How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT in London, Ontario
Short answer: ChatGPT and Google's AI answers name the businesses they can find consistent facts about: the same name, address and phone number everywhere, a complete Google Business Profile with reviews, pages that say plainly what you do and where, and other sites that mention you. Nobody can promise you a spot in an answer, but all four of those are in your hands, and you can start on every one of them this week. Here is the order we'd do it in, and what it looked like for two London businesses we work with.
## what_it_picks
What ChatGPT is actually looking for
When someone in London asks "who's the best roofer near me" or "best ADU builder in London Ontario", the assistant isn't flipping through a phone book. It reads what it can find about local businesses and names the ones it can describe without guessing. If your name is spelled three ways, your old address is still on half the internet, and your website never says which city you serve, you're a risky thing to recommend, so you get left out.
The short version
Make it easy to confirm who you are, where you are, and what you do. Then make sure other places say the same thing. That's most of it.
## seven_steps
Seven steps you can do yourself
01Ask the question yourself, first
Open ChatGPT and Google and ask what your customers ask, with London in it: "best [your trade] in London Ontario", "[your trade] near me London". Write down who gets named, in what order, and whether you appear at all. This is your starting line, and you'll repeat it later.
02Pick one version of your name, address and phone number
Write it down exactly: "Smith Roofing Ltd.", the street address as you'd put it on an invoice, one phone number. Then search for yourself and fix every place that differs: Google, Facebook, Yelp, Yellow Pages, the Chamber of Commerce, your supplier listings, old directories. If you've moved or changed numbers, this step matters most.
03Finish your Google Business Profile
Choose the right main category, list every service you offer, add your real service area (London, plus the nearby towns you actually work in), upload recent photos of real jobs, and add your hours. An empty or half-filled profile is one of the easiest things to fix and one of the first things the assistants read.
04Ask your last ten customers for a review
Send a short message with your review link the same day the job is done. Reviews that mention the service and the neighbourhood ("replaced our roof in Old North") tell the assistants what you do and where. Reply to every review, good or bad, in plain words.
05Make your website say it in plain words
Put one sentence near the top of your home page and each service page: what you do, for whom, in which city. "We build custom homes and garden suites in London, Ontario." Give each service its own page, and put your name, address and phone number in the footer exactly as you wrote them in step 2.
06Answer the questions customers really ask
On a service page or a short FAQ, answer in two or three sentences: how long does it take, what does it cost in general terms, do you handle permits, which areas do you cover. Short, specific answers are the easiest thing for an assistant to quote.
07Get mentioned by other London sources
A listing on the London Chamber of Commerce, a supplier or manufacturer that lists you as a dealer or installer, a local news mention, a project featured by a partner. Each one is another place confirming you exist and do what you say. Only list yourself where it's accurate, and use the name from step 2.
## kuzyn
What it looked like for a London builder
Kuzyn Builds is a custom home and ADU builder in London, Ontario. We built their website and track what AI assistants say about them. For the question "best ADU builder in London Ontario", AI assistants named Kuzyn in 23 of 23 checks and put them first in 17, between June 27 and October 19, 2026. On October 28, 2026, both ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview listed Kuzyn Builds first for that question.
AI assistants named Kuzyn Builds in 23 of 23 checks for "best ADU builder in London Ontario" between June 27 and October 19, 2026, and first in 17 of them. This is one builder and one question, so treat it as an example of what the steps above can look like, not a promise of the same result.
Google also showed kuzynbuilds.com 8,741 times between July 28 and October 25, 2026, up from 2,518 times between January 1 and March 31, 2026, an increase of 247%.
## smart_fix
What it looked like for a shop that moved
Smart Fix London is a repair shop that moved locations. When we started in September 2026, 27 pages of its site still gave Google the old address, and 139 product listings still said "visit us at our store" at that old address. We changed every one of them, and merged two copies of the homepage into one. That's step 2 in action: one address, said the same way everywhere. For context, clicks from Google between September 28 and October 25 were 385 in 2025 and 516 in 2026; we only started in September, so that isn't all our work.
If you've moved, rebranded or changed your phone number in the last few years, go looking for the old version. It's usually still sitting on your own website.
## keep_it_up
Why this isn't a one-week job
Assistants change their answers, competitors publish new pages, and your own site drifts: a new service, a new phone number, a listing that gets edited. The businesses that stay named are the ones that re-ask the question every month and fix what slipped. If you'd rather not own that, it's what our monthly maintenance does for London businesses.
## faq
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?
You can't buy your way into the answer itself. Where assistants show ads, they're labelled separately from the businesses the answer names. What you can do is make your business easy to find and confirm: consistent name, address and phone, a complete Google Business Profile, clear pages, and mentions on other sites.
How long does it take for ChatGPT to start naming my business?
Nobody can say for sure. Fixing your listings and website can show up in Google within weeks, and assistants pick up changes on their own schedule. Re-ask the same questions every month and note what moves, rather than expecting a date.
Is this different from regular Google ranking?
Much of it overlaps: a complete Google Business Profile, reviews and a clear website help both. The difference is that an AI answer names a few businesses instead of listing ten, so being easy to confirm matters even more.
Does my business have to be in London, Ontario for this to work?
No, the steps are the same in any city. We wrote this for London because that's where we work, and the two examples above are London businesses.
## related_guides
## want_it_done_for_you
Want this done and re-checked every month? Our monthly maintenance re-runs your buying questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, ships the fixes that keep you out of the answers, and reports what moved. Or run the free check on your site first at advancelabs.dev/tools/audit.
See how it works