How to Get Your Restaurant Recommended by ChatGPT and AI Search

Why it's worth an afternoon

More guests are asking AI. In BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 US adults, 45% said they used AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before.

The lists are short. In a BrightLocal study of about 200,000 local searches, published in September 2026, ChatGPT named 4.1 businesses per answer on average, Google AI Mode 3.5 and Google AI Overviews 2.5.

Many restaurants never make the list. Local Falcon, which sells local visibility tracking, analyzed 189,905 ChatGPT results from February 2026. It found that 83% of the restaurants it tracks never appeared on ChatGPT for their category and location, against 14% on Google.

Where each assistant gets restaurant information

1. Keep your name, address and phone the same everywhere

When your website, Google, Yelp, Apple Maps and the delivery apps show different hours or phone numbers, an assistant has conflicting facts to choose from. Pick one version of each detail and use it everywhere.

Start with your Google Business Profile. In BrightLocal's September 2026 study of about 1.9 million citations across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews, Google Business Profile made up 28.5% of all citations and Yelp about 9.5%. Google also says businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local results. Our guides to your Google Business Profile and showing up on Google Maps walk through it.

2. Let the AI search crawlers in

Each assistant has its own crawler. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot so your site appears in its results.

Search and training are separate switches:

• OAI-SearchBot decides whether ChatGPT search can show your site. GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler, and blocking it doesn't block search.
• PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in Perplexity. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.
• Google-Extended controls whether Google can use your content to train Gemini and to ground answers in Gemini Apps. Google says it doesn't affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search.

Check your robots.txt file and your host's bot settings. OpenAI notes that your host or CDN must allow traffic from its published crawler IP addresses. OpenAI and Perplexity both say robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to apply.

3. Put your menu on your site as text

For its AI features, Google's advice is to put important content in text form and support it with images and video. For a restaurant, the most important content is the menu: dish names, short descriptions, prices and dietary notes on a real web page. A menu that exists only as a photo or a PDF doesn't follow that advice.

It helps on Google's own surfaces too. Google may transcribe menu data from your website onto your Business Profile, and you can point the profile's menu link at that page. Our restaurant website checklist covers the rest of the site. If your menu is also your ordering page, see how the main online ordering systems compare.

4. Add Restaurant and Menu markup

Schema.org markup labels each fact on your page so software can read it. On schema.org, Restaurant is a type of FoodEstablishment, which is a type of LocalBusiness. Google lists name and address as required for local business markup and recommends the properties below.

Schema.org also has a Menu type, linked to the restaurant through hasMenu. A menu holds sections (hasMenuSection) and items (hasMenuItem), and each item can carry its price through an Offer.

Two points from Google keep this in proportion. There is no special schema.org markup you need to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and your markup must match the visible text on the page. Treat it as a clean copy of what guests already see.

5. Earn reviews and mentions on the sites assistants cite

Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, and that prominence also reflects how many sites link to your business.

Your own site and mentions elsewhere count too. In BrightLocal's November 2024 test of 800 local searches in ChatGPT, 58% of sources were business websites, 27% were pages that mention the business, and 15% were directories. In its 2026 study, business websites made up 42% of all citations across the three platforms it tracked.

So ask happy guests for reviews on Google and Yelp, reply to them, and say yes when a local paper or food blog wants to write about you.

6. Claim your Apple Maps place card

Apple Maps and Siri use Apple's own place cards. Apple Business Connect lets you claim your location for free and add photos, a logo, offers, and actions such as ordering food or booking a table. When it launched the tool in January 2023, Apple said that information reaches more than a billion Apple users across Maps, Messages, Wallet, Siri and other apps.

How to check where you stand

• Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google the questions your guests ask, such as "best pho near downtown" or "pizza open late", with your city or neighborhood in the question.
• Note which sites each answer cites, and make sure your details on those sites are right.
• In Google Search Console, traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the Performance report under the Web search type.

Once guests find you, the next job is bringing them back. Our guide to restaurant loyalty programs covers that.