Ask ChatGPT for a roofer in your city and it will usually give you three to five names with a short reason for each. Those names come from the live web, not from a hidden business directory. The model searches, reads a handful of pages, and summarizes what it finds. That means the answer depends almost entirely on which pages happen to rank and get read that day. Ask the same question twice and you can get two different lists, which is the first thing to understand about this channel.
What gets a business into that list is pretty ordinary stuff. The model needs to find your name, your city, and the service you do, written plainly somewhere it can read. Service pages that say the city out loud, a Google Business Profile that matches, reviews with real detail in them, and a few local directories or news mentions all help. Businesses that only exist on Facebook, or in a photo heavy one page site, tend to get skipped entirely, because there is nothing for the model to quote.
Treat it as one more place you can be found rather than a channel you control. There is no dashboard, no bid, and no way to submit yourself. The practical move is to check what ChatGPT says about your trade and your city right now, write down who it names, and then fix the gaps on your own site and profiles. Heights Digital does this work for contractors, clinics and firms, and you can reach us at (210) 729-4008 if you would rather hand it off.
Send the site over. We will tell you what is broken, what you could rank for, and whether AI search knows you exist. No charge and no pitch deck.
