How AI assistants choose which local businesses to recommend

When someone asks an assistant “who’s a good plumber near me?”, there is no single public ranking formula. The companies don’t publish one, and answers differ by product, location and even by run. But the inputs are well understood, and most of them are things you can influence.

The four sources behind an answer

1. The open web. Assistants with search features read pages through search indexes and their own crawlers. Your website, plus other sites that mention you, are the raw material.
2. Business listings and map data. For local questions, products lean heavily on structured business data: Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp and similar sources.
3. Reviews. Rating, volume, recency and what reviewers say about you are widely treated as the strongest local trust signal, and review text is often quoted in answers.
4. What the model already “knows”. Established brands are sometimes named from training data alone. Most small businesses aren’t in there strongly, so the live sources above matter far more.

What you can influence

1. Be readable

If your robots.txt or firewall blocks search and AI crawlers, or your content only appears after JavaScript runs, you may not make it into the pool at all. Here’s how to check and fix it.

2. Be unambiguous

Use the same business name, address and phone everywhere, and say it in structured data so machines don’t have to guess. Link your website and your Google profile to each other. Generate the markup free.

3. Be corroborated

Claim and complete your Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect, and keep Facebook, Yelp and your industry directories accurate. Agreement between sources builds confidence. Use the checklist.

4. Be reviewed

Ask every customer, make it easy with a direct link, reply to everyone, and never pay for or gate reviews. A steady trickle of recent, specific reviews beats a one-time burst.

5. Be useful

Pages that state plain answers (what you do, where, roughly what it costs, how to book) are easier to quote than pages of slogans. Write the answers to the questions your customers actually ask.

What nobody controls

You can’t force an assistant to name you, and anyone who promises that is guessing. What you can do is remove the obstacles and strengthen the evidence. Then test what assistants say every month and watch the trend.