GEO and SEO
How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my business in Singapore?
By DongHyun Kim, Co-founder, CTO and COO · Last updated
A customer needs a birthday cake for Saturday. She doesn't open Google. She asks ChatGPT: "Where can I get a good custom cake in Singapore?"
It gives her three names. She calls the first one.
If your bakery wasn't one of the three, you never knew she was looking.
This is how more and more people choose who to buy from. In Singapore, 72% of people have already used an AI assistant to help them shop. So the question for any business owner is simple: when your customers ask, does ChatGPT say your name?
How does ChatGPT decide who to recommend?
ChatGPT recommends the businesses it can find good, consistent information about. When you ask it for a recommendation, it usually looks around the internet first, a bit like a person asking friends for advice. It reads your website, your Google listing, review sites, and the "best of" articles written about your trade. When those places all tell the same clear story about you, it can recommend you with confidence. When you are missing, or every site says something different, it picks someone else.
The good news: most of what it reads is yours to improve. In one large study, about seven in every ten things the AI answers quoted came from businesses' own websites and their Google listings.
Marketers call this work GEO. GEO is getting your business named in AI answers, and it is built on the same basics as being found on Google.
The answer changes every time you ask
Ask ChatGPT the same question twice and you will usually get a different list. Researchers asked the same questions almost three thousand times, and less than once in a hundred did they get the same list twice.
So don't worry about one answer, and don't celebrate one either. What matters is how often you are named when you ask many times.
Try it yourself: a 20-minute check
- Write down five questions your customers would ask. Use their words, and put "Singapore" in. "Where can I get a good custom cake in Singapore?" is how a customer asks. "Bakery services" is not.
- Ask each question five times, each time in a new chat. Try ChatGPT and Google's AI answers. Use a private browser window, so your own history doesn't change the answer.
- Count how often you are named. Named in most answers? You are in a good place. Named once out of twenty-five? Now you know where to start.
- Write down who is named instead, and look at the websites listed under the answer. When ChatGPT searches the web, it lists where it got its information. If the same review site or "best of" article keeps showing up, that is a page you want to be on.
- Ask ChatGPT about your own business. Type "What does [your business name] in Singapore do?" If it gets something wrong, like an old address or a service you no longer offer, that mistake came from a page somewhere, often an old directory listing. Find it and correct it.
- Ask whoever looks after your website one question: "Does our website let ChatGPT read it?" One setting can block it, and a blocked website is left out of ChatGPT's search answers.
What to fix first
- Your Google listing. A Google Business Profile is the free Google listing that shows your business on Maps. Fill in everything: what you sell, your hours, your photos, your description. Google itself says these listings can help businesses show up in its AI answers.
- The first lines of your website. Say plainly what you do, who it is for, and where in Singapore. Write it the way a customer would ask for it, not the way a brochure would say it.
- The same story everywhere. Your name, what you do and where you are should read the same on your website, your Google listing, Facebook, LinkedIn and every directory you are in.
- The review sites and "best of" lists that keep showing up. Get listed on them, and ask happy customers to leave a review there. Real reviews only: Google says fake mentions help less than people think.
- Be talked about. A short video answering a question customers often ask. A feature in a local publication. A talk at a trade event. Every one is another place where your business is described well.
Being on page one of Google is a great start, but it isn't the whole job. In the same large study, businesses that showed up in two out of three Google Maps searches were named in only one out of three ChatGPT answers.
Questions owners ask
Can an agency help my business get named by ChatGPT?
Yes. AI WISE is a Singapore-based digital marketing agency serving Asia that does this work. We agree with you on the questions your customers ask, and we put those questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI every day. Then we improve the pages their answers are built from: your website, your listings and the places that describe you. See how our GEO and SEO work runs.
If my business does well on Google, will ChatGPT recommend it too?
Not always. Doing well on Google helps, but ChatGPT also reads your reviews, your listings and what other websites say about you. A business can be easy to find on Google Maps and still be missing from ChatGPT's answers.
How do I find out who ChatGPT recommends instead of me?
Do the 20-minute check above. Ask your customers' questions a few times each, in new chats, and write down every business that is named. The names that keep coming back are the ones ChatGPT prefers today, and the websites listed under each answer show you why.
Where should I start if ChatGPT never mentions my business?
Start with your Google listing and the first lines of your website. Both are yours to change today, and in that large study they were the two places AI answers quoted most.
Want to know what ChatGPT says about your business? In a 30-minute discovery call, we will show you what ChatGPT and Google's AI tell your customers when they ask. Book a 30-minute discovery call