The short answer
- There is no public confirmation from OpenAI that ChatGPT reads Google Business Profiles directly. Claims that it does, or that it never does, are guesses.
- What OpenAI does say: ChatGPT search sends rewritten queries to third-party search providers, may share your approximate location with them for local results, and will not show sites that block its OAI-SearchBot crawler.
- Your Google Business Profile still matters a lot: Google says it helps your business show up in Google's own AI answers and regular results, and it feeds the reviews and details other sites repeat.
- The practical move is the same either way: consistent listings everywhere, steady reviews, and a website that states clearly what you do and where.
The short answer
Nobody outside OpenAI knows for certain, and OpenAI has not published a list of where its local business data comes from. You will find confident blog posts saying ChatGPT pulls everything from Bing, or from Foursquare, or from Yelp, or that it scrapes Google Maps. Most of them cite each other, not OpenAI. Treat any single answer with suspicion.
The good news: you do not need to solve that mystery. Every plausible source rewards the same few things, and the things that help you in ChatGPT also help you in Google, where most of your customers still search.
What OpenAI has actually said
Three facts come straight from OpenAI's own documentation and are worth knowing:
- ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers. When it searches the web, it typically rewrites your question into one or more targeted queries and sends those to search partners.
- Location is shared, accounts are not. OpenAI says ChatGPT may share your general location, based on your IP address, with those providers to make local results more accurate, but not the IP address itself or your account details.
- Blocking the crawler removes you from search answers. Sites that opt out of OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as plain navigational links. Changes to robots.txt take about 24 hours to be picked up.
The claims you will read, and how solid they are
| Claim | Source | How solid |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT uses Bing for its search results | Widely repeated; Microsoft is OpenAI's long-time partner | Plausible, not confirmed as the only source |
| Local results come from Foursquare, Yelp or TripAdvisor | Third-party studies and vendor blogs | Unverified; studies disagree on the share |
| ChatGPT reads Google Business Profiles directly | Vendor blogs, anecdotes | No public confirmation either way |
| Adding special schema or an llms.txt file gets you recommended | SEO tool marketing | Not supported: Google says neither is needed for its AI features, and no AI search engine has confirmed using llms.txt to pick businesses |
Why your Google Business Profile matters anyway
Even if ChatGPT never reads your profile directly, it is the most important listing you have:
- Google's own AI answers use it. Google says Business Profiles help products and services show up in its AI responses as well as in regular Search and Maps, and most local searches still happen on Google.
- It is copied everywhere. Directories, review sites and data aggregators pull business details from public sources. A wrong phone number on your profile tends to spread.
- Reviews live there. The volume and recency of your reviews are among the clearest signals that a business is active and trusted, for people and for any system summarizing them.
The listings worth fixing, in order
- Google Business Profile. Exact business name, primary category, every service you offer, service area, hours (including holidays), photos, and a link to the right page on your website.
- Bing Places for Business. Free, often ignored, and Bing powers or informs several other search experiences. You can import your Google profile to set it up in minutes.
- Apple Business Connect. This is what iPhone users see in Apple Maps and Siri.
- Yelp, plus the directories that matter in your trade: Healthgrades or Zocdoc for health, Avvo or Justia for law, Angi or HomeAdvisor for home services.
- Your website. One page per service, your city and service area written in plain text, prices or price ranges where possible, and answers to the questions customers ask before calling.
The rule across all of them: name, address and phone number spelled exactly the same everywhere. Inconsistent details make it harder for any system to be sure two listings are the same business.
A 15-minute self-test
- Write down five questions a real customer would ask, with your city in them: "Who's a good family dentist in Weston, FL?", "Emergency AC repair in Pembroke Pines open now?"
- Ask them in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, logged out or in a temporary chat, so your own history does not bias the answer.
- Note whether you appear, who appears instead, and which sources each answer cites.
- Look at the cited sources: those are the sites where you need to be listed or mentioned.
- Repeat every two to four weeks. Answers vary from one try to the next, so watch the trend, not one result. If you have analytics on your site, also watch for visits coming from chatgpt.com.
What not to pay for
- Guaranteed ChatGPT rankings. No one controls the answer. A provider can promise work, not placement.
- "AI schema" packages. Structured data is useful when it matches what is visibly on your page, but Google says no special markup is required for its AI features.
- Hundreds of near-identical city pages. Google treats mass-produced pages made to manipulate rankings as scaled content abuse, which can hurt the whole site.
- Fake reviews or listicles you pay to be included in. They violate platform rules, and getting caught costs more than it gains.
Want to know what Google sees on your site right now? Run it through our free website analyzer.
Frequently asked questions
OpenAI has not said so publicly. It says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers and may share your general location with them for local results, but it does not name its local data partners. Some third-party studies claim Google Maps data is scraped; that is unconfirmed.
It is plausible, since ChatGPT has used Bing as a search partner, but OpenAI has not confirmed Bing Places as a source for local recommendations. Setting up Bing Places is free and quick, so it is worth doing regardless.
Make sure your site does not block OAI-SearchBot, keep your business details identical across Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and Yelp, collect reviews steadily, and publish clear pages on your website for each service and the area you serve. No one can guarantee a recommendation.
No. GPTBot is OpenAI's crawler for training data. The crawler that matters for appearing in ChatGPT search answers is OAI-SearchBot; sites that block it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers.
Mostly no. Google's own guidance says optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO. What is added for AI assistants is more emphasis on being mentioned and listed consistently across other sites, and on testing what the assistants answer.
No. Google says it does not use llms.txt, and no AI search engine has confirmed using it to choose which businesses to recommend. It does no harm, but your time is better spent on your listings, reviews and website content.
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