How to Get Your Business Found on ChatGPT

Grant Calloway

An auto glass shop with multiple locations had a problem. Its pages sat at an average search position of 48.1. That's the back of the room, and the shop was missing entirely from AI answer boxes. Then, according to the marketing agency that did the work, Third Marble Marketing, the owner started getting phone calls where the customer said, quote, "I found your shop on ChatGPT." Same shop, same glass. What changed was the format of the pages. Today we're going through exactly how that works, because a while back I flagged answer engine optimization, AEO, as a blind spot, and I owe you the operational answer.

Grant Calloway

First, the market. The SBE Council's 2026 Small Business Tech Use Survey says 82% of small business employers have invested in AI tools, with a median of five tools, and marketing is the most common use. So owners are using AI to make things. The bigger shift is that customers are using AI to find things. ChatGPT reached 800 million weekly active users as of October 2025. Capgemini's 2025 consumer research says 58% of consumers have replaced traditional search with AI tools for product and service discovery. HubSpot reports AI referral traffic to small business websites up 123% in a matter of months. And one agency analysis found that 58% of local businesses still don't optimize for local search at all. That's an open door, and most of your competitors are walking past it.

Grant Calloway

Now let me be the dry one in the room. Hype is a tax on the gullible. That same analysis found Google still sends about 345 times more traffic than ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity combined. AI referrals are growing fast, but from a small base. So this isn't a replacement for search. It's a second door. And it's a door you can open cheaply, because here's the useful part. That same analysis says ChatGPT Search takes 58% of its local citations from business websites, 27% from mentions on third party sites, and 15% from directories. Your own website is the biggest source. No secret database deal required. Also, 76.1% of Google AI Overview citations come from pages already in Google's top 10. So the fundamentals still matter. You're not starting over. You're translating.

Grant Calloway

Now, the agency tax. Agencies are packaging AI search into retainers. Third Marble's tiers run from $499 to $1,299 to $3,499 a month. Some of that buys real work. But watch what's being sold. Often it's volume, more articles, more words. HubSpot's SVP Kieran Flanagan has said that today more content is generated by AI than by humans, but it's mostly average, and consumers will tune out AI generated content. Mass produced filler is the cheapest thing on the market. What the answer engines want is verified, firsthand expertise in a format they can lift out cleanly. That you can do yourself, in an afternoon.

Grant Calloway

Three moves. I call it the Answer Capsule and entity schema playbook. Move one, the Answer Capsule. Take a service page and turn a heading into the question a customer actually types. For example, "What does emergency commercial refrigeration repair cost in Austin?" Directly under it, put a short, plain, direct answer. Bottom line first. Third Marble uses capsules of 20 to 30 words. Another agency analysis recommends 50 to 60. The sources disagree on length, so aim for the range, and don't sweat the exact count. That second analysis, citing Backlinko, says pages with answer capsules get a 40% higher citation rate in AI responses. That's a secondhand figure, so treat it as direction, not a promise. The logic is simple, though. A model that has to dig through three paragraphs of "we pride ourselves on excellence" will grab someone else's clean answer.

Grant Calloway

Move two, entity density over keyword density. Don't say "best local roofer" twenty times. That's shouting in a crowded pit and hoping someone hears you. Instead, give the machine facts it can verify. Your license and insurance details. The actual neighborhoods and zip codes you serve. Equipment brands you're certified on. Pricing ranges. Turnaround windows. Models understand a business through those relationships, not repetition. And this is where your expertise becomes the edge. A competitor's AI can't invent how long a job really takes in your market. You know it. Write it down.

Grant Calloway

Move three, schema markup. That's a block of structured code behind the page that tells the machine, in its own language, what's on it. That same analysis says content with proper schema shows 30 to 40% higher visibility in AI generated answers. Three types cover most of it. LocalBusiness schema, with your name, address, phone, and location. FAQPage schema, which mirrors your question and answer blocks. And Service schema, listing what you offer and where. You don't need a developer. Most website platforms have plugins, and free generators exist. Then check your work with Google's Rich Results Test.

Grant Calloway

Back to the glass shop. The agency interviewed the owner, pulled out what he actually knew about the trade, and rewrote pages into question headings with short answer capsules. The average position went from 48.1 to 21.3, and the calls started. Two honest caveats. That's one case, reported by the agency that sells this service. And 21.3 is still not the front of the room. It's progress, not a coronation.

Grant Calloway

Timing is also fuzzy. HubSpot's guidance says small businesses often see AI citations within 4 to 8 weeks. Third Marble says most see a shift within 3 to 6 months. Plan on the longer number, and be pleasantly surprised if the shorter one shows up.

Grant Calloway

Here's your assignment, and it costs nothing but 45 minutes. One. Find the service page that makes you the most money. Two. Delete the vague opening paragraph, the one that says you're a family owned leader in solutions. Replace it with a capsule of about 50 words answering the questions customers ask first: what it costs, how fast you respond, and where you work. Three. Take your top three customer questions, the ones your team answers every week, and put them in an FAQ block on that page, with FAQ schema. Then, in a few weeks, ask ChatGPT and Perplexity for your service in your city, and see who gets named. Be accurate on every detail, because a machine that can't verify you will quietly skip you. Make yourself easy to quote. That's the whole trade.