How to get your local business mentioned by ChatGPT and AI answers

ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews mention a local business when a page on the open web answers the customer's exact question in one clear paragraph, names the town, and is backed up by a complete Google Business Profile, recent reviews and other sites saying the same thing. You cannot buy a mention. You can earn one in about a week of focused work, and the same work lifts your ordinary Google ranking at the same time.

What an AI mention is worth to a local business

Start with the money, because that decides whether this is worth a week of your time. Here is a worked example for a podiatry clinic in Surrey. The job values are verified: a podiatry visit is £50 to £148, and patients rebook every six to eight weeks. The number of patients is an assumption for the example, so swap in your own.

1 new patient a week found through an AI answer (assumption)
x £80 a visit (within the verified £50 to £148 range)
x 7 visits a year (rebooking roughly every 7 weeks)
= £560 a year per patient
x 52 patients a year = £29,120 of first-year revenue

Now run the same sum for a roofer. A new roof averages £8,000, with a verified range of £4,000 to £19,000. One extra roof a quarter, found because an assistant named you when someone asked "who does flat roofs in Weybridge", is £32,000 a year. That is the size of the thing we are talking about. It is not a vanity metric.

What does "mentioned" mean in plain terms? When someone types a question into ChatGPT or sees an AI Overview at the top of Google, the answer often names two or three businesses and links to the pages it drew from. If your page is one of those sources, you are named. If it is not, a competitor is, and the customer never scrolls down to the ten blue links where you might be sitting.

What the data says about AI search in 2026

Two honest facts before anyone sells you an "AI visibility" package. First, people are searching for this: "aeo" (answer engine optimisation, the practice of being quoted by AI assistants) gets 4,425 searches a month, "answer engine optimization" 325, "ai visibility" 244, "ai search optimisation" 214, "llm seo" 159 and "chatgpt seo" 76 searches a month (UK, 2026 run-rate). Most of those searches are agencies and marketers, not business owners. The cost per click on "ai visibility" is £44.33, which tells you agencies are paying heavily to sell it.

Second, AI Overviews are not on every local search yet. On 13 October 2026 we checked the Google results page for a set of terms. An AI Overview was present on "ai agency", "ai agency surrey", "website for plumbers" and "website for dentists". It was absent on "web design surrey", "seo surrey", "web design woking", "web design guildford", "marketing agency surrey" and "seo farnham". The pattern: Google shows an AI answer when the question is informational ("what is", "which is best for"), and shows the map pack and ordinary results when the intent is to hire someone nearby.

Why does that matter? Because it tells you where to aim. The questions that trigger AI answers are the ones your customers ask before they know who to hire: "how much does a new roof cost in Surrey", "do I need a podiatrist or a GP for this", "how often should a boiler be serviced". If your site answers those questions plainly, you are in the pool the assistant draws from. If your site only says "we are a friendly family firm", you are not.

How do ChatGPT and Google AI decide who to mention?

Nobody outside those companies has the full recipe, and anyone who claims to is guessing. What we can observe from the pages that do get cited comes down to four mechanisms.

1. The page answers the question directly. Assistants pull short, self-contained passages. A paragraph that starts with the answer ("A gutter replacement in Surrey usually takes one day and ...") is quotable. A paragraph that starts with "At Smith Roofing we pride ourselves on" is not.
2. The page names the place. The town, the county and the trade appear in the heading and the first paragraph. "Podiatrist in Walton-on-Thames" is something a model can match to "podiatrist near Walton". "Expert foot care" is not.
3. Other sources agree. The model checks your claim against your Google Business Profile, your reviews and directory listings. If your site says Shepperton and your profile says Staines, you look unreliable and you get skipped.
4. The site is easy to read by machine. Clean headings, a page that loads, no walls of text inside images, and structured data (a short block of code that tells search engines "this is a business, here is its address and opening hours") where your platform supports it.

None of these is new. They are the same signals that decide the Google map pack and ordinary local rankings. That is the good news: there is one job here, not two. We covered the overlap in plain terms in SEO, AEO and GEO for a small business.

Three ways to approach it

You have three options. Two of them do not involve paying anyone.

Option 1: Wait until it matters

What it means: leave the site as it is and revisit in a year. How you know it is a real option: on 13 October 2026 most hiring-intent local searches in Surrey showed no AI Overview at all. Where it falls down: the informational searches that feed those decisions already do, and a customer who gets your competitor's name from an assistant on Tuesday does not run a second search on Wednesday. Who it is right for: a business with a full diary and no plan to grow, or a trade where the work comes entirely by referral.

Option 2: Do the seven things yourself

What it means: a week of your own time, or an afternoon a week for a month, rewriting your key pages so they answer questions, and tidying your Google Business Profile so it agrees with your site. How you know it works: the pages being cited today follow the four mechanisms above, and the same changes are what move the map pack, which you can measure. Where it falls down: it needs someone who can write plainly and who will keep going after the first week. Who it is right for: any owner who can give it the hours and does not mind editing their own website.

Option 3: Pay an agency for "AI visibility"

What it means: a monthly retainer for someone to do option 2 for you, plus reporting. How you know: there are agencies paying £44 a click to appear for "ai visibility", so there is a market. Where it falls down: nobody can buy a citation. There is no advertising product that puts you in a ChatGPT answer. Ask any agency, including us, one question: "what number will you report each month, and how do you measure it?" If the answer is a "share of AI voice" score from a tool, ask how that tool samples the questions, because the answers change by the hour and by the user. Bad Boy Labs does not have a reliable citation metric. We report enquiries and calls, because those are what you bank. Who it is right for: a multi-site business with more pages than an owner can rewrite, and a clear figure for what an enquiry is worth.

The recommendation

Bottom line: do option 2 this week, and only talk to an agency once your own pages answer questions and your profile is complete. The reason is money. The seven steps below cost you time, not cash. They improve the Google results you already get, which for most Surrey businesses is still the bigger source of enquiries. And they are the exact work an agency would do first anyway, so doing them yourself means you only ever pay for the harder second layer, if you need it at all.

How to do it this week: seven things, in order

1. Write down the ten questions customers ask you on the phone. Not what you want to say. What they ask. "Do you do emergency call-outs?" "How much is a new boiler?" "Can you see my child?" Done looks like: a list of ten questions in their words, in a document you can open on Monday.
2. Answer each question in one paragraph, answer first. Three or four sentences. The first sentence is the answer. The second gives the mechanism or a number. The third says why it matters to them. Example: "A plumber's call-out in Surrey is usually £80 to £150. That covers the first hour and the diagnosis. The repair itself is quoted before any work starts." Done looks like: ten paragraphs, none starting with your company name.
3. Put those answers on your site under question-shaped headings. Open your site editor. On the service page each question belongs to, add a heading that is the question itself ("How much does a plumber cost in Walton-on-Thames?") and the paragraph beneath it. If your site has an FAQ feature, use it, because it usually adds the structured data for you. Done looks like: each heading is a question a person would type.
4. Name the place in the first paragraph of every service page. Town and county, once, naturally: "serving Shepperton, Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge in Surrey". Not a list of thirty towns in the footer. Done looks like: a stranger could tell where you work from the first two sentences.
5. Make your Google Business Profile agree with the site. Go to business.google.com. Check the business name, category, address or service area, phone number and opening hours match your website exactly. Add the ten questions and answers to the profile's description and posts where they fit. The setup walk-through is in our 30-minute Google Business Profile setup. Done looks like: name, address and phone identical on site and profile, character for character.
6. Ask your last ten customers for a review that names the job and the town. Send the direct review link from your profile. Say: "If you can, mention what we did and where." A review that reads "replaced our flat roof in Addlestone, done in two days" is corroboration an assistant can use. Done looks like: five new reviews within the fortnight that mention a service or a place.
7. Test it. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google. Ask the questions on your list, with your town in them. Note who is named and which pages are cited. Do it again in a month. Done looks like: a dated note of which questions name you and which do not. That note is your real metric, and it costs nothing.

If you only do three of the seven, do 2, 5 and 6. Answer-first paragraphs, a profile that matches, and reviews that name the place. Those three carry most of the weight, and the profile part has its own page at Google Business Profile.

Mistakes we see

• Writing for the robot instead of the customer. Stuffing "AI" and the town name into every sentence reads badly to a person and gives a model nothing quotable. One clear sentence beats ten keyword ones.
• Hiding the answers in a PDF or an image. A price list as a photo, a brochure as a download. Assistants read text on pages. Put it on the page.
• Different details in different places. Old phone number on Yell, new one on the site, a third on Facebook. Fix every listing to match, or you look like two businesses.
• Paying for a "citation score" before the basics exist. A dashboard cannot cite a page that does not answer anything.
• Checking once and giving up. AI answers vary by day and by person. Test the same ten questions monthly and look at the trend, not one result.

Want the ten questions checked?

If you send us the ten questions your customers ask and the URL of your site, we will tell you which pages answer them, which do not, and what the first rewrite should be. No retainer, no dashboard. If you would rather do the seven steps yourself, the AI search page has the same checklist in a printable form. Which would you prefer: the check, or the checklist?