AEO Letchworth How to Get Recommended by ChatGPT in Your Local Area

Right, so ChatGPT is recommending businesses now

And if you're not on that list, you're basically invisible to a growing chunk of people who've stopped Googling things.

I had a plumber in Hitchin call me last month. Proper old-school bloke, been trading 30 years. His son showed him ChatGPT and asked it "Who should I call for a boiler repair in Hitchin?" Three names came up. His wasn't one of them. His mate Dave's was. Dave's been in business eight years.

That's what we're dealing with in 2026. AI search isn't coming. It's here. And it's picking winners based on signals most businesses haven't even thought about yet.

This is what I'm doing all day now at the office on Woolston Avenue. Not just SEO anymore. AEO. Answer Engine Optimisation. Making sure when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or whatever else about businesses in Letchworth, Baldock, Stevenage, wherever... the right names come up.

Your name, ideally.

What's actually happening when someone asks ChatGPT for recommendations

OK so here's the thing most people get wrong. They think ChatGPT is just searching Google and repeating what it finds. It's not that simple anymore.

When someone asks "Who's a good accountant in Letchworth?" ChatGPT is pulling from:

• Structured data it can parse (your website schema, directory listings, review platforms)
• Content where you've clearly stated what you do and where
• Signals about authority (links, citations, mentions across the web)
• Recency, because stale information gets weighted down
• Consistency, because if your business name and address are different everywhere, that's a red flag

It's not reading your site like a human. It's looking for patterns it can trust.

And look, I've tested this obsessively. Changed one thing on a client's site, waited a week, asked the same question five different ways. You start to see what moves the needle.

The bloody obvious stuff that still trips people up

Your Google Business Profile needs to be complete. Not 70% complete. Fully done.

That means:

• Every field filled in (services, products, attributes, the lot)
• Photos from the last three months, not 2023
• Regular posts (yes, they still matter for AI)
• Categories that match what people actually search for
• Reviews you've responded to, especially recent ones

I know this sounds basic. But I looked at 30 Letchworth businesses last week doing this audit thing we run. 22 of them had incomplete profiles. One place had their opening hours wrong for six months. Another had the category set to something so niche that nobody would ever find them.

ChatGPT scrapes this stuff. If your GBP is half-done or wrong, you're teaching the AI that you're not really serious.

Your website needs to say what you do and where, clearly

This is where I see the most carnage.

Someone's got a beautiful website. Clean design, nice photos, they paid good money for it. I ask ChatGPT about their service in their area. Nothing. Not a mention.

I look at the site. Nowhere does it say "We're a family-run bakery in Letchworth Garden City serving fresh bread to North Hertfordshire since 2015." It just says "Welcome to Artisan Bread Co" and then some flowery stuff about craft and passion.

AI can't infer. It needs you to state the obvious.

Your homepage, your about page, your service pages... they need to include:

• Your town name (Letchworth, Hitchin, wherever you actually are)
• What you actually do in plain language
• Ideally the areas you cover if you're mobile or serve a region

Not keyword stuffing. Just clear declarative sentences about who you are and where you operate.

I rewrote one paragraph on a Royston builder's homepage in March. Just added two sentences that mentioned the towns he covers and the fact he's been operating locally for 12 years. Within three weeks he started appearing in ChatGPT results for "recommended builder Royston." That's it. Two sentences.

Schema markup, which sounds technical but isn't really

Schema is just a way of labelling information on your website so that machines can read it easily.

You're telling Google (and by extension, the AI models that scrape Google's data): "This is my business name. This is my address. This is my phone number. These are my opening hours."

LocalBusiness schema is the main one. If you're a service business, you might also want Service schema. If you've got reviews on your site, ReviewRating schema.

Most people don't have this. Or they have it but it's broken or incomplete.

ChatGPT loves schema because it's clean, structured data. It doesn't have to guess whether that phone number at the bottom of your page is current or if it's a random example someone left in the template.

You can test your schema with Google's Rich Results Test. If it's not there or it's throwing errors, fix it. This is table stakes now.

Citations and consistency (the boring bit that matters)

Your business name, address, and phone number need to be identical everywhere they appear online.

Not similar. Identical.

"Hert Bots Ltd" in one place and "HertBots" in another and "Hert Bots Digital" in a third... that's three different businesses as far as AI is concerned.

Same with your address. "6 Woolston Avenue" vs "6 Woolston Ave" vs "Unit 6, Woolston Avenue" - pick one format and use it everywhere.

This stuff used to matter mostly for local SEO. Now it matters for AEO too because AI models are looking for consensus. If they see conflicting information, they just... don't recommend you. Too risky.

Go through your: - Google Business Profile - Bing Places - Apple Maps - Facebook page - LinkedIn - Industry directories (Yell, Thomson Local, whatever's relevant to your sector) - Your actual website footer

Make sure they all match. Exactly.

Reviews matter more than you think

ChatGPT isn't just counting stars. It's reading the content of reviews to understand what you're actually good at.

If you're a solicitor in Stevenage and all your reviews mention "really helpful with house purchases" and "made conveyancing easy to understand," that's semantic gold. When someone asks ChatGPT for a conveyancing solicitor, those phrases matter.

Which means: - You need recent reviews (not just from 2019) - You need reviews with actual detail, not just "great service" - You need to respond to them, which signals you're an active business

I'm not saying chase reviews aggressively or do anything dodgy. Just have a system. Ask people when they're happy. Make it easy. Follow up.

And respond to every review, even the short ones. "Thanks Sarah, glad we could help" is enough. It shows you're present.

Content that answers actual questions people ask

Here's what I did for that plumber's mate Dave (the one who was showing up when my client wasn't).

Dave had a blog. Nothing fancy. One post a month, sometimes less. But every post answered a real question.

"Why is my boiler making a clicking noise?" "How much does a full central heating service cost in Hertfordshire?" "When should I replace my boiler vs repair it?"

Not sales pages. Actual answers. Written like he was explaining it to someone in their kitchen.

ChatGPT was pulling from these posts because they were the clearest, most direct answers to common questions. The AI wasn't recommending Dave because of his fancy branding. It was recommending him because his site had useful information that matched what people were asking.

You don't need 50 blog posts. You need 5-10 really solid ones that answer the questions your customers actually ask you. Write them in your own words. Make them locally relevant where it makes sense.

A Letchworth café could write "Where to get proper coffee in Letchworth Garden City" and actually talk about the local scene, mention a couple other places they rate, position themselves honestly. That's useful content. AI picks that up.

The bit nobody's doing yet (citations in AI training data)

Some businesses are getting mentioned on news sites, local blogs, community forums, industry publications. Those mentions are in the training data.

If you're a business that's been around a while and you've never been mentioned anywhere except your own website... that's a problem now.

Can you get featured in the Comet for something? Can you write a guest post for a local news site about your industry? Can you sponsor something and get your name on a reputable local website?

I'm not talking about spammy link building. I mean actual presence in your community, online and off.

The businesses showing up most reliably in AI recommendations are the ones that exist in multiple places across the web, not just on their own domain.

So what do you actually do on Monday morning

Pick three things:

1. Fix your Google Business Profile properly. Complete every section. Add recent photos. Post something.

2. Add a paragraph to your homepage that clearly states what you do and where you are. Use your town name. Be specific.

3. Check your NAP (name, address, phone) across your top five online listings. Make them match exactly.

That'll take you maybe two hours if you're slow. And it'll put you ahead of 80% of local businesses who still think AI search is someone else's problem.

If you want help with the deeper stuff (schema, content strategy, actually getting recommended consistently), that's what we do. AEO in North Hertfordshire is basically our whole focus now. But start with those three things first. See what happens.