How to Get Your Trade Business Recommended by ChatGPT in Australia

What influences AI recommendations, and how to fix the gaps yourself

More Aussies are asking ChatGPT who to call before they even open Google. 45% of consumers now use AI tools to choose local businesses, up from 6% a year earlier, so if your business isn't set up properly, you're invisible to a growing chunk of customers. The good news is that what influences AI recommendations isn't mysterious. It comes down to a handful of things you can check and fix yourself.

What ChatGPT Actually Looks At

AI tools don't guess who to recommend. They pull from data that's already public: your business listings, your reviews, your website, and other sites that mention you. If that information is messy, outdated or inconsistent, AI has nothing solid to work with and will often leave you out entirely.

Four things matter most: your name, address and phone number being consistent everywhere (NAP), how many reviews you have and how recent they are, whether your website is structured clearly enough for AI to understand what you do and where, and whether other trusted sites and directories mention your business.

The Step-by-Step Checklist

Set aside an hour this week and work through this in order. It's not complicated, just easy to put off.

1. Check your Google Business Profile, Facebook page and any directory listings (Yellow Pages, True Local, Hipages) have the exact same business name, address and phone number.
2. Ask five recent customers for a review this week. Recency matters as much as volume, so make it a habit, not a one-off push.
3. Add clear service pages to your website, one per trade service, with your suburb and service area mentioned naturally.
4. Make sure your site has basic structured data (schema markup) so search engines and AI tools can read your business type, location and services properly.
5. Get listed on a few reputable industry directories or local business associations relevant to your trade.
6. Recheck everything in three months. NAP details drift and reviews go stale faster than most tradies expect.

Why This Matters More Than Ranking Number One

Even businesses sitting at the top of Google aren't safe from this shift. Research shows the number one Google result loses 58% of its clicks when an AI answer appears above it, which means being first on Google isn't enough anymore. If your business isn't feeding the right signals to AI tools, you can lose customers before they ever see a search results page.

This is why the basics (consistent data, real reviews, clear website structure and outside mentions) matter more than chasing rankings alone.

Where Wombid Fits In

You can do all of this yourself with a spreadsheet and some patience. Wombid is one tool that helps by keeping your review requests consistent and your website's structured data accurate, which are two of the areas tradies tend to let slip. It won't guarantee ChatGPT recommends you, nobody can promise that, but it takes the manual upkeep off your plate.

If you're not sure where your business currently stands, Wombid's free AI Visibility Audit checks your NAP consistency, review activity and site structure in one go, so you know exactly what to fix first.

Common questions