How to get ChatGPT to recommend your business: a guide for Pakistani small businesses

When someone in Lahore asks ChatGPT for "a good bakery for a birthday cake in Johar Town", the assistant does not have a secret list of paid partners. It either answers from what it learned during training or, more and more often, runs a web search and summarises what it finds: listings, reviews, articles, social posts and business websites. The same is broadly true of Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity and Claude.

So the real question is not "how do I get into ChatGPT". It is "what does the internet say about my business, and is it clear, consistent and good?" These AI and SI assistants are cautious. They prefer businesses that several independent sources describe in the same way.

Many Pakistani businesses appear online under three names: the board outside the shop, the Instagram handle, and whatever someone typed into a directory years ago. To a customer that is annoying; to an AI assistant it can look like three different businesses, or one it cannot trust.

1. 1Settle on one business name and spell it the same way everywhere, including in Urdu if you use it.
2. 2Write a one or two sentence description that says what you do and where. Example: "Family run bakery in Johar Town, Lahore, known for custom birthday cakes and same day orders."
3. 3Use one main phone number and one WhatsApp number, and list the same ones on every page.
4. 4Write your address the way locals search for it: the area, the nearest landmark and the city.
5. 5Check your Google profile, Instagram bio, Facebook page, website and any directory listings, and fix every mismatch.

Your Google Business Profile is the listing that appears on Google Maps and in local search. Gemini draws on Google's information, and other assistants often find the same reviews and details when they search. Claim your listing, verify it, and add opening hours, photos of the real place and the right category.

• Ask happy customers for a review after a good experience, in person or on WhatsApp, with a direct link.
• Reply to every review, good or bad, politely and in the language it was written in.
• Never buy reviews or write them yourself. Fake reviews get removed, and they read as fake to people and machines alike.
• Update your hours for Ramzan, Eid and public holidays, so nobody turns up to a closed shutter.

What you say about yourself counts for less than what others say about you. Assistants give more weight to a business that appears in several independent places: a local news story, a food blog's list, a directory, a community page, or a creator's post described in text on the web.

• Local news and blogs. A new branch, a charity drive or the story behind the business can earn a mention in city news or on local blogs.
• Directories. Reputable local and industry directories, with exactly the same details you use everywhere else.
• Creator posts and blogs. When a creator reviews your cafe, salon or shop, their caption, video description and any blog post put your name, city and what you do into public text. This is where influencer collaborations help beyond the views on the day.

Only real audiences help. A collaboration with an account full of bought followers adds nothing, and the fake followers guide shows how to check before you pay. For a plan built around a small budget, read influencer marketing for small businesses.

Wasta (wasta.pk) is a Karachi based creator collaboration platform for Pakistan: businesses post influencer campaigns, creators with Instagram verified numbers apply at their own rates, and agencies source creators for their clients. Posting a campaign and reading the applications is free. See how Wasta works for businesses, or post your first campaign.

An Instagram page on its own is hard for assistants to read and quote. A simple website gives them a page that states the facts plainly. It does not need to be fancy. It needs to be clear and fast.

• One page per service or product line, with prices or price ranges wherever you can.
• Your name, address, area, phone, WhatsApp and hours in plain text on every page, not only inside an image.
• An FAQ with the questions customers actually ask on WhatsApp: do you deliver to DHA, can I order a sugar free cake, do you take cards, is there parking. Answer each in one or two plain sentences.
• Write in the language your customers search in. English, Urdu and Roman Urdu are all fine, as long as it reads naturally.

robots.txt is a small text file at the root of your website that tells crawlers what they may read. Some website templates and security plugins block AI crawlers by default, so assistants cannot read your site at all. Ask your web developer to check it.

• Allow the main search and AI crawlers, such as Googlebot, Bingbot, GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic) and PerplexityBot.
• Do not block your FAQ, services or contact pages.
• Add an llms.txt file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt: a short plain text summary of who you are, what you sell, where you are, with links to your key pages. It is a newer convention and not every assistant reads it yet, but it is cheap to add and does no harm.

If you only do one technical thing, make sure your contact details are written as text on your site, not just shown in a photo of your visiting card.

Most owners in Pakistan think only about Google, but Microsoft Copilot runs on Bing, and several other assistants use Bing results when they search the web. If Bing has not indexed your site, those assistants may simply not find it.

1. 1Create a free Bing Places listing with the same details as your Google profile.
2. 2Add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools. You can import it from Google Search Console in a few clicks.
3. 3Submit your sitemap there so new pages are found quickly.

No. AI assistants keep changing how they answer, give different answers to different people, and nobody outside the companies that build them controls what they say. Anyone who promises "we will get you recommended by ChatGPT in 30 days" is selling something they cannot control.

What you can control is the groundwork above. It also helps with ordinary Google search and with customers who check you out before visiting, so the effort is never wasted. Every few months, ask a few assistants the questions your customers would ask, and note what they say and which sources they cite.