How ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI tools find local businesses

When someone asks ChatGPT “Who's a good dentist near me?”, it doesn't pull the answer out of thin air. It searches the web, reads what it finds and writes a short answer, often with links. Each AI tool searches a different way, and that decides which businesses it can find.

Here's what each company says about its own tool, in plain words, with links to their pages.

Two kinds of knowledge

Every AI tool has two sources. The first is what it learned when it was built, from a huge snapshot of the internet. That snapshot is months or years old and only changes when the company releases a new version. That's one reason an AI tool can mention a business that has since closed.

The second is a live search, done when you ask. A question about who's good near you is exactly the kind that needs fresh information, so this is the part that matters for a local business. A live search is only as fresh as the search engine behind it.

Tool by tool

ChatGPT

OpenAI says ChatGPT searches the web automatically when a question might benefit from it, and shares the search with third-party search providers such as Bing. It also uses the person's general location, so “near me” means near them.

OpenAI also runs its own search robot, OAI-SearchBot. Its crawler page says websites that block it won't be shown in ChatGPT's search answers. A different robot, GPTBot, collects pages for training; blocking that one is a separate choice.

What this means for you: Bing matters more than most owners think, and your website needs to let OAI-SearchBot in.

Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode

These are the AI answers at the top of Google Search, and they're built from Google's own search results. Google's page on AI features says there's no special trick to appear in them: a page has to be in Google's index and eligible to show in Search, the same as always. On its list of good habits, Google includes keeping your Business Profile information up to date.

Gemini

Gemini is Google's AI assistant. It can show the sources behind an answer, though not every answer has them. Google also lets apps built on Gemini pull in Google Maps information on more than 250 million places, including reviews and opening hours. For a local business, that information comes from your Google Business Profile listing.

Perplexity

Perplexity searches the internet in real time for each question and puts numbered links to its sources in every answer. Its robot, PerplexityBot, finds websites for its results, and Perplexity's crawler page recommends letting it in if you want to appear.

Microsoft Copilot

Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant, built on Bing. It's also the only one of these that reports how often it cites your website: Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report (a preview since February 2026) that counts how often your pages were cited in Copilot, in Bing's AI summaries and in some partner tools.

How often the answers change

Often, and not on a schedule anyone publishes. The search engines behind these tools revisit websites at their own pace, so a change to your website reaches the AI answers whenever the robots come back. If your web person changes which robots your site allows, OpenAI and Perplexity both say it takes about a day for them to notice.

The answers themselves also vary. Ask the same question twice and you can get a different list of businesses. That's normal. One answer tells you little. The pattern over many answers, and over a few months, is what counts.

What you can check yourself

1. Your Google Business Profile listing is complete and current: hours, services, phone number, website. Google's AI and Gemini draw on Google's information about your business.
2. You have a Bing Places listing (bingplaces.com). It's free, and Bing can copy your details from your Google Business Profile listing.
3. Your website lets the AI search robots in. Ask whoever looks after your website to check that the site's robots.txt file doesn't block OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot or Bingbot.
4. Your website is set up in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Google counts visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search Console's Performance report, and Bing's AI Performance report shows your Copilot citations.
5. Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the question your customers would ask, word it the same way each time, and write down who they name.

For more on tracking, and on why all of this takes months, read how long it takes to show up higher on Google.

See what the AI tools say about you

Our free check shows where you rank on Google Maps and whether ChatGPT named you. The full report gets up to 30 answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini to the questions your customers ask, shows who they recommend instead of you, and what to fix first, based on our own testing.

Check my business for free

Checked against each company's own pages on November 1, 2026. These tools change often; the linked pages have the latest.