How does ChatGPT find local businesses? What is known and what is not, DarkTiger Studios

ChatGPT finds businesses the way it finds everything else on the web: through third-party search providers, content from partners, and a crawler of its own called OAI-SearchBot, and OpenAI has not published how it chooses one local business over another. That is the honest shape of the answer. Half of it is documented. The other half is not, and anyone who tells you they can get your business "recommended by ChatGPT" is selling the half nobody can see.

What OpenAI has documented

OpenAI's crawler page lists four user agents; three matter for a business site, and the page describes what each one is for (Source: OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers).

OAI-SearchBot "is for search" and "is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features." If your site blocks it in robots.txt, your site "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links."
GPTBot "is used to crawl content that may be used in training our generative AI foundation models." This is the training crawler. Blocking it keeps your pages out of training; the page does not say it affects search.
ChatGPT-User is used "for certain user actions in ChatGPT," the moments when a person asks ChatGPT to open a specific page. OpenAI notes that robots.txt rules may not apply to those requests, because a person asked for the page.

When OpenAI launched ChatGPT search in October 2024, its announcement said the feature "leverages third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by our partners, to provide the information users are looking for" (Source: OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT search). The same post said "Any website or publisher can choose to appear in ChatGPT search," that OpenAI "partnered with news and data providers to add up-to-date information and new visual designs for categories like weather, stocks, sports, news, and maps," and that answers "include links to sources" behind a Sources button (Source: OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT search).

That is the documented picture: a search layer that draws on outside search engines and partner data, a crawler you can allow or block, a maps category fed by a data partner, and visible source links.

What Google has documented

Google's answer about its own AI features is short. "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary," and "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features" (Source: Google Search Central, AI features). Google adds the sentence it attaches to everything: "Indexing and serving isn't guaranteed."

Google also runs a control called Google-Extended, and it is worth knowing what it does not do: it "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search" (Source: Google Search Central, common crawlers). It governs whether your content trains or grounds Gemini, nothing about whether you show up.

What is not known

We looked for these and did not find them in any OpenAI or Google document:

How ChatGPT ranks local businesses. Which signals it weighs, whether reviews count, whether distance counts, whether a Google Business Profile counts. Not published.
Which "third-party search providers" feed a given answer. The launch post names the category, not the engine behind each answer. We will not name one.
Whether maps data in ChatGPT includes your listing. The post says maps came from a data partner. It does not say which partner, or how a business gets into it.
How often any of this changes. No changelog covers local results.
Any way to see it. There is no OpenAI report that tells a business how often it was mentioned. If a vendor shows you a "ChatGPT visibility score," ask where the number came from.

So nobody controls whether ChatGPT names your business. Not us, not an agency, not you.

What is in your control

The documented parts give you a short list, and every item on it is the same work that helps Google.

Do not block the crawler. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt on your phone. If you see User-agent: OAI-SearchBot followed by Disallow: /, your site has opted out of ChatGPT search. If you see nothing about it, the crawler is allowed.
Put the facts in plain text on the page. Business name, the towns you serve, the phone number, the services, the hours. A search layer can only repeat what it can read. A phone number inside a photo is invisible to it.
Use the same facts everywhere. Your site, your Google Business Profile, and the directories should agree on your name, address and phone. Disagreement is noise, and noise is the one thing no engine resolves in your favor.
Mark up the facts. Structured data (the LocalBusiness kind) is the standard way to label name, address, phone and hours so a machine can read them without guessing.
Answer real questions on real pages. The Sources sidebar links to pages. A page that says what a water heater replacement involves in Colonie is a page that can be cited. A page that says "we are your trusted partner" is not.

What to do next

Our Search and AI Foundations package is $650. It covers structured data, an answer page written from your customers' real questions, a completed Google Business Profile, AI crawler access in robots.txt, Search Console verified with the sitemap submitted, and a before-and-after report on every item. It does not promise a mention in ChatGPT or a ranking in Google, because nobody can. Details at /services#aeo.