How to Get Recommended by ChatGPT: The 2026 Checklist for Small Business Websites
How to get recommended by ChatGPT: the 2026 checklist
Let's be blunt: nobody can guarantee ChatGPT recommends your business — not us, not any agency, not any tool. What you can do is make your business findable, understandable and citable, which is the entire game. Here are the ten things to fix on your website, in priority order.
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Scan My Website FreeThe ten-point checklist
1. Your business name, phone and address in plain text on every page — not trapped in images. 2. Your services described the way customers actually search for them. 3. Prices or honest pricing guidance ('most projects run $X–$Y'). 4. Hours and service areas stated plainly. 5. JSON-LD structured data on every page. 6. A valid llms.txt file. 7. A robots.txt that allows AI crawlers — check this first; it's the most common silent killer. 8. An identical name, phone and website on your Google, Bing and Apple listings. 9. A quote or booking path an AI can describe ('request a quote online'). 10. Freshness signals — recent updates, the current year in the footer, active content.
What doesn't work
Keyword-stuffing for robots. Fake reviews — assistants cross-check sources, and inconsistencies hurt you. Plugins that inject invisible text. And anyone selling 'guaranteed placement': there is no placement to buy, so there's nothing to guarantee.
How to measure it
Run the free AgentEligible scan. It checks every item on this checklist against your actual pages and scores you out of 100 — detected, not detected, or could-not-verify. Fix the top three gaps, rescan, and watch the number move. That's the whole feedback loop.
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