How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI in South Africa

By Tihan van der Walt | 13 November 2026

Here's a test worth doing before you read on. Open ChatGPT and ask "who's a good [what you do] in [your area]?", then put the same question to Google and read the AI Overview at the top.

Google's documentation for site owners says: "The best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode). There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." OpenAI's crawler page, for its part, says "OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features."

Nothing there about secret prompts or paid shortcuts, you'll notice. It's SEO, done with more care than usual, and a web that tells one consistent story about your business.

Can you pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?

OpenAI says not. Its post on advertising, from January 2026: "Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you." Elsewhere in it: "you need to trust that ChatGPT's responses are driven by what's objectively useful, never by advertising." Ads, according to the post, are "clearly labeled and separated from the organic answer."

Paid placement is covered in ChatGPT ads in South Africa. Here, the organic answer.

How do ChatGPT and Google AI decide which businesses to mention?

Google says both AI Overviews and AI Mode "may use a 'query fan-out' technique", which it describes as "issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources". And on eligibility: "To be eligible to be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, fulfilling the Search technical requirements. There are no additional technical requirements."

OpenAI's crawler page is just as plain: "OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features."

My guess, and it is a guess, is that agreement between sources counts for a lot. If the website, the Business Profile, Facebook and a couple of directories all call you a "commercial electrician in Midrand", that's what an AI is likely to repeat.

StatCounter's figures for South Africa in October 2026 had Google at 92.89% of search and Bing at 6.28%. Copilot runs on Bing, which is why I wouldn't ignore Bing.

Is your website blocking AI crawlers?

Go to yoursite.co.za/robots.txt and look. OpenAI's documentation: "Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links. To help ensure your site appears in search results, we recommend allowing OAI-SearchBot in your site's robots.txt file and allowing requests from our published IP ranges below."

Training is a separate switch. The same page says "a webmaster can allow OAI-SearchBot in order to appear in search results while disallowing GPTBot to indicate that crawled content should not be used for training OpenAI's generative AI foundation models." And after you change it, "it can take ~24 hours from a site's robots.txt update for our systems to adjust."

Security plugins with a "block bad bots" box are the usual suspect, as far as I can tell. Google's list of SEO basics for AI features starts with "ensuring that crawling is allowed in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure", and includes "making sure that important content is available in textual form". So no prices baked into images.

What should your website say to get picked up by AI?

Google's helpful-content page is mostly questions to ask of your own pages. Among them: "Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?", "Does the main heading or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?" and "Is this the sort of page you'd want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?" Its AI features guide adds "making sure that important content is available in textual form".

I would add one thing of my own, which is to put a price range in rand near the top of the page. Customers want it, and a page that answers "how much?" gives an AI something concrete to repeat.

Do reviews and mentions matter for AI recommendations?

Google is fairly direct about reviews on its local ranking page: "This factor's also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." Its reviews page, meanwhile, says "a mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy".

Which tells you that links matter as well as reviews. A quote in local news, an industry association listing or a supplier's installer page all count as "websites" that "link to your business". As for the reviews, ask customers to mention the job and the suburb. "They replaced our DB board in Bryanston the same day" is more use to anyone than "great service".

Does schema markup or llms.txt help?

Google's AI features page: "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add." On llms.txt specifically, its documentation update says these files "aren't needed for Google Search (and won't negatively or positively impact your visibility or rankings), it's fine if you want to maintain these files for other services or systems that use them."

LocalBusiness and Organization schema are still worth adding for name, address, phone and areas. Google's line there is "making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page".

FAQ rich results are gone too. Another update: "The FAQ rich result feature is no longer shown in Google Search results". Question-and-answer sections still help readers, so I'd keep them anyway.

How does Google Business Profile affect AI answers?

For anything local, quite a bit. Google's guide to AI features lists "checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date" among the SEO basics, and its page on local ranking says "Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results."

There's a full walkthrough here: how to set up Google Business Profile properly for a service-area business. Cheapest win on the list, I reckon.

How do you check whether AI is recommending you?

Google's answer, from the AI features page: "Just like the rest of the search results page, sites appearing in AI features (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode) are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console." There's a nice line after it, too: "We've seen that when people click from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality (meaning, users are more likely to spend more time on the site)."

ChatGPT and Gemini don't give you a console, so I'd ask them directly once a month, using what a stranger might type ("who does vehicle branding in Johannesburg?"), and keep the answers. Referral visits from chatgpt.com do show in Analytics; the GA4 and Google Tag Manager guide explains the setup.

What should a small business do first?

Google's AI features page has a list of basics that I'd more or less follow in order. It starts with "ensuring that crawling is allowed in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure", goes through "making sure that important content is available in textual form" and "making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page", and ends with "checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date".

I'd move the Business Profile to the top for a local business, and add two things Google doesn't list: a review request after every job, and a monthly look at what ChatGPT and Gemini say. The long view is in SEO in South Africa in 2026, when AI answers come first.

FAQ

Not sure where you stand?

Some owners enjoy this kind of digging. Most, I'd guess, would rather someone else did it.

Sources

• Google Search Central, "AI features and your website"
• Google Search Central, "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content"
• Google Search Central, "Latest Google Search documentation updates" (llms.txt and FAQ rich results)
• OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI crawlers"
• StatCounter Global Stats, "Search engine market share South Africa", October 2026
• Google Search Central, "Local Business structured data"
• Bing Webmaster Tools, "Webmaster guidelines"
• OpenAI, "Our approach to advertising and expanding access to ChatGPT"
• Google Business Profile Help, "Tips to improve your local ranking on Google"
• Google Business Profile Help, "Tips to get more reviews"