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Does ChatGPT recommend my plumbing business?

A customer calls and says, "ChatGPT gave me your name." Or a customer says ChatGPT gave them a competitor. Either way, you want to know what it sees when someone asks for a plumber in your town.

This guide covers how ChatGPT finds local businesses, the three checks that decide if it can read your site, and five fixes you can make this week. It uses what we found when we scanned 25 local trades websites on October 23, 2026. No one can promise ChatGPT will name you. These checks remove the reasons it can't.

How ChatGPT picks local businesses

ChatGPT can search the web when a question needs current facts. OpenAI's help page on ChatGPT search explains what happens with a "near me" question. ChatGPT uses your approximate location from your IP address and rewrites the question into a search. Their example turns "good restaurants near me" into "top restaurants San Francisco."

So "plumber near me" turns into something like "plumber Kansas City." The pages that best answer that search are the pages ChatGPT reads and cites. OpenAI says it may pull in "nearby business listings" from partners, and that "Placement is not guaranteed."

That gives you two jobs:

Let ChatGPT's crawler read your site.
Make your site say, in plain text and in code, who you are, what you fix, and where you work.

The 3 checks

Check 1: crawler access

OpenAI's search crawler is called OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's crawler docs say sites that opt out of it "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers." The help page says to allow OAI-SearchBot and to confirm your host or CDN "allows traffic from OpenAI's published searchbot IP addresses."

Two things block it. A robots.txt rule, or a firewall or bot shield that answers with a challenge page. The second one is easy to miss. Your site looks fine in your browser, but a crawler gets a bot challenge page with none of your content.

Check 2: llms.txt

An llms.txt file is a short Markdown file at yoursite.com/llms.txt. It lists your key pages with one line on each. It is a proposed standard. OpenAI does not say ChatGPT uses it. It costs ten minutes and gives any AI tool a clean summary of your business. See our llms.txt example for the format.

Check 3: LocalBusiness schema

Schema is a block of code (JSON-LD) that tells machines your business name, phone, address, hours, and service area. Schema.org has a Plumber type for this. Google's local business guide lists the fields it reads. Without it, a crawler has to guess your city and phone from page text.

What we found on 25 local trades websites

On October 23, 2026 we ran our free check on 25 websites of local plumbers, HVAC companies, roofers, and landscapers. They came from public search results in eight US metros: Kansas City, Denver, Tampa, Columbus, Sacramento, Nashville, Raleigh, and Austin. We are not naming them.

Finding	Sites	Share
Our checker could not read the homepage at all	5 of 25	20%
No llms.txt	12 of 20	60%
No LocalBusiness or trade schema type	7 of 20	35%
Schema with errors, or none	10 of 20	50%
Server took over 2.5 seconds to respond	4 of 20	20%
No sitemap found	3 of 20	15%
robots.txt blocks an AI crawler	0 of 20	0%

The 20 sites we could read scored 83 out of 100 on average. Five scored 100. Eight scored under 80.

Robots.txt was not the problem. Not one site blocked OAI-SearchBot. The problems were the five sites we could not read (three returned 403, one had an SSL error, one would not connect), the missing llms.txt files, and schema that was missing or broken. Two sites had a schema block that was not valid JSON, so parsers skip it.

A real scan, name removed

One plumbing company in Florida scored 45. Its robots.txt allowed every AI crawler, and the page had 2,820 characters of readable text. But it had no llms.txt, no JSON-LD schema, no meta description, and no sitemap. A crawler could read the words but had no clean record of the business name, phone, or service area. Each of those is a one-time fix.

What to fix this week

Run the free scan. It tests OAI-SearchBot and seven other AI crawlers, and tells you when a challenge page blocks the checker.
Ask your web host about bot shields. If the scan can't read your homepage, ask your host to allow OpenAI's published IP ranges. Our AI crawlers guide lists the user agents.
Add LocalBusiness schema. Use the Plumber type. Include your business name, phone, address or service area, and hours. Match what your page says.
Add an llms.txt file. List your home page, service pages, service area page, and contact page.
Put your city and services in plain text. Write "We fix water heaters and drains in Kansas City and Overland Park" on the page itself, not in an image. That matches the search ChatGPT runs.

Give it a day. OpenAI's crawler docs say robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to show in search. Our ChatGPT search guide covers the full crawler setup.

When to hire it out

If your site runs on a builder you can't edit, or the scan shows a firewall problem, you can pay us to do it. Fix it for me is $499 one time to fix the issues your scan found, or $1,500 to rebuild the site.

If you want to know each month what ChatGPT says when people ask for a plumber in your area, the Monitor is $29 a month. It asks 25 buyer questions each week and shows who AI names: you or up to 5 competitors.

Other trades

Check your site

Scan your site free. It takes under a minute and needs no signup.

FAQ

Does ChatGPT recommend local plumbers? Yes. ChatGPT can search the web and use your approximate location to find local results. OpenAI says placement is not guaranteed.

How do I get my plumbing business on ChatGPT? Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, make sure your firewall lets OpenAI's crawler through, add LocalBusiness schema, and state your city and services in plain text on your site.

Can I pay ChatGPT to recommend my business? OpenAI's search docs describe no paid placement in search answers. They say placement is not guaranteed.

Does my Google Business Profile matter for ChatGPT? OpenAI says ChatGPT may use partners for "nearby business listings." It does not name which listings. Keep your Google, Bing, and Yelp listings correct and matched to your website.

How long do fixes take to show up? OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to reach ChatGPT search. New schema and text show up after the next crawl of your site.

What score should my site get on the AI Ready Check? Aim for 85 or higher with no failed crawler checks. The local trades sites we scanned averaged 83.

Checked 2026-10-23. Prices and policies change. Confirm on the source before you buy.

Sources

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