a family dental practice with two offices in Danville, offering implants and same week appointments", it has a sentence it can use.

So the first job is boring and precise: one clear line on every key page saying who you are, where you work and what you do. The same name, address and services everywhere the business appears online.

2. Your pages answer the questions people actually ask

Assistants pull from pages that answer a question directly. A pricing page with real prices. A service page that says how long something takes. An FAQ written in the words customers use, not the words in your brochure.

A useful exercise: write down the ten questions a new customer asks on the first call. If your site does not answer them in plain sentences, that is where to start.

3. Other people mention you

An assistant is far more comfortable recommending a business that other sources talk about. Reviews on more than one platform, local directories, industry lists, a mention in a news article or a partner's site.

This is the slow part. It cannot be faked at scale, and it is also the part that lasts the longest once it is there.

4. Your information is current

Answer engines that browse the web, like Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, notice when a page was last updated and whether it still matches what other sources say. An old address on one directory and a new one on your site is enough to make an assistant hedge.

How we measure it

The honest way to measure this is to ask. We keep a fixed set of buyer questions for each client and run them through the main assistants every week, recording whether the business is mentioned, cited with a link, or recommended outright, and who appears instead.

That turns a vague goal into a number you can watch. It also shows when a competitor starts appearing, which is often the first sign they have started doing the same work.

Where to start this week

• Rewrite the first paragraph of your home page and main service pages so a stranger could summarise your business in one sentence.
• Check that your name, address and phone number match on your site, Google Business Profile and the two directories that matter most in your industry.
• Ask three recent happy customers for a review on a platform other than the one you already have.

None of that needs a big budget. It needs a clear head and a couple of afternoons. If you want to see where you stand first, the AI visibility check on our AEO page takes two minutes and needs no email.