How to get your business recommended by AI, starting with Yelp

One review site is doing most of the talking

Across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode, one review site got named 512,680 times in a single quarter. That's more than the next five review sites combined, and 3.4 times the closest one. The site is Yelp. Those numbers come from a study by Foundation and AirOps that read more than 28 million AI answers to local questions in late 2025. When an AI assistant names a local business today, it's usually reading off a review site, and that site is usually Yelp.

So if a customer near you asks one of those assistants for the best in your line of work, there is a strong chance the answer came off a Yelp page. Here's the catch. Most owners have a Yelp page they claimed once, filled in halfway, and haven't touched in a couple of years. That page is quietly speaking for you in the AI answer, and it's out of date. This post is about that short list of review sites the AI reads before it names anyone, and the afternoon of cleanup that puts your business back on it.

How the AI decides who to name

When you ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for the best plumber or dentist near you, the assistant builds its answer from a small set of review sites it already trusts. It reads what those pages say and repeats the businesses they rate well. Researchers call each of those mentions a citation, which is a fancy way of saying your business got named in the AI's answer. Yelp earns more of those mentions than the next five review sites combined.

Take two plumbers a few blocks apart. One claimed the Yelp page, listed every service, and keeps the hours current. The other has a page a customer set up years ago, with three services listed and nothing about emergency work. When someone asks Perplexity for an emergency plumber near me, the assistant has real facts to quote for the first shop and almost nothing for the second. Same trucks, same skills, but only one of them is easy for the AI to name.

Almost all of those Yelp mentions come from one kind of question. Think best plumber near me, or top-rated house cleaner in town. In the study, between 91% and 97% of Yelp mentions each month came from these best near me questions. When someone types your business name on its own, it barely moves the answer. The assistant is building a shortlist of who looks like the best match for that near me question. Being the most complete, best-reviewed listing is what earns you a spot on it.

This is growing fast. In the last year, the share of people using AI to find a local business jumped from 6% to 45%, per BrightLocal. AI now ranks third among the ways people look for a local business, behind Google and Facebook. On Google AI Mode, Yelp held 72.5% of the local mentions the study counted, which makes it the one review site worth getting right first. So the folks asking ChatGPT or Gemini for a name are a real, growing slice of your future customers.

The afternoon fix that puts you back in the answer

The good news is that this is a job you fully control, and it takes about an afternoon. The work is simple. Make sure the review sites the AI reads have your business right, starting with Yelp, since it carries the most weight. Then fix the one or two other sites that matter for your trade.

On Yelp, work through this short list:

1. Claim your page. Search for your business on Yelp for Business and claim it as the owner. If someone set it up years ago, take it back so you can edit it.
2. Match your hours and services to your website. This is the big one. If the AI reads Tuesday 9 to 5 on Yelp and 8 to 6 on your site, it has two stories about you, and a mixed answer helps nobody.
3. List the service you actually make money on. Many owners fill in the basics and leave off their best work. When a customer asks for that exact job, the AI needs to find it on the page.
4. Refresh your photos. A page with current photos reads as a live, working business to a customer and to the AI alike.
5. Reply to a few recent reviews. A short, plain answer to the last handful shows the page is tended, and it gives the AI fresh, dated text to read.

A complete page does more than look tidy. Every real fact you add gives the AI one more thing it can quote about you, and one fewer reason to reach for a competitor. The pages that get named are the ones that answer the customer's question in plain words, right where the assistant can read it.

Yelp is the first move for almost every local trade. If you run a home-service business, like plumbing, HVAC, or roofing, claim a few more sites while you're at it. The assistants lean on Angi, Thumbtack, and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) for home-service answers. One finding from the study still surprises me. On Perplexity, just 24 plumber near me questions produced 1,168 answers that named a Yelp business in a single quarter. One strong listing gets served to customer after customer. For a dental office, a medspa, or a restaurant, Yelp carries most of the weight by itself, so you can start and mostly finish there.

What to do this week

Before you change anything, see what the AI says about you right now. Open ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, and ask each one for the best in your trade near your town. Read the names it gives back. If your business is missing, or the details it repeats about you are wrong, you have just found your afternoon of work.

It helps to check a second assistant too. Run the same question through Perplexity or Gemini and compare what each one says back. When two assistants tell a customer two different things about you, that gap is usually pointing at a fact you left unclear on your Yelp page or your own website.

Then run the checklist on Yelp first. Most of the payoff is in that one place, which is why this is worth doing even in a busy week. Match your hours and your services across Yelp and your own website, so anyone checking you gets the same answer everywhere they look.

None of this needs an agency or a monthly fee. The businesses that get named by AI are usually just the ones with clean, complete listings on the sites the assistants already read. That used to be a nice-to-have. With 45% of people now asking AI for local names, it's turning into the difference between a full schedule and a quiet phone.