# 5 things AI assistants read before they recommend you Source: https://botofmouth.com/guides/five-things-ai-assistants-read/ 11 November 2026 More and more people now ask ChatGPT or Gemini the question they used to ask a neighbour: who should I go to? The assistant answers with a few names. If you run a small business, you want to know where those names come from. The companies behind the assistants have said, in public, what they read. Here are the five things, with the source for each. ## 1. Search results, for more than one version of the question The assistant doesn't answer from memory alone. It searches. OpenAI says ChatGPT [“typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries”](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-chatgpt-search). Google calls its version [“query fan-out”](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features): one question becomes several related searches. Claude answers with [direct citations](https://www.anthropic.com/news/web-search) to the pages it used, so you can see what it read. That means a question like “a good bakery near the old market” is really several searches at once: bakeries in your town, bakeries open early, bakeries with good reviews. A business that turns up in more of them has more chances of being named. **What to do:** nothing new. If a normal search can't find your website, the assistant probably can't either. Search for your own kind of business in your own town and see whether you appear. ## 2. The plain text of your own website When BrightLocal traced 800 local searches in ChatGPT, [business websites were 58% of the sources](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/uncovering-chatgpt-search-sources/). In a Yext count of 6.8 million sources, [52% of Gemini's were the business's own website](https://www.yext.com/blog/2025/10/ai-visibility-in-2025-how-gemini-chatgpt-perplexity-cite-brands). Your own site is read more than you might think. But it has to be readable. A Vercel study found that [none of the major AI crawlers ran JavaScript](https://vercel.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-ai-crawler), apart from Google's. Google's own checklist asks that [“important content is available in textual form”](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features). Words that only appear inside a widget, an image or a PDF may never be seen. And the assistants have to be let in. OpenAI says sites that opt out of its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, [“will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”](https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots). **What to do:** put what you do, where, when you're open and how to reach you in ordinary text on the page. Ask whoever looks after your site to confirm that it doesn't block the assistants' search crawlers. ## 3. Your Google Business Profile Gemini takes its facts about places [“from Google Maps”](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/gemini/how-gemini-plans-trips/). Google's own guide lists an up-to-date Business Profile among the things that [help a business appear in AI answers](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide). **What to do:** open your profile at [business.google.com](https://business.google.com/) today. Check the category, the hours (holidays too) and the link to your website. ## 4. Reviews and listings on other sites In the same Yext count, [almost half of ChatGPT's sources](https://www.yext.com/blog/2025/10/ai-visibility-in-2025-how-gemini-chatgpt-perplexity-cite-brands) came from third-party sites such as Yelp and Tripadvisor. The assistant reads those pages next to yours, and OpenAI itself warns that [“search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect”](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-chatgpt-search). An old phone number on one directory is one more wrong answer waiting to happen. **What to do:** make sure your name, address and phone are the same everywhere. Earn real reviews and reply to them. Never buy them. ## 5. What other people say about you Google says its AI features can show [“what's being said about products and services across the web, including in blogs, videos, and forum discussions”](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide). A local blog, a newspaper piece or a forum thread about you all count. **What to do:** be worth mentioning, and make it easy. A clear “about” page gives writers the facts to get right. Google also warns that chasing [“inauthentic mentions”](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide) isn't as helpful as it may seem, so skip paid mentions and fake posts. ## And one thing they don't need A special file. Google says there is [“no special schema.org markup you need to add”](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide), and that files such as llms.txt [“will neither harm nor help your site's visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them”](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide). They do no harm. They're just not a shortcut. ## The answer changes every time In a SparkToro study, volunteers ran the same prompts 2,961 times. The chance of getting the same list of names twice was [less than 1 in 100](https://sparktoro.com/blog/new-research-ais-are-highly-inconsistent-when-recommending-brands-or-products-marketers-should-take-care-when-tracking-ai-visibility/). So don't judge by one answer. Ask a few times, on different days, and look at how often you come up. Our [15-minute guide](https://botofmouth.com/guides/check-what-ai-says-about-your-business/) walks you through that check, step by step. Nobody can promise that an assistant will name your business. What you can do is make sure that, when it reads these five things, the facts about you are there and they agree. --- Want this as a to-do list for your own business? Start with the free check at [botofmouth.com](https://app.botofmouth.com/start). Also published on [Substack](https://botofmouth.substack.com/p/5-things-ai-assistants-read-before).