Ask ChatGPT for the best bespoke tailor in your city and you get a handful of names back. Some of your future clients are asking exactly that, and the answer decides who they call. This is how those names get picked, and what a small shop can do about it this month.
Picture a groom’s sister on the sofa with her phone, typing: where can I get a wedding suit made near me? A few shops come back, each with a line or two about what it does. She calls the first. The tailor two streets away, who has made wedding suits for twenty years, wasn’t in the answer. He never finds out he lost that call.
Last year we wrote a guide to “near me” searches and your Google Business Profile. Most of it still applies. The profile, reviews and website that get you found on Google Maps are the same material AI tools pull from. This piece picks up where that one stopped.
Pew Research Center’s 2026 survey of 5,119 U.S. adults, fielded 17 to 23 February, found that 49% use AI chatbots and 42% use them to search for information. ChatGPT use was 44%, up from 34% in 2025, although Pew changed the wording of that question between years. Roughly half of American adults now use a chatbot of some kind.
People who ask a chatbot also tend to take the answer and move on. The Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford asked respondents in 27 markets how often they click through to the original source from different places. In its 2026 Digital News Report, just 4% said they always or often click through from an AI chatbot, against 19% from search and 17% from social media. That survey was about news, not shops, but it points the same way: when the answer sits on the screen, many people never open a website, so your name, hours and reviews have to do the persuading inside the answer itself.
Google says there is no special setting, file or markup that gets a business into its AI answers. Its guidance on AI features, updated in December 2025, puts it plainly:
Read the other way, that is good news. Nothing is hidden behind a technical trick or a paid service. Who gets shown is decided by the same short list that has always decided local results, and every item on it is something you can improve this month. Google’s help pages say local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity”:
To appear in AI answers built from web pages, a page also has to be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet. That is the only technical requirement. Google adds that your Business Profile information should be up to date, which is where the first few steps below come in.
1. See what AI says about you now. It takes about 15 minutes. Open ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode and Gemini, and ask what a client would ask:
Write down whether you’re named, who is named instead, and which websites get cited. Keep it in a simple sheet with the date.
Don’t be discouraged if you’re missing from every answer the first time. That is your baseline, and it’s more useful than a guess. When a competitor is named, open their Google profile and website next to yours. Count their reviews. Read how they describe their services. Note what they say that you don’t. Answers change from one run to the next, so repeat the check every month and watch how often you appear, not just whether you did once.
2. Fill in your Google Business Profile. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to appear in local results. List every service you offer. A service list for a tailor might read: bespoke suits, made-to-measure suits, wedding suits and groomsmen packages, alterations and repairs, shirts. Keep your hours current, including holidays, and add real photos of the shop, the work and the finished suits. The full walkthrough is in our Near Me guide.
3. Make your details identical everywhere. Google warns that if your information isn’t accurate, your profile might not show up for relevant nearby searches. So pick one version of your name, address, phone number and opening hours, and write it in a note on your phone. Then check Google, Facebook, your Instagram bio, wedding directories and your website, and paste it in exactly. Look especially for an old address or a retired phone number sitting on a directory you forgot about. “Tue to Sat, 10 to 6” on one site and “Mon to Sat” on another is the kind of mismatch to fix.
4. Ask for reviews, then answer them. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. It lets you ask customers to review you through a link or a QR code. Put a QR code on the counter, or send the link in the email you write after the final fitting, when the client is happiest. Never offer a discount or gift in return for a review. Google calls that “strictly prohibited”.
Reply to every review, and keep it short. Google’s advice is to be professional, address the reviewer by name, respond promptly, apologise where it’s warranted and skip any offers or promotions. A good reply sounds like this: “Thank you, Daniel. It was a pleasure making your wedding suit, and we hope it serves you for many years.” For a complaint, acknowledge what went wrong and say how you’ll put it right. Your replies are public, so future clients can read them too.
5. Spell out what you do on your website. Google says AI features rely on the same basics as regular search, and that any structured data has to match the text a visitor can see. So plain, visible words are what count. Put these on your site:
Write it the way you’d answer a client who just walked in. A page called “Wedding suits in [your city]” that says something like this does the job: “We make wedding suits for grooms and groomsmen in [your city]. A made-to-measure suit starts at [price] and takes [number] weeks from the first fitting. Call [number] to book a fitting.” That tells a person and a search tool the same thing, which is the point. It beats a page called “Services” that lists nothing.
![Mock-up of a website service page titled Wedding suits in [your city], with the starting price, timeline and phone number in plain words and a Book a fitting button](https://i0.wp.com/tg3ds.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/ai-search-for-tailors-page-example.webp?w=800&ssl=1)
6. Get mentioned on other sites. Google’s help page lists the number of websites that link to your business as one of the things behind how well-known it looks. Ask the venues and planners you’ve worked with whether they’d list you. Check whether your cloth suppliers have a stockist page. Look for local “best tailors” roundups and wedding vendor directories, and send the editors facts and photographs. A local reporter may like a story with a face on it, such as the groom whose suit you made in ten days. Nothing guarantees a mention, and sites that sell placement or write fake rankings aren’t worth the money.
OpenAI’s documentation says: “Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.” That crawler is separate from GPTBot, which collects content for training, so you can block training and still allow search.
Checking takes a minute. Type your website address followed by /robots.txt into a browser. If you see OAI-SearchBot listed with “Disallow: /” under it, you’re blocked. Some website platforms and security tools have settings that block AI crawlers, so it is worth a look. OpenAI says a change to the file can take about 24 hours to take effect for search. If you can’t edit it yourself, send the finding to whoever built the site. The same person can use Google’s free Search Console to confirm your pages are indexed.
Skip special AI files or markup, since Google says none is needed. Be wary of anyone who guarantees placement in ChatGPT: Google says “there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking”. And don’t buy reviews or trade rewards for them. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission’s 2024 rule bans creating or selling fake reviews, and bans incentives tied to a positive or negative review. The agency can seek civil penalties against businesses that break it.
You don’t need to do it all at once. In week one, run the check and fill in your Google profile. In week two, make your details match everywhere and look at your robots.txt file. In week three, put up the QR code, send the review link to your last ten clients and start replying. In week four, write the wedding suit page and ask two local businesses to list you. Then run the check again and set it beside the first one.
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