One ChatGPT answer that leaves your Indianapolis business out is a clue to check. It doesn’t prove customers can’t find you, or that one missing website feature caused it. Trojan Digital Marketing, based in Indianapolis, does SEO, AEO and GEO work. We check four things: crawler access, your business facts, the saved answer and any visits or inquiries that followed. To have us run that check on your business, the first strategy call is free, and during business hours we aim to reply within five minutes.
We don’t sell a guaranteed “GEO fix,” and this guide lays out the checks we’d run instead. The useful work behind that label is real: state your business facts clearly, improve the pages that answer buyer questions, confirm crawler access and keep a record. Jeff Clerisier, our founder, holds our own pages to one rule here: a claim needs proof, and the conservative version wins.
Define what you are trying to observe
Begin with a specific customer task. Someone might be comparing providers for a service, checking whether a business serves their area, or asking what a project involves. A broad prompt asking for the “best company” combines many possible criteria and gives you little information about why a particular business was or was not included.
Use a small, consistent set of realistic questions. For a hypothetical Indianapolis interior painting business, one question might ask what to consider when choosing a painter for an occupied home. Another might ask which information is needed for a quote. A recommendation question can be included, but it should not be the only observation in the review.
Record the exact wording and any context you supplied, plus the date, the answer and any cited pages. We never reword a prompt until the business shows up and then report that one answer as typical.
Check the relevant search crawler
OpenAI documents OAI SearchBot as the crawler used to surface websites in ChatGPT search results. Its guidance recommends allowing that crawler and requests from the published IP ranges when a site wants search visibility. GPTBot concerns potential training use, and its control is independent. These roles are explained in the official OpenAI crawler documentation.
Ask the website operator to review the relevant crawl rules and infrastructure if search access is a concern. A rule written for one crawler should not be assumed to control every OpenAI feature. Document any intentional restrictions and the reason for a proposed change before editing them.
Access is a prerequisite to investigate, not a promise that a business will be selected for a particular answer. Keep a confirmed access problem separate from uncertainty about why a recommendation omitted the business. The evidence may support fixing the first without establishing a complete explanation for the second.
Make the business easy for a person to understand
Review the website as a prospective customer. Can you identify the business name, the service offered, the actual area served, and the way to contact the team? Can you tell whether an offer is current? Is the process described accurately enough to decide whether an inquiry makes sense?
For the painting example, useful details might include the kinds of interiors handled, preparation responsibilities, how occupied rooms are managed, and what information is needed for an estimate. Those details are practical customer information. They should not be presented as a secret formula that forces an assistant to recommend the company.
Keep important business facts consistent across the website and the profiles the business manages. Fix an old phone number, a dropped service or a wrong location wherever it turns up, and never invent an office, credential or client result to look bigger. We follow that on our own site: our business markup names Indianapolis as our only location and lists no street address, because we don’t have a public office.
Publish answers grounded in actual experience
- Question
- Identify what the customer needs to know.
- Answer
- Explain it clearly.
- Evidence
- Support the answer with a source.
Choose questions the business can answer with specific knowledge. A preparation checklist, a documented process, or an explanation of a difficult tradeoff can give a reader something more useful than a generic description of the industry. Include evidence where the claim needs it.
For example, a page about preparing a home for painting can distinguish the customer’s responsibilities from the crew’s, explain how scope is confirmed, and show approved photographs that support the explanation. Avoid turning that practical information into an unsupported statement that all AI systems reward a particular phrase or paragraph length.
The companion article What Is AEO? explains answer writing and current featured snippet guidance. Clear language is useful for readers even when no assistant citation has been observed.
Keep legitimate reputation work distinct from manufactured mentions
Accurate professional profiles, honest customer feedback, and real community participation can help people evaluate a business. Review their usefulness and accuracy on their own merits. We haven’t seen evidence that each positive mention on a local website brings a predictable rise in ChatGPT visibility.
When you discover an inaccurate description on a profile the business controls, correct it. When another publisher has described the business incorrectly, document the issue and use an appropriate correction process. Focus on making the public information reliable rather than producing repetitive praise across low value pages.
Use structured data with a clear purpose
Structured data can describe applicable information, but it should reflect the visible page and the real business. Do not treat it as a substitute for a useful explanation or as a guarantee that every assistant understands and recommends the company.
Google’s AI features guidance does not require special markup for its AI search features. That is Google specific guidance, not a universal statement about every provider. Check the documentation for the actual system involved in a proposed technical change.
Keep FAQ advice current as well. Google stopped displaying FAQ rich results on May 7, 2026, as recorded in its official changelog. A useful FAQ can remain on your website, but adding its markup should not be sold as a current Google FAQ rich result benefit or a guaranteed ChatGPT citation tactic.
Separate four kinds of evidence
| Evidence | What it can establish | What it cannot establish alone |
|---|---|---|
| Access review | Whether a relevant restriction or access problem was identified | Selection for every relevant answer |
| Saved assistant response | What appeared for the recorded question and context | Universal visibility or the reason for every omission |
| Referral data | Visits attributed to an available source in the measurement system | All mentions that did not produce a tracked visit |
| Qualified inquiry records | Business outcomes under the team’s agreed definition | A complete causal account of the customer’s discovery journey |
A search readiness score belongs in the diagnostic part of the review. Our audit score explanation describes why it is different from an observed citation. The free website audit can help organize available checks; it should not be described as measuring an exact rank across ChatGPT and other assistants.
Google has a separate Generative AI performance report for reported impressions in supported Google features. That report does not measure ChatGPT. Keep each provider’s data labeled and do not combine unlike observations into a single “AI visibility” number without a defensible method.
Choose a next action from the evidence
If a relevant crawler is blocked unintentionally, review that issue with the website operator. If the page does not explain the service clearly, improve the explanation. If the business information is inaccurate, correct it. If the only evidence is one missing recommendation, gather a more useful set of observations before commissioning a large website change.
Use the audit fix prioritization guide to separate confirmed problems from questions that still need investigation. For a broader plan across local search and content, use our Indiana SEO, AEO, and AI search guide.
Questions Indianapolis businesses often ask
Should I rebuild my website because one answer omitted my business?
That observation alone does not establish a need for a redesign. Review access, information quality, actual customer needs, and available outcomes before choosing a scope of work.
Can I guarantee a recommendation by adding schema or buying mentions?
No recommendation guarantee is established by those actions. Ask for the provider’s current guidance, a specific explanation of the work, and a measurement method that distinguishes observation from prediction.
Can Trojan help investigate the problem?
Our Indianapolis AI marketing services can help define a review and connect it with the relevant website and content work. A useful engagement should explain what was checked, what remains unknown, and what evidence will support the next decision.
About the author
Jeff Clerisier is the founder of Trojan Digital Marketing. Learn more on the about page. This article was reviewed on September 7, 2026, to update provider guidance and replace unsupported visibility guarantees with a practical diagnostic approach.
