How AI assistants find businesses
When someone asks "who is a good electrician near me?", most assistants run a web search, read a handful of pages and summarize them. Each company uses its own crawler for this:
| Crawler | Company | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | Finds and links websites in ChatGPT search |
| Claude-SearchBot | Anthropic | Improves the quality of Claude's search results |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | Surfaces and links websites in Perplexity answers |
| Googlebot | Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode | |
| Bingbot | Microsoft | Bing search, which also feeds Copilot |
OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot will not appear in ChatGPT search answers. There are separate crawlers for collecting training data (GPTBot, ClaudeBot and the Google-Extended control), and blocking those is a separate choice.
Step 1: let the right crawlers in
Open yoursite.com/robots.txt. If you see Disallow: / under User-agent: * or under any of the crawlers above, they are blocked. Some security plugins and hosting firewalls also block bots without telling you. Our free AI readiness check tests this for you.
Step 2: put your facts in plain text
Assistants quote what they can read. Make sure these are written on the page as text, not only inside images or PDFs:
- What you do, in one clear sentence
- Services and prices, or starting prices
- The towns or areas you serve
- Opening hours, including holiday changes
- Phone number and address
Step 3: add structured data for your business type
Structured data (schema.org markup) labels those facts so machines do not have to guess: this is a Plumber, these are its hours, this is its service area. Google says the markup must match what visitors can see on the page. There is no special markup for AI features; standard markup done accurately is what helps.
Step 4: answer the questions customers ask
Write short, direct answers to the questions you hear on the phone: how much, how long, do you cover my town, do you take my insurance. Assistants favor pages that answer the question in the first sentence or two.
Step 5: fix your presence off the site
Assistants cross-check. Your Google Business Profile, your listings on directories your industry uses, your reviews and any local news coverage all feed the picture. Make sure your name, address and phone number are the same everywhere.
Step 6: keep it current
An assistant that finds last year's prices or closed hours will repeat them. Update the site when anything changes, especially hours and services.
What not to waste money on
Be wary of anyone selling guaranteed placement in AI answers. Google's guidance says there are no extra requirements to appear in its AI features beyond being indexed and eligible for a normal search snippet. The fundamentals above are the work.
Sources: OpenAI: overview of OpenAI crawlers; Anthropic: about Claude's crawlers; Perplexity crawlers; Google: AI features and your website. Checked 22 October 2026.
