25 September 2026
When someone asks ChatGPT “what's the best garage in Leeds?”, the answer doesn't come from a paid list. The assistant searches the web, reads the pages it finds and picks the businesses it has enough consistent information about. There is no way to buy a spot in the answer, but there is a lot a business can do to be found and understood. The same goes for Perplexity, Gemini and Claude.
1. Let AI assistants into your website
Many websites block AI crawlers without the owner knowing, often because of an old rule in the robots.txt file or a hosting setting. If the crawler can't get in, the AI can't read the site. These lines in robots.txt let the main ones in:
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /2. Make sure the content shows up without JavaScript
Some websites only show their text after the browser runs JavaScript. A visitor won't notice, but most AI crawlers read the page without running it and see an almost empty page. Ask whoever manages your site to make the main pages carry their text in the HTML itself (server-side rendering). WordPress sites usually already do.
3. Give AI your business details
A schema.org (JSON-LD) block tells a machine, with no room for doubt, what the business is, where it is, its phone number and its opening hours. It goes in the home page's code and isn't visible on the site. An example for a garage:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "AutoRepair",
"name": "Example Garage",
"url": "https://www.examplegarage.co.uk",
"telephone": "+44 113 000 0000",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "10 Example Street",
"addressLocality": "Leeds",
"postalCode": "LS1 1AA",
"addressCountry": "GB"
},
"openingHours": "Mo-Fr 09:00-18:00"
}
</script>The type depends on the business: Dentist, Restaurant, HairSalon, RealEstateAgent and many more.
4. Write your city and services as text
It sounds obvious, but many websites say “the best garage in the area” without saying which area, or show their services only in images. AI needs to read, as text, the city (and the neighbourhood, if it makes sense) and what the business does. A sentence like “Car repair garage in Leeds, near Kirkstall Road, offering servicing, MOTs, diagnostics and tyres” helps more than a slogan.
5. Look after what's said about you elsewhere
AI assistants cross-check what your website says with what they find elsewhere: your Google Business Profile, directories, social media, local press. Three simple rules:
- A complete Google Business Profile: the right category, opening hours, photos and a description of your services.
- Name, address and phone number written the same way everywhere.
- Recent reviews, with replies to the ones you get.
6. Summarise your site in an llms.txt file
llms.txt is a plain text file at the root of your site with a summary of the business written for AI: what it does, where it is, its services and contact details. It isn't an official standard yet, but it's easy to make and has no downside. Our guide What is llms.txt shows how.
How to tell whether it's working
AI answers vary from one request to the next, so a single question tells you little. What counts is how often the business appears across several questions and several assistants, and how that changes over the months. That's what the Chatlisted scan measures: it asks the questions your customers ask, in their language, and shows how many answers you appear in, who shows up instead of you and what to fix first.
Get a free scan of your business: it takes about a minute.