How Do You Get Your Business Mentioned by ChatGPT and Other AI Tools?

There's no ad system yet where you can pay to be the business ChatGPT recommends, and be sceptical of anyone who tells you otherwise. Getting mentioned by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Mode comes down to the same unglamorous groundwork that's always mattered for visibility: clear, specific, well-structured content; consistent business information wherever you're listed; and a genuine base of customer reviews. What's changed is that these systems are now a real discovery channel in their own right, Australians are using them fast, and there are a handful of specific, practical habits that meaningfully improve your odds of being the business quoted in the answer rather than left out of it entirely.

TL;DR

• 12% of Australians now use an AI tool as their main way to search online (Telsyte, June 2026), up from 5% just twelve months earlier, and ChatGPT alone reaches roughly 10.5 million average four-week Australian users (Roy Morgan, March 2026).
• There's no paid mechanism to buy a citation inside a ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Mode answer. Anyone selling "guaranteed AI mentions" or proprietary AEO markup is selling something that doesn't exist.
• Citations are concentrated, not evenly spread: the top ~10–11% of cited URLs capture roughly 37% of all AI citations (Peec AI, February 2026), being present isn't enough, being clearly the best answer is what gets you cited.
• AI-referred website traffic is small in absolute terms but growing fast and converting well, US retail sites saw AI-driven traffic up 393% year-on-year in Q1 2026, converting 42% better than non-AI traffic (Adobe Analytics, April 2026).
• What actually helps is mostly an extension of good SEO and local search practice, not a separate secret playbook, plus a few AI-specific habits most small businesses haven't started yet.
• You need a new way to measure this channel, because standard analytics tools significantly undercount it.

What Is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), and How Is It Different From SEO?

Answer engine optimisation, sometimes called generative engine optimization (GEO), is the practice of structuring your content and business information so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Mode and Gemini are more likely to cite or recommend you directly inside their generated answers, rather than simply ranking you in a list of links for a human to click through.

The core difference from traditional SEO is the outcome you're optimising for. SEO earns you a position in a results list the searcher still has to scan and choose from. AEO earns you a mention inside an answer the AI system has already assembled and presented as the response, often with no results list at all. The searcher may never see ten blue links; they see one synthesised paragraph, and either your business is part of it or it isn't.

That said, AEO isn't a replacement discipline requiring an entirely new skill set. The signals that earn a citation, clarity, specificity, structure, credibility, consistency, are extensions of the same fundamentals that have driven good SEO and local search for years, applied with a sharper focus on being quotable rather than merely findable.

How Many Australians Are Actually Asking AI Tools for Recommendations?

Enough that ignoring this channel is no longer a safe default, even for a small local service business.

Telsyte's June 2026 research found that 12% of Australians now list an AI tool as their main way to look something up online, double the 5% recorded twelve months earlier. That's a genuine behavioural shift, not a niche curiosity, and the trajectory suggests it keeps climbing rather than plateauing. Separately, Roy Morgan's March 2026 survey put average four-week ChatGPT usage in Australia at roughly 10.5 million people, comfortably ahead of Gemini's approximately 5 million, meaning ChatGPT alone reaches close to two in five Australians in a typical month. Globally, OpenAI's own data (reported via TechCrunch, February 2026) put ChatGPT at 900 million weekly active users, with roughly a quarter of all ChatGPT messages representing genuine information-seeking behaviour rather than writing help or general chat, a meaningful share of which functions as search.

The commercial signal behind this is arguably more telling than the usage numbers alone. Adobe Analytics data from April 2026 showed AI-driven traffic to US retail websites surged 393% year-on-year in Q1 2026, and, critically, that traffic converted 42% better than non-AI-referred traffic in March 2026, a sharp reversal from AI traffic actually underperforming by 38% just twelve months earlier. Early AI-tool visitors behaved like tyre-kickers; current ones increasingly behave like people who've already done their comparison shopping inside the chat and arrive close to a decision. For a small business, a smaller number of AI-referred visitors who convert well can matter more than a larger number of low-intent search clicks.

How Does ChatGPT (or Perplexity, or AI Mode) Actually Decide What to Mention?

These systems don't maintain a hand-curated business directory. Broadly, they work by retrieving and synthesising information from across the web, your website, business listings, review platforms, news coverage, forums and other sources, and then generating a response that draws on whichever sources it judges most relevant, current and trustworthy for the specific question asked.

The practical implication is that citation is earned per-question, not once, globally. A business might be the clear answer to "best-rated electrician in Parramatta for emergency callouts" and completely absent from "how much does rewiring a house cost in Sydney", because the second question needs a different kind of content (a clear pricing explanation) that the business simply hasn't published anywhere.

Research from Peec AI's February 2026 analysis illustrates how concentrated this is in practice: the top 10–11% of cited URLs captured roughly 37% of all citations tracked, and specific content formats performed disproportionately well, 52% of listicle-style pages achieved high citation rates despite representing less than a fifth of all cited URLs. On Google's AI Mode specifically, the same analysis found more than nine in ten URLs had a citation rate below 1.0, meaning most content, even content that ranks reasonably well in traditional search, simply isn't being pulled into AI-generated answers at all. Being present on the web is the entry ticket; being clearly, specifically the best answer to a real question is what actually gets you cited.

What Actually Increases Your Odds of Being Cited?

None of this is exotic. It's the same discipline good local SEO has always demanded, sharpened for a system that's assembling an answer rather than ranking a list.

• Answer the specific question directly, early, in plain language. A page that opens with a clear, two-to-three sentence direct answer to a real customer question is far more useful to an AI system building a response than a page that buries the answer under three paragraphs of preamble. This is exactly the structure we recommend across every article on this site, and it matters even more here.
• Be specific rather than generic. "We service Hornsby, Parramatta and the greater Hills District, with same-day emergency callouts available Monday to Saturday" is quotable. "We service Sydney and surrounding areas" is not, there's nothing in it an AI system can confidently lift into an answer.
• Keep your business information consistent everywhere. Name, address, phone number, service list and hours should match exactly across your website, Google Business Profile, industry directories and review platforms. Inconsistency doesn't just hurt traditional local SEO, it actively undermines an AI system's confidence that your listing is current and trustworthy enough to cite.
• Build a genuine, current base of reviews. AI systems increasingly treat review volume, recency and sentiment as a credibility signal, much as human searchers do. A handful of reviews from three years ago reads as stale; a steady trickle of recent ones reads as an actively run, trustworthy business.
• Publish content in formats these systems can lift cleanly. Structured formats, clear headings, direct-answer openings, genuinely useful FAQ sections, comparison-style content, perform better than dense, unstructured paragraphs, echoing the listicle-format finding above.
• Earn mentions on other credible sites, not just your own. Being referenced accurately on industry sites, local news, directories and forums adds to the pool of sources an AI system can draw on and cross-reference, this is the AEO equivalent of a backlink, and Whitespark's 2026 local ranking research put it plainly: "mentions are the new links."

What Doesn't Work (and Who's Selling You Snake Oil)?

Be wary of anyone offering to "optimise" your site for AI Overviews or ChatGPT using special markup, proprietary file formats, or a guaranteed placement. Google's own developer documentation states plainly that there are no special technical requirements to appear in its AI features beyond standard SEO fundamentals, and no AI provider has published a paid mechanism for buying a citation. If a proposal promises guaranteed inclusion in an AI-generated answer, treat it exactly as you would a guaranteed #1 Google ranking pitch: it's not something anyone can honestly promise, because none of these companies sell that placement.

Similarly, stuffing a page with keyword-heavy, unnatural phrasing aimed at "tricking" an AI system doesn't work the way it might have with older search algorithms, these systems are specifically built to synthesise genuinely useful, well-supported answers, and thin, manipulative content is exactly what they're designed to avoid citing.

How Do You Even Know If You're Being Mentioned by AI Tools?

This is the part most small businesses are currently missing entirely, because standard analytics tools weren't built to track it well. AI-referred traffic often arrives with incomplete or generic referral data, so it can hide inside your "direct" traffic bucket in Google Analytics rather than showing up as its own clearly labelled source, meaning your actual AI-referral numbers are probably higher than your dashboard currently shows.

Practical, low-effort ways to check: periodically ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the actual questions a prospective customer would ask about your industry and area, and see whether your business comes up, not as a vanity exercise, but as a genuine visibility check repeated every month or two. Check your website analytics for referral traffic from chat.openai.com, perplexity.ai and similar sources specifically, rather than assuming it's captured elsewhere. And keep an eye on branded search volume for your business name, a rising trend there is often a downstream sign that AI tools are surfacing you and people are following up with a direct search.

A Practical AEO Checklist for This Quarter

If you take one thing from this article, make it this: don't chase AI mentions as a separate project, fold these habits into the content and profile work you should already be doing.

• Audit your top five service pages for a genuine, specific direct-answer opening. If a page doesn't answer the core question in the first two or three sentences, fix that before anything else on this list.
• Run a consistency check on your NAP (name, address, phone) and service list across your website, Google Business Profile and any directories you're listed in. Fix mismatches, this is a one-off clean-up with a long payoff.
• Set up (or tighten) a genuine review-request habit. Ask at the moment of highest satisfaction, make it a one-tap process, and respond to every review.
• Add a real FAQ section to your most important pages, written in the specific, plain language your actual customers use, not generic industry phrasing.
• Test yourself monthly. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the questions your customers would ask, and track whether you're mentioned, cited, or absent.
• Don't buy a guaranteed-placement AEO package. Redirect that budget toward the content and profile fundamentals above, they're what every credible source on this topic, including Google itself, actually points to.

Does This Apply Differently Across Trades, Health, Property, Finance and Local Services?

The mechanics are consistent, but where the payoff lands shifts by category. Trades and urgent local services benefit most from specific service-and-suburb content and tight NAP consistency, since the questions being asked ("emergency plumber open now near Hornsby") are highly localised and time-sensitive. Health and wellness businesses gain most from consistent, recent reviews and clearly structured, plain-language explanations of services and conditions treated, trust signals matter disproportionately here, and AHPRA advertising rules mean a well-built FAQ section often carries more weight than testimonial-style content ever could. Finance, property and consulting businesses, where decisions are researched over days or weeks rather than resolved in one search, tend to benefit most from genuinely in-depth, well-sourced explanatory content, since that's exactly the format these AI systems favour citing for higher-consideration questions. Across every category, the businesses most likely to be mentioned are the ones already doing the fundamentals properly, not the ones chasing a shortcut.

We go deeper on the broader shift these AI features represent for organic search in Is SEO Still Worth It in the Age of AI Search?, and on how local discovery specifically is changing in How Customers Find Local Businesses Now: Google Search, Maps, Reviews and AI. If you're building out a broader measurement approach beyond vanity traffic, From Click to Customer: How to Build a Digital Marketing System That Generates Qualified Leads covers exactly that, and our pillar guide Digital Marketing for Australian Small Businesses in 2027: What Actually Matters Now sets the wider context this all sits within.

Getting mentioned by ChatGPT and other AI tools rewards the same discipline that's always driven good marketing: clarity, credibility, and consistency, just with a new channel now paying attention to it. If you want a plain-English look at where your business currently stands in AI-driven search and what's genuinely worth prioritising first, our AI Marketing and Local SEO services are built exactly for this shift. Book a free strategy session and we'll walk you through exactly where the gaps are.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I pay to get my business mentioned by ChatGPT?

No. There's currently no advertising or paid-placement mechanism that guarantees a citation inside a ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Mode answer. Be sceptical of any agency or tool claiming to sell one.

Is AEO different from SEO, or do I need a completely separate strategy?

It's related, not separate. AEO shares the same foundations as good SEO and local search, clear content, consistent business information, genuine reviews, applied with more focus on being directly quotable rather than simply ranking. Most businesses doing SEO properly are already most of the way there.

How long does it take to start being mentioned by AI tools after making these changes?

There's no fixed timeline, since it depends on how often these systems re-crawl and re-evaluate your content and listings, typically weeks to a few months, similar to how long meaningful SEO or local ranking changes usually take to show.

Do I need to create special files or markup for AI tools to find my content?

No. There's no special AI-specific file format or markup required, standard, clean website structure, accurate schema markup where relevant, and genuinely useful content are what these systems draw from.

Which AI tools should I actually be checking myself against?

ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode currently reach the largest Australian audiences, so start there. Perplexity and Gemini are worth checking periodically too, since usage patterns are still shifting quickly.

Will this replace the need for traditional SEO or Google Ads?

No. AI-tool mentions are an additional discovery channel layered on top of traditional search and local search, not a replacement for either. The businesses handling this well are treating it as one more channel to measure, not a wholesale strategy change.

Sources and References

• Telsyte — Australian AI search behaviour report, June 2026 (12% of Australians now use an AI tool as their primary way to search online, up from 5% a year earlier), as reported by tech-insider.org, "12% of Australians Use ChatGPT Over Google Search".
• Roy Morgan — Australian ChatGPT usage survey, March 2026 (10.5 million average four-week Australian ChatGPT users vs. approximately 5 million for Gemini), as reported via tech-insider.org.
• Adobe Analytics — AI-referred retail traffic and conversion data, April 2026 (393% year-on-year growth in AI-driven traffic to US retail sites in Q1 2026; AI-referred traffic converting 42% better than non-AI traffic in March 2026), as compiled in Peec AI, "70+ Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Statistics for 2026".
• TechCrunch — ChatGPT weekly active user figures, February 2026 (900 million weekly active users), as compiled in Peec AI, "70+ Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Statistics for 2026".
• Peec AI — AI citation concentration and format analysis, February 2026 (top 10–11% of URLs capturing 37% of citations; 52% of listicles achieving high citation rates; over 90% of URLs on Google AI Mode below a 1.0 citation rate): peec.ai/ai-search-geo-statistics.
• Google for Developers, Search Central — AI Features and Your Website (confirms no special technical requirements beyond standard SEO fundamentals to appear in Google's AI features).
• Whitespark — 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors, published 6 November 2025 ("mentions are the new links" finding on citation consistency for AI-driven visibility).