How do you use this AEO checklist?
Work through the six sections in order — access, entity, reputation, content, structured data, measurement — because each one depends on the one before it.
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting AI assistants to find, trust and recommend your business. If you are new to the idea, start with what AEO is and how it differs from SEO, then come back here.
The shift is already measurable. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 45% of consumers said they use AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before. Pew Research found that when a Google AI summary appears, users click a traditional result in 8% of visits, versus 15% without one.
Each item below has a bold action and a short explanation. Mark each one done, not done or not applicable. Most items take under an hour; a few, like reviews and mentions, never really finish.
Can AI engines reach your website?
Only if your robots.txt, firewall and page code let AI search crawlers in — a blocked crawler means the engine cannot cite your site, however good it is.
Access is the cheapest section to fix and the most expensive to get wrong. Many sites block AI crawlers by accident through an old robots.txt rule, a security plugin or a CDN setting. Our AI crawlers and robots.txt guide covers every bot in detail.
- Allow OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User in robots.txt. OAI-SearchBot builds ChatGPT's search index and ChatGPT-User fetches pages when a person asks. OpenAI's documentation states that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Test yours with the free AI Crawler Checker.
- Allow Bingbot, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User. Bingbot powers Bing and Copilot, and ChatGPT has been observed running Bing searches for local queries. Blocking Bing quietly cuts you out of more than one assistant.
- Decide on training crawlers as a separate choice. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, Applebot-Extended and Google-Extended govern training or model use, not live search answers. Google-Extended does not affect AI Overviews — Googlebot does — so never block Googlebot to keep out of AI.
- Check that your firewall or CDN is not returning errors to AI bots. A robots.txt "Allow" means nothing if a security layer blocks the request first. Ask your host or developer whether any bot-blocking or "AI scraper" setting is switched on, and check server logs for blocked AI user agents.
- Put your core facts in plain HTML. Your business name, phone, service area, hours and services should be in the page's text, not only inside images, PDFs, sliders or script-loaded widgets. View the page source: if a fact is not there, do not assume a crawler will see it.
Do all your sources tell AI the same facts?
They should: AI engines cross-check your website, listings and directories, and conflicting names, phones or service areas make them less confident about recommending you.
To an AI engine, your business is an entity: a set of facts that different sources agree on. The more sources agree, the safer it is for the engine to name you. Contradictions — an old phone number on Yelp, a different suite on BBB — are a reason to pick someone else.
- Write one canonical fact sheet. Record your exact business name, address or service area, primary phone, website, hours, services, cities served, year founded and license numbers. Every listing, page and schema block on this checklist should copy from this document.
- Complete your Google Business Profile and match it to the fact sheet. Set the most accurate primary category, list every service, fill in hours and service areas, and add real photos. Google is also testing a revamped Q&A with yes/no owner prompts, so answer those when they appear. Our Google Business Profile service covers the full setup.
- Claim Bing Places and Apple Business Connect. Public evidence does not establish that ChatGPT reads Google Business Profile directly, according to Cheers' citation analysis. Bing's data feeds Copilot and the Bing searches ChatGPT runs, and Apple's feeds Siri and Apple Maps.
- Fix the directories AI engines actually cite. In Cheers' analysis of 70,723 ChatGPT citations across 100 US and Canadian metros, 44.7% pointed to directories and review platforms such as Angi, BBB and Yelp. Correct your profiles there first, then the directories specific to your trade, such as legal or medical provider directories.
- State your entity facts on an About page. Say who owns the business, when it started, where it operates and which licenses and certifications it holds, in plain sentences. Link out to your official profiles so engines can connect them to the same business.
Which reviews and mentions do AI engines trust?
Recent, specific reviews on Google and the platforms AI engines cite, plus genuine mentions in local media, associations and community forums.
Reviews do double duty. AI engines use them as evidence, and customers use them to check the AI. BrightLocal found that 88% of AI users fact-check AI recommendations and 97% double-check against real reviews. A recommendation that leads to a thin or stale review profile loses the job anyway.
- Build a steady flow of Google reviews. A few new reviews every month beats a burst every two years. Send a short review link by text or email right after a completed job, when satisfaction is highest.
- Spread reviews to the other platforms that matter in your trade. Directories and review platforms make up a large share of ChatGPT's local citations, so a profile on BBB, Angi or your trade's main directory with no recent reviews is a gap. Follow each platform's rules; Yelp, for example, discourages businesses from asking for reviews.
- Ask for detail, never for a specific rating. Ask customers to mention the service and the neighborhood if they are comfortable doing so — that detail is what engines quote. The FTC's final rule on fake reviews bans fake and AI-generated reviews, undisclosed insider reviews and incentives conditioned on positive sentiment.
- Respond to every review, including the bad ones. A calm, specific reply that names what you fixed shows the next reader, human or AI, how you handle problems. Keep replies factual and never reveal private customer details.
- Earn genuine third-party mentions. Local news coverage, chamber and trade association pages, sponsorships and helpful answers in community forums all count. Cheers found 4.3% of local ChatGPT citations came from social and forums like Reddit, Facebook and Nextdoor. Google AI Overviews have also been seen citing low-quality self-promotional listicles — earn real "best of" mentions rather than building fake ones.
What makes a local page answer-ready?
A page is answer-ready when it opens with a direct answer, covers one service in one area, includes real prices and proof, and can be quoted without rewriting.
Your own website is still the single biggest source. In the Cheers analysis, 48.8% of ChatGPT's local citations went to business websites. The question is whether your pages give an engine a clean sentence to quote. For how this plays out in Google specifically, see Google AI Overviews for local businesses.
- Give every core service its own page. "Water heater replacement" and "drain cleaning" need separate pages, not one "Plumbing services" page listing both. Add city or service-area pages only where you have something specific to say about that area.
- Open each page with a one-sentence answer. State what you do, where and for whom in the first 40 words, the way you would answer the question on the phone. Put the detail underneath.
- Publish your real price ranges and what changes them. "How much does it cost" is one of the most common questions buyers ask assistants. A range with the factors that move it — size, materials, access, urgency — is quotable; "call for a quote" is not.
- Answer the questions customers actually ask. Pull questions from call recordings, emails, reviews and your Google Business Profile. Answer each in two to four plain sentences on the relevant service page.
- Show proof and keep it current. Include license numbers, warranties, the name of the person who wrote or reviewed the page, photos of real jobs and a visible "last updated" date. Do not mass-produce thin AI-written pages; Google's August 2026 spam update reportedly targeted mass AI-generated content.
Which structured data should a local business add?
At minimum, LocalBusiness schema using your most specific business type, Service markup on service pages, and FAQPage markup where questions are visible on the page.
Structured data restates your fact sheet in a format machines parse without guessing. It does not replace visible content, and it will not earn a recommendation on its own. It removes ambiguity, which is the point of this whole checklist. The free Schema Generator builds valid JSON-LD for items 21 through 24.
- Add LocalBusiness schema with your most specific type. Use Plumber, HVACBusiness, RoofingContractor, Electrician, Dentist, AutoRepair or LegalService rather than the generic LocalBusiness where one fits. Place it on your homepage or each location page.
- Fill the fields that carry entity facts. Include name, address, telephone, url, geo coordinates, openingHoursSpecification, areaServed and sameAs links to your official profiles. Every value must match your fact sheet exactly.
- Mark up each service page with Service schema. Name the service, link it to your business as the provider and list the areas served. This tells engines which page answers which request.
- Use FAQPage markup only where the FAQs are visible. Mark up the questions and answers exactly as they appear on the page. Hidden or mismatched markup is a trust problem, not a shortcut.
- Validate your schema and update it when facts change. Run pages through Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema.org validator after every edit. When your hours, phone or service area change, the schema changes the same day.
How do you measure whether AI recommends you?
Run a fixed set of buyer prompts every month across the major assistants, then pair that with AI reports in Search Console and Bing and with the sources callers name.
AI visibility is measured differently from rankings. There is no single position to track, and answers vary by engine, wording and location. A consistent prompt list, run the same way each month, is the most reliable signal you have.
- Build a list of 20–30 buyer prompts and record a baseline. Use real phrasings: "best emergency plumber in Jacksonville", "who fixes AC same day near me", "is it worth repairing a 15-year-old furnace". Run them in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, and log who gets named. The free AI Visibility Checker automates part of this.
- Track your share of answers against named competitors. Count how often you appear versus the three to five competitors engines name most. Test with and without location; ChatGPT added optional, off-by-default precise location sharing for more localized "near me" results.
- Check Search Console's generative AI performance report. It shows impressions, pages, countries and devices for Google's AI features, but no clicks or queries, and it is not live on every domain yet. Use it to see which pages Google surfaces in AI answers.
- Check Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report. Bing added Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare in June 2026. It is one of the few first-party sources of AI citation data a local business can see for free.
- Tag AI referrals and ask every caller where they heard of you. In analytics, group visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com into one "AI assistants" channel. Many AI-driven leads call without clicking, so add "an AI assistant" to your intake question. At Media Spearhead, many of the business owners who call us now say an AI assistant recommended us, and AI is our biggest source of new clients.
This checklist overlaps with good local SEO — our SEO services cover the classic side — but it adds the pieces SEO audits usually skip. For the ChatGPT-specific playbook, read how to get recommended by ChatGPT. If you would rather hand the list to someone, our answer engine optimization service works through all 30 items and reports your share of AI answers every month.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AEO checklist?
An AEO checklist is a list of concrete tasks that make a business easier for AI answer engines to find, understand and recommend. This one covers 30 items across crawler access, consistent business facts, reviews and mentions, answer-ready content, structured data and measurement.
How long does it take to see results from AEO?
Technical fixes like unblocking AI crawlers can take effect as soon as the engines recrawl your site. Reputation work such as reviews and third-party mentions builds over months. No one can guarantee when or whether a specific AI engine will recommend a business, so track your share of answers monthly instead of expecting a fixed date.
Is AEO different from local SEO?
They overlap heavily. Accurate listings, reviews, fast crawlable pages and clear service pages help both. AEO adds work that classic SEO often skips: allowing AI crawlers, matching the directories AI engines cite, writing direct answers engines can quote, and measuring mentions inside AI answers rather than only rankings.
Do I need an llms.txt file for AEO?
It is optional. llms.txt is a 2024 proposal, and no major AI engine has confirmed that it changes local recommendations. It takes a few minutes to create, so it is fine to add, but it should come after crawler access, listings, reviews and content.
Which AI engine should a local business focus on first?
Start with ChatGPT and Google. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of US consumers, ChatGPT was the most-used AI tool for local recommendations at 31% of AI users, followed by Google AI Mode at 23%. Most of this checklist helps every engine at once, because they read many of the same sources.
Can I pay to get recommended by ChatGPT?
No one can sell you a guaranteed spot in ChatGPT's organic answers. Treat any vendor promising guaranteed AI placement with suspicion. What you can do is improve the sources AI engines read: your website, your listings, your reviews and credible mentions of your business.
Sources: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 · Pew Research Center, July 2025 · Cheers, What sources does ChatGPT use · OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers · llmstxt.org · FTC, final rule banning fake reviews (Aug 2024) · Search Engine Roundtable, GBP Q&A test · Search Engine Roundtable, AI Overviews citing listicles · Search Engine Roundtable, August 2026 spam update · Search Engine Roundtable, ChatGPT location sharing · Search Engine Roundtable, Search Console AI report · Bing Webmaster Blog, June 2026