Will my business show up in ChatGPT?

When a Melbourne owner asks us "will my business show up in ChatGPT?", they're really asking something simpler: when a customer asks an AI for a recommendation, does my name come up?

It's a fair thing to wonder about. More people are swapping their "near me" Google searches for a quick question to ChatGPT or Perplexity. The honest answer is that it depends on what those tools can actually find out about you.

How does ChatGPT find local businesses?

AI assistants don't keep a secret directory of businesses. They build answers from information that's already public on the web, the same material a Google search draws on. A few sources do most of the work:

• Your Google Business Profile. For a local business this is the big one. Google's own documentation says it uses Business Profiles as a source for AI answers about businesses.
• Your website, as long as it spells out in plain text what you do and where you do it.
• The directories you're listed in, and what your reviews say about you.

When those sources agree, you're a real candidate to get recommended. When they don't, say your phone number is different on three sites, or your address is out of date, or there's no readable text on your site at all, the AI has nothing solid to stand on. So it stays quiet, or it recommends a competitor instead.

How do I check what AI already knows about my business?

Don't guess. Go and ask. Open ChatGPT (or Perplexity, or Google's AI mode) and try a few of these, using your real business name and suburb:

1. What do you know about [business name] in [suburb]?
2. Who are the best [your service, e.g. "laundrettes"] in [suburb], Melbourne?
3. I need [your service] near [suburb]. Who should I call?

Then read the answers the way a customer would. Does your name come up? Is what it says actually right? Are competitors turning up where you aren't? Five minutes of this tells you where you really stand.

Why isn't my business showing up?

Usually it's one of these, roughly in the order we see them:

• No website, or a website with no readable text. If your site is a single image, a PDF, or just a link in your Instagram bio, there's nothing for a machine to read.
• A Google Business Profile that's unclaimed or half-finished, with missing categories, hours, or service area.
• Details that don't match. Your name, address, or phone number reads differently on Google, on Facebook, and on your own site.
• You're simply new. There isn't enough public information about you yet, and that takes time to build.

So what actually works?

The reassuring part: there's no separate "AI SEO" trick to chase. Google has said plainly that you don't need special AI files or markup. Being findable by an AI is the same job as being findable in ordinary Google search, done properly.

So the basics are the work:

• Claim your Google Business Profile and fill in everything. Categories, services, the suburbs you cover, hours, a real description, photos. Then keep the reviews coming.
• Put clear text on your website. Say what you do, who it's for, and where you do it, in words rather than just images.
• Keep your details identical everywhere. Same business name, same address, same phone number on every listing.
• Earn real mentions. Genuine reviews and links from local sources are what give an AI the confidence to put your name forward.

We did exactly this for Sud's Laundrette, a family laundrette in South Yarra. A clean, hand-coded website plus a tightened-up Google presence lifted their organic search traffic by 280%. The same groundwork that moved them up in Google is what makes a business readable to an AI in the first place.

The bottom line

Showing up in ChatGPT isn't a separate game to play. It's what you get for having an accurate, crawlable presence online. Do that properly and you become the obvious answer, whether your customer is typing into Google or asking an AI out loud. If you'd rather not piece it all together yourself, that's what we do.