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Why ChatGPT recommends your competitors, and what to do

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AI assistants like ChatGPT recommend the businesses that the sources they read already talk about. If your competitors appear in “best of” articles, review sites and forum threads, and you don’t, they get named and you don’t. The good news is that this is something you can check and work on.

First, check properly

Asking ChatGPT once on your own account isn’t a reliable test. Answers change from one run to the next, and can differ between accounts. Business owners have reported appearing on a work account but not a personal one, or being mentioned one day and missing the next (WordAgents).

A fairer check:

  1. Write five to ten questions a customer would actually ask, such as “best bookkeeping service for small agencies in Manchester”.
  2. Ask each one several times, ideally logged out or in a fresh chat.
  3. Try more than one assistant: ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity often give different answers.
  4. Note who gets named, and which websites the answer cites.

The pattern across runs matters more than any single answer.

Look at what the AI is reading

When an assistant cites sources, those sources tell you why it chose your competitors. An analysis of 1.3 million AI citations by Peec AI, reported by Squarespace, found that over 20% came from “best of” style articles, with Reddit, YouTube, review sites and niche directories also prominent (Squarespace).

So if the answers keep citing the same two roundup articles and a review site, those three pages are your to-do list.

The fixes that make a difference

Get into the sources AI already trusts. Contact the authors of the roundup articles it cites and ask to be considered, with a short, specific reason you belong there. Build up reviews on the review sites it cites.

Say clearly who you serve. AI can only recommend you for things your website clearly states. A services page that says “we help businesses grow” gives it nothing to work with. One that says “bookkeeping for creative agencies with 5 to 50 staff” does.

Answer the questions customers ask. Add plain answers to common questions on the relevant pages, such as pricing ranges, who you work with and how you compare. AI assistants pull from pages that answer questions directly.

Keep your facts consistent. Make sure your name, location, services and contact details match across your website, Google Business Profile and directories. In one survey, 40% of owners who checked had found incorrect information about their business in AI search (Squarespace).

What not to expect

Nobody can guarantee that ChatGPT or any other assistant will recommend you. Be wary of anyone who offers that. What you can do is make it easy for AI to find clear, consistent, well-supported information about you, then check again in a month to see whether anything changed.