By the Rank in Chat team · Updated 21 October 2026 · About a 5-minute read
First, an honest caveat. Nobody outside OpenAI, Google and Perplexity knows exactly how each assistant picks its answers, and they change how their tools work often. What follows is based on how the assistants visibly behave (what they say, and the sources they show) and on long-standing basics of being found online. It's a practical guide, not a secret formula.
Where an assistant gets its information
An AI assistant can know about your business in two broad ways.
1. What it learned in training
Each assistant is built on a model trained on a very large amount of public text from the web and other sources, collected up to a certain date. If your business was written about before then, the model may "remember" it. That memory can be out of date or simply wrong: an old address, a service you stopped offering, a business that has since closed.
2. What it finds when it searches the web
For questions about the here and now, such as "who's a good electrician in Stamford?", assistants often search the web while they answer. They read a handful of pages, then write a summary, and usually show links to where the information came from. Perplexity shows its sources alongside its answers, and ChatGPT and Gemini can do the same when they search.
For local recommendations this second route usually matters most, because the assistant needs current, local information. In practice that means: if search engines can find clear, consistent, positive information about your business, an assistant is more likely to find it too.
What makes a business easy to recommend
Think about it from the assistant's side. It has a question ("best dog groomer in Leeds?") and a few minutes' worth of reading. It's looking for businesses it can name with confidence. These are the things that make that easier.
A clear match for the question
Does what it can read say, in plain words, that you do the thing that was asked, in the place that was asked? A home page that says "Family-run dog groomers in Headingley, Leeds" is easier to match than one that only says "Welcome to Pawfect". A page for each main service helps for the same reason.
The same facts everywhere
Your business name, address, phone number, opening hours and services should match across your website, your Google Business Profile and the directories you're listed in. When sources disagree, it's harder for any system to be sure it has the right business, or that you're still trading.
What other people say about you
Assistants often repeat what's said about a business elsewhere: reviews, local news, "best of" lists, trade bodies and community sites. Reviews that describe the actual service ("came out the same evening", "great with nervous dogs") give an assistant something specific to say about you.
Pages that answer real questions
If a customer asks "Which plumbers near me do emergency call-outs on Sundays?", the businesses whose pages clearly answer that are easier to name. Simple, honest FAQ and service pages do a lot of work here.
A website search engines can actually read
If search engines can't find or read your pages, assistants that rely on search probably can't either. Check that your important pages aren't hidden from search engines by a setting on your website, that they load properly on a phone, and that the key facts are written as text rather than only inside images.
Why the answer changes
Ask the same question twice and you may get a different list. The wording of the question, where the person is, which assistant they use, whether it searched the web that time, and the day itself can all change the answer. That's normal.
It's also why a single screenshot isn't a ranking. To get a fair picture, ask several questions your customers would really ask, in more than one assistant, and look at the pattern rather than one answer. That's what our free check does.
Five things you can do this week
- Ask the assistants yourself. Try three or four questions a customer would type, such as "Who's a good [what you do] in [your town]?", in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Note who gets named and what's said about you.
- Check your Google Business Profile. Make sure the category, services, area, hours, phone number and website are complete and correct.
- Say what you do and where, in plain words. Put it on your home page and give each main service its own page.
- Ask happy customers for reviews. Real ones, in their own words. Fake or bought reviews break the review sites' rules and UK consumer law, and they're not worth the risk.
- Fix wrong information at the source. If an assistant says something wrong about you, look for where it might come from (an old directory listing, an out-of-date page) and correct it there.
What nobody can promise
Nobody can guarantee your business a particular place in an AI answer, and you should be wary of anyone who says they can. What can be done is checking honestly where you stand, fixing what's unclear or wrong, and measuring again later.
If you'd like us to do the first part for you, the Rank in Chat check is free. We ask the assistants the kind of questions your customers ask and email you what they said, checked by a person first.