Guide: Does ChatGPT recommend local businesses?
What the assistants do when a buyer asks where to buy, and what a local business needs to be named.
The short answer
In two paragraphs.
Yes. When a buyer asks where to buy, ChatGPT and the other assistants name shops, and they name local ones. In our running-shoe study in Lebanon, 85% of the 99 answers to a question of the form "where can I buy one?" named a shop. The retailer named most, Mike Sport, was described accurately down to the cities its stores are in.
The shop is named when the buyer asks for a shop. When the buyer asks which product to get, the answer is about products: 16% of the 189 answers to "which shoe should I get?" named any shop. A local business is recommended for the questions that call for a place, and the first job is to know which of your customers' questions those are.
What the study found
Asked for a shop, the assistants name one. Asked for a product, they rarely do.
| The buyer asked | Answers | Named a shoe | Named a shop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Which shoe should I get? | 189 | 84% | 16% |
| Where can I buy one? | 99 | 44% | 85% |
| Which shoe, and where can I get it? | 54 | 85% | 65% |
Across all 342 answers, 149 named any place to buy. Mike Sport was named 52 times, Decathlon 48, Nike selling direct 22, Running Warehouse 20 and adidas selling direct 18. A local retailer led the list, ahead of the global brands' own shops.
The gap was between the shop and the shelf. In 12 of the 342 answers the system recommended a product the retailer sells and named the retailer as the place to buy it. The assistant knew the shop and knew the shoes; it rarely put the two in one sentence, and when the buyer did not ask for a place, it rarely offered one.
What a local business needs
A website the assistant can read, that says what you sell and where you are.
- A website of your own. The assistants read websites. A business that lives on Instagram or Facebook alone gives them a page they cannot open, so there is nothing to recommend. Our question map, which has made maps for businesses with no website, offers exactly this: a website made for AI search.
- The places, in words. The cities and areas you serve, the address, the opening hours, on a page the assistant can read without a script building it.
- What you stock, by name. The assistant recommends products it has read about and shops it has read about; it connects the two when a page says this shop sells this product. A product list that matches what is on the shelf is what makes the connection possible.
- The same facts everywhere. Your listings, your map entry, your reviews and your site should agree on the name, the places and the hours. The assistant repeats what the sources agree on.
Does ChatGPT use Google Maps or Google Business Profile?
ChatGPT searches the web and reads what it finds; it does not read Google's map listings as Google does. Gemini is Google's own assistant. Keep both in order: your own website for the assistants that read the web, and your map listing for Google.
We only have an Instagram page. Will AI recommend us?
Rarely. The assistants cannot open Instagram pages the way they open a website, so a business that exists only there is read, if at all, through what other sites say about it. A small website that says what you sell and where is the first step, and it is work we do.
Which questions should a local business try to win?
The ones that ask for a place: "where can I buy", "near me", "in" a city, "which shop". The question map on this site shows them for your business in a minute, and Senpai.ai's audit ranks them by how much each is worth.
The question map
What are your customers asking AI?
They ask ChatGPT what to buy and who to trust before they ever reach you. Type your website and see the questions they ask, and who AI names instead of you.
People ask AI things like
- Where can I try on running shoes in Dubai today?
- Which running shoes stay cool in very hot weather?
- How do I know my running shoe size?
Find what's worth changing next.
Bring the market, the product or the question. We'll start there.
Or start with the question map: see what your customers ask AI.