How to Show Up in AI Overviews and ChatGPT: A Guide for Local Businesses

If you want to know how to show up in AI Overviews as a local business, start with the basics that already win in Google Maps: an accurate Business Profile, a solid presence on the review and directory sites AI tools read, and a website that answers real questions in plain text.

There is no trick file or secret tag. Google says "there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." ChatGPT works in a similar way. OpenAI's publisher FAQ says "any public website can appear in ChatGPT search."

What changes is which sources the answers lean on. A recent study of nearly 2 million AI citations for local businesses, covered below, found that profiles and directories carry a lot of weight, alongside business websites.

This guide covers how each system picks its sources, which sources get cited for local service questions, and the steps a Maryland business can take this month. We have not run AI visibility checks for this post. Every check below is one you can run yourself.

Both systems search first and write second. They run searches, read the pages that come back, and write a summary with links to some of those pages.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google's page on AI features and your website explains that both features may use a "query fan-out" technique, "issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources." One question from a customer can turn into several searches behind the scenes.

To be shown as a supporting link, Google says "a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet." That is the whole technical bar. If a page is not indexed, or you have blocked snippets with nosnippet or max-snippet, it cannot be cited.

ChatGPT search

ChatGPT uses its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's publishers and developers FAQ says, "For your site content to be included in summaries and snippets in ChatGPT, make sure you aren't blocking OAI-SearchBot." A separate crawler, GPTBot, is for model training. Blocking GPTBot does not remove you from ChatGPT search, but blocking OAI-SearchBot does.

So the first part of how to show up in AI Overviews and ChatGPT is simple: let the crawlers in, and make sure your pages are indexed.

AI Overviews do not appear on every local search. The type of question matters more than the trade.

Whitespark ran 540 searches across six local industries, including plumbers, dentists and personal injury lawyers, in Houston, Phoenix and Denver. Miriam Ellis's write-up of the case study on AI Overviews in local search reports that AI Overviews appeared on 68% of the searches on average, against 39% for local packs.

The split by intent is the useful part:

• Local-intent searches such as "plumber near me": AI Overviews on 15%, local packs on 93%.
• Informational searches such as "why is my water heater leaking": AI Overviews on 92%, local packs on 6%.
• Hybrid searches that mix both: AI Overviews on 97%, local packs on 17%.

The study's own summary: "Where local packs are most prominent, AI Overviews are least prominent, and vice versa."

For a Maryland business this means two jobs. The Map Pack still decides most "near me" searches. AI Overviews decide many of the questions customers ask before they are ready to call. A Columbia homeowner asking how often to service a heat pump is a future customer, and that is where an AI answer is likely to appear. Knowing how to show up in AI Overviews for those early questions puts your name in front of buyers before they compare quotes.

BrightLocal published one of the larger studies on this question. Mike Hawkes's report, Top sources and directories for local AI search, looked at more than 1.9 million citations across 116,670 domains. The checks ran prompts for 1,355 business locations in the US, UK and Australia through Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and ChatGPT.

The main findings:

• Google Business Profile was the largest single source, at about 28.5% of all citations. Google's own AI tools leaned on it most.
• Yelp was the second-largest source overall, and it was cited heavily in ChatGPT answers.
• Older directories still show up. BBB, Angi and MapQuest were cited regularly.
• Industry directories matter in some trades. Restaurants leaned on Tripadvisor and OpenTable, for example.
• Business websites made up about 93% of the cited domains.
• Instagram and Reddit were the most-cited social platforms.

Put simply, the answer to how to show up in AI Overviews is not one channel. Your profile, your listings and your own website each feed the answer. A gap in any one of them leaves room for a competitor.

Google lists "checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date" among its recommendations for AI features. Given how often the profile was cited in the BrightLocal study, this is the first fix for most local businesses.

• Name, address, phone and hours. Match them to your website exactly. Update holiday and seasonal hours before the date, not after.
• Categories. Use the most specific primary category that describes your business. Our guide to Google Business Profile categories covers how to choose them.
• Services and service areas. List the services you want to be known for and the towns you actually serve.
• Business description. Say plainly what you do and where, in two or three sentences.
• Reviews and replies. Ask every happy customer, and reply to reviews in plain language. Reviews that mention the job and the town give an AI tool something specific to repeat.
• Photos. Real photos of your team, vehicles and finished work.

None of this is new. It is the same work that helps you rank in the Map Pack, which is why a local SEO plan for Maryland covers most of what AI tools need from your profile.

Much of how to show up in AI Overviews happens on your own site. Google's list of recommendations for AI features reads like a basic SEO checklist. It includes:

• "Ensuring that crawling is allowed in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure"
• "Making your content easily findable through internal links on your website"
• "Making sure that important content is available in textual form"
• "Making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page"

Here is what that means in practice for a local service site.

Answer the question in the first lines

If a page is about water heater replacement in Towson, the first paragraph should say what you do, where, and what affects the price. Put the plain answer first and the detail after it.

Write the questions customers ask

Informational searches are where AI Overviews appear most often. Turn the questions you hear on the phone into short sections or FAQs: how long a job takes, what it costs and why, what permits are needed, what to do in an emergency. Keep prices to what you actually charge.

One page per main service and area

A single "Services" page with a list of ten bullet points gives an AI tool little to cite. A page per main service, and pages for the towns you really serve, give it clear, specific text.

Check the technical basics

Make sure your robots.txt and firewall do not block Googlebot or OAI-SearchBot. Our technical SEO work starts with this kind of crawl and index check. You do not need an llms.txt file for Google. Its guidance says, "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features."

The BrightLocal study shows that AI answers draw on many sites besides Google. A few steps cover most of them:

• Claim your Yelp listing and keep its hours, phone and categories the same as your Google profile.
• Check BBB, Angi and MapQuest. Fix any listing that shows an old address or phone number.
• Find the directories for your trade. Search your main service and "Maryland" and note which directories rank. Those are the sites AI tools are likely to read as well.

Consistency matters more than volume. Ten accurate listings beat fifty with three different phone numbers, and clean listings are a quiet but large part of how to show up in AI Overviews and ChatGPT answers.

We have not run AI visibility checks for this post. Here is how you can run a basic check yourself in about 30 minutes:

• Write five questions a customer would ask before calling you, such as "how much does a roof inspection cost in Baltimore County."
• Search each one in Google while signed out, and note whether an AI Overview appears and which sites it links to.
• Ask the same questions in ChatGPT with search turned on and note the sources it cites.
• Mark which sources are your own site, your profile, a directory or a competitor.
• Repeat in a month. Results change often, so track the pattern, not a single answer.

For ongoing tracking, OpenAI says ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to referral links, so you can see that traffic in Google Analytics. Look for it under traffic sources.

The results tell you where to work. If AI answers cite Yelp and directories but not your site, fix your listings first. If they cite competitors' guides, you need better answers on your own pages. Either way, the check turns how to show up in AI Overviews from a guess into a short list of fixes.

Kause Marketing Agency is a Maryland SEO agency based in Randallstown, in Baltimore County. If you would rather not work out how to show up in AI Overviews on your own, our AI SEO services cover profile, listing and on-page work for AI answers.

AI SEO is an add-on from $600 a month alongside a monthly plan. Our Local Starter plan is $1,500 a month, with a 90-day minimum and then month-to-month. See every plan on our pricing page.

Want a quick read first? The free SEO audit is a 30-minute review call plus a short written snapshot of your top issues, usually within 48 hours.