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What to put on your business website so ChatGPT and Google can answer questions about it

People now ask an assistant "is this shop open on Sunday?" before they visit the website. Here is what the assistant needs to find on your site to answer correctly.

To let ChatGPT, Google's AI answers and other assistants answer questions about your business, put the facts people ask about as plain text on your website: what you sell, where you are, when you're open, what it costs, and how to order. Make sure search engines have indexed that page. Keep the same facts on your Google Business Profile.

That's most of it. No special file or markup is required. This post shows what to write, where to put it, and what to skip.

Where an assistant gets its answer

When someone asks an assistant about a business, it usually runs a web search, reads a few of the pages it finds, and writes an answer from them. If your page isn't in the search results, the assistant can't read it.

Google says so directly about its AI Overviews and AI Mode: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode." A page must be "indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet" (source).

ChatGPT's search uses its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's docs say sites that block it "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers" (source).

A customer's question goes to an assistant. The assistant runs a web search, reads the pages it finds, and writes an answer. Your page can only be read if it is indexed and the facts are in its text. "open on Sunday?" web search your page indexed? hours in text? answer no text, no index: the assistant guesses or skips you

Step 1: list the questions people actually ask

Write down the questions customers ask you on the phone, in messages and at the counter. For most small businesses they are some of these:

  • Are you open now? On Sunday? On holidays?
  • Where are you, and is there parking?
  • Do you deliver to my area? How long does it take, and what does it cost?
  • How much is it? Is there a minimum order?
  • Do you have this item, size or service?
  • How do I order or book? Can I pay by card, or cash on delivery?
  • How do I reach you?

Each answer you write down is a sentence that belongs on your website. Use the words customers use. "Do you deliver?" is what people type. "Logistics solutions" is not.

Step 2: put each answer in text, where it's easy to find

  • The first lines of your home page say what you are and where: "A bakery selling bread and cakes, with delivery across the city." One plain sentence. Assistants and search snippets both read the top of the page first.
  • Hours and address as text, on the home page or a contact page. Say which days you're closed, in words: "Closed on Sundays." Add holiday changes when they happen, and take them down after.
  • Prices on a page, even if only "from" prices or ranges. "Call for prices" gives an assistant nothing to repeat.
  • A short FAQ page with the questions from step 1 as headings and one or two sentences under each.

Things that hide your facts:

  • Opening hours only in an image, a poster photo or an Instagram post.
  • A menu or price list only as a PDF or a photo.
  • Facts that only appear after a click, inside a pop-up or a chat widget.

Images are fine. Just write the same facts as text next to them. Google's own advice for its AI features is to make sure "important content is available in textual form" (source).

Step 3: keep the facts the same everywhere

An assistant may read your website, your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page and a directory listing in one answer. If your website says you close at 6 and your profile says 8, it has to pick one, or hedge.

Google's help for Business Profiles says: "If your business info isn't accurate, your Business Profile might not show up for relevant searches in your area" (source). It also asks for complete info: address, hours, category, and attributes like parking. Its list of practices for AI features includes "Checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date."

For holidays, use the profile's Special hours instead of changing your regular hours. It covers short changes and closures of up to 6 days in a row, and Google suggests confirming your hours for official holidays even when they don't change (source).

Pick one place as the source of truth, usually your website. When something changes, update it there first, then the profile, then the rest. Bing has its own listing too, Bing Places, and Microsoft's assistant answers from Bing.

Step 4: check that search engines can read the page

  1. Search site:yourdomain.com on Google and on Bing. If your pages don't show up, start with checking that Google can see your site. This checklist builder fills in the links for your domain.
  2. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Make sure it doesn't block Googlebot, Bingbot or OAI-SearchBot. A line like Disallow: / under User-agent: * blocks all of them. To see which line decides it for a given page and bot, paste the file into this robots.txt tester.
  3. If you, or your website builder, added AI-crawler blocks, read them line by line. OpenAI lists separate crawlers for search and for model training, each with its own robots.txt name. Block the one you mean, not both by accident.
  4. Check your host or CDN too. Google's list says crawling must be allowed "in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure." A firewall can turn a bot away before it ever reads robots.txt. On Cloudflare, look under Security Settings, Configure AI bot policies. It sorts AI bots into Search, Agent and Training, and each can be blocked everywhere, blocked on pages with ads, or allowed. Search crawlers are the ones that let an assistant find you later. Agent covers bots that fetch your page in real time when someone asks an assistant about it. Crawlers that do both search and training count as Training there (source).

A robots.txt that lets everyone in looks like this:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Optional: describe the business in structured data

Structured data is a small block of code that states your facts in a fixed format. Google says no special structured data is needed for its AI features. It still uses LocalBusiness data for regular search results, and it's a cheap way to state your hours without ambiguity.

Put this in the <head> of your home page, with your own values:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Bakery",
  "name": "Example Bakery",
  "url": "https://yourdomain.com/",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1 Example Street",
    "addressLocality": "Your City",
    "addressCountry": "XX"
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [{
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "dayOfWeek": ["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday"],
    "opens": "08:00",
    "closes": "19:00"
  }],
  "priceRange": "$$"
}
</script>

Two rules. Use the most specific type that fits (Bakery, Restaurant, Dentist; schema.org lists them). And every value must match what the page itself says. Data that disagrees with the visible text is worse than none.

Hours trip people up most. The example lists Monday to Saturday only. To say plainly that you're closed on Sunday, Google's docs say to add a Sunday entry with both opens and closes set to "00:00". Open around the clock is "00:00" to "23:59". Holiday closures get their own entry with validFrom and validThrough dates (source):

{
  "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
  "dayOfWeek": "Sunday",
  "opens": "00:00",
  "closes": "00:00"
}

Before you publish, paste the page URL or the code into Google's Rich Results Test. It shows whether the block parses and which fields Google read.

What doesn't matter

  • llms.txt files. Google says you don't need "new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup" for its AI features. On the sites I work on, we found no evidence that any assistant read one.
  • Writing for robots. Repeating "best bakery near me" ten times doesn't help. One clear sentence that answers the question does.
  • Paid "AI SEO" packages that promise placement in ChatGPT. Nobody can sell a place in an assistant's answer. The work is the four steps above.

What I learned

On a directory site I work on, the first visitors from ChatGPT arrived within days of launch. The pages they landed on had one thing in common: the first lines answered one specific question, with the name, the place and the facts. The general pages got nothing.

So write the answer first. Explain later, if at all.

The checklist

  1. List the questions customers ask you.
  2. Say what you are and where in the first line of your home page.
  3. Put hours, address, prices and how to order as text, not only in images or PDFs.
  4. Add a short FAQ with those questions as headings.
  5. Make your website, Google Business Profile and Bing Places say the same thing.
  6. Check site: on Google and Bing, read your robots.txt, and check your host's AI-bot settings.
  7. Optional: add LocalBusiness structured data that matches the page, and test it.
  8. Ask an assistant about your business. If the answer is wrong, find which page it came from and fix that page.

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