Google Business Profile and AI recommendations

Because it answers the questions an assistant has to settle before naming you: is this a real business, what work does it do and in which town, and do customers like it. Your website says all that about itself. The profile is a record held by someone else, with reviews from people who aren't you.

Its details also travel. Directory sites, map apps and data aggregators copy them, so a wrong phone number or an old category can spread to pages the assistants read.

Every field you can, in the words a customer would use:

• Primary category as specific as Google allows, plus secondary categories for the other work you do.
• Every service you sell, listed one by one, with a short plain description of each.
• Your service area, or your address if customers come to you.
• Hours, including holiday hours, and a phone number that's answered.
• A description that says what you do, for whom and where, in two or three sentences.
• Recent photos of real jobs, your team and your premises.

We can't give you a weight, and nobody outside the AI companies can. What we see is that reviews do two jobs. They show the business is active and liked. And when they describe the work, they tell an assistant what you're good at.

So recency and detail count. Ask for a review after every finished job, make it easy with a direct link, and reply to each one. A review that says "replaced our furnace in a day" is more useful to you than three that say "great".

ChatGPT's search has been reported to draw on Bing's index, so claim Bing Places too. It can import your Google profile in a few minutes. Apple Business Connect does the same job for Apple Maps and Siri.

Then make sure Yelp and the directories your trade uses carry the same name, address and phone number. Assistants are more confident about a business whose details agree everywhere.

It can't answer the specific question a buyer asks. Someone asking for an accountant who handles LLC taxes, or a roofer for storm damage, gets an answer built from pages about that exact thing. The profile gets you considered; a page on your site about the service, and mentions on roundups and forums, get you named for it.

It also can't help if your website blocks AI crawlers. Check your robots.txt as well.