How ChatGPT and Perplexity choose which businesses to recommend
Neither OpenAI nor Perplexity publishes the rules that decide which businesses their assistants name, so nobody outside those companies can say exactly how it works. What is public is how they find sources: they search the web, read pages, and build an answer that links back to where it came from.
Do ChatGPT and Perplexity publish how they choose businesses?
No. Both companies describe in broad terms how their assistants find information, but neither publishes a ranking formula for businesses. Anyone who tells you exactly how to be recommended is guessing, or selling something.
This article separates what is documented from what is only reasonable to assume. We will say which is which.
How does Perplexity build an answer?
Perplexity describes a short workflow. It interprets the question, searches the internet across sources such as articles, websites and journals, and then compiles what it finds into an answer. Each answer includes numbered citations that link to the original sources [1].
That has a practical meaning for a business. The assistant does not answer from memory alone. It reads pages at the moment someone asks, and it shows where each point came from. A business that is clearly described on pages the assistant can find has something to cite. A business that is not described anywhere it can read has nothing to cite.
Perplexity also says its crawler, PerplexityBot, respects robots.txt: it will not index the text of a site that disallows it [2].
How does ChatGPT find businesses?
ChatGPT can answer in two different ways, and it helps to keep them apart.
From what the model learned in training. OpenAI says its GPTBot crawler gathers content that may be used to train its models, and that site owners can disallow it [3]. Knowledge learned this way can be out of date, because it reflects when the model was trained.
By searching the web at the moment of the question. OpenAI says OAI-SearchBot powers ChatGPT’s search feature, and that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers [3]. A third agent, ChatGPT-User, handles individual requests made by users inside ChatGPT [3].
The takeaway is the same as with Perplexity. If you want to appear in search-based answers, the crawler has to be allowed to read your site.
What do they probably rely on for local questions?
This is where we move from documented to reasonable. Neither company publishes a list of sources for local businesses. Based on how they describe themselves, they read web pages. For a local question those are likely to include:
- your own website
- business listings and directories
- review pages
- local articles or other pages that mention you
We do not know how much weight any one source gets, and it can differ between assistants and over time. So the sensible approach is to be accurate and consistent everywhere, not to tune for one source.
What can you control?
Quite a lot of the basics:
- Whether the crawlers can read you. Check that your robots.txt allows the search crawlers you want, and that your pages load properly without relying on scripts to show the main text.
- How clearly you describe yourself. Say what you do, where, and for whom, in plain sentences at the top of the page.
- How consistent your facts are. Name, address, phone number, hours and services should agree across your website and your listings.
- Whether you answer the questions customers ask. Pages built around real questions give an assistant something quotable.
- How fast and reliable your site is. A page that fails to load cannot be read.
What can’t you control?
- The assistant’s choice. You cannot make an assistant name you.
- What other websites say about you. Reviews and mentions are written by other people.
- Changes over time. Models, sources and rules change. A result today is not a promise for next month.
- Differences between assistants. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude do not behave identically.
Will you get the same answer every time?
Not necessarily. Answers can vary between askings, between assistants and over time. That is why a single test tells you little. Repeat the same questions on different days, write down what you see, and look for a pattern.
How can you check how you appear?
- Write three or four questions a customer would ask about the kind of service you offer in your area.
- Ask each question in ChatGPT and Perplexity, and note which businesses are named and which sources are linked.
- Click the sources. Look for errors in how your business is described.
- Fix what you can: your own pages first, then your listings.
- Repeat in a week or two.
Treat the results as a starting point. They are an observation, not a measurement.
If you would like us to look, request the free AI Visibility Audit. You can also read about our AI visibility service and our website performance service, since a fast, readable site is the foundation for all of this.