Every business in the stories below had happy customers and good reviews. None of them was named when someone asked ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI. Each one was missing something small and fixable. Cited Locally finds that thing in your business and tells you how to fix it.
These are composite stories. Names and places are illustrative, and the way each engine behaves comes from the published research listed at the bottom of this page.
Riya's molar started throbbing after dinner. She didn't open Google Maps. She opened ChatGPT and typed what she'd say to a friend: "good dentist in Indiranagar open Sunday morning?"
Two streets from her flat, Dr. Meera's clinic has 212 Google reviews averaging 4.8. It opens Sundays from 10 to 2. It was the perfect answer, and it wasn't in the reply.
ChatGPT named three other clinics, citing Practo, Justdial and a "best dentists in Bengaluru" blog. Riya booked the first one at 11:46 pm.
Why it happened. ChatGPT doesn't read Google. For local questions it runs a Bing search, scans the top 20–30 results and keeps the few sources it can verify.[1] Dr. Meera had never claimed Bing Places, her site wasn't in Bing Webmaster Tools, and her Practo profile was half finished.
Week 1 of her plan: verify the site in Bing (import from Google Search Console, about 2 minutes), claim Bing Places, finish the Practo and Lybrate profiles with matching details. Her prompt tracker re-tests "dentist Indiranagar Sunday" every two weeks.
Santosh runs a five-person plumbing crew in Kothrud. His nephew built him a good-looking website with one problem: the rate card was a photo of the laminated sheet on his van.
When a flat owner asked Perplexity "how much does a plumber charge for a leaking tap in Pune?", it quoted two competitors. Their prices were written as plain text, so the crawler could read them.
Why it happened. AI crawlers read text. A price list in an image, hours inside a map widget or a menu PDF can't be quoted. Perplexity also prefers pages that answer the question early under a clear heading.[2]
The audit flags "prices are images" as a gap. The FAQ starter gives him five answer-first questions written for home services, and the plan tells him to add a page for each area he covers.
Dana's café has the fastest Wi-Fi on the block and an outlet at every table. Remote workers love it. When they ask AI for "a café in Austin good for working", the answer pulls from two city guides and a Yelp roundup. Dana isn't in any of them.
She'd never contacted the writers. She didn't know who they were.
Why it happened. For "best X in Y" questions, engines lean on city guides, "best of" posts and local news. Lifestyle sites came up again and again for hospitality searches.[3]
0 = absent · 1 = mentioned · 2 = cited. Illustrative.
The tracker shows which articles the engines cite when she's missing. The pitch template turns each one into a short, specific email to the author, with one checkable fact about her café.
On Google, the firm was "Agarwal Tax Consultants". On Justdial it was "Agarwal & Co. CA". The website said "AgarwalFinServ". The phone number on Sulekha was from before they moved offices.
Every one of those listings had good reviews. To an AI engine, though, they looked like four uncertain businesses rather than one trustworthy one.
Why it happened. Engines cross-check facts across sources, and consistent name, address and phone is part of how they verify a business.[1][3]
One generated business description and a schema block with every profile linked as "sameAs". He pastes the same text into Google, Bing, Justdial, Sulekha and his site.
Bing Webmaster Tools, Bing Places, robots.txt for AI crawlers, prices and hours as text, schema on your site.
Your industry's directories, the national ones, Foursquare and the leading review site, all with identical details.
Service pages and area pages that open with a direct answer, and an FAQ written the way your customers ask.
A steady flow of reviews, pitches to the lists the engines cite, and a prompt check every two weeks to see what moved.
No subscription. Use it for one business, or re-run it each time you open a new location.
Get Cited Locally nowSecure checkout by Razorpay · The app opens right after payment
It helps a lot, because business websites are the most common source AI engines cite. Without one, the plan still covers directories, review sites and Google, Bing and Apple listings, which engines read directly.
No tool can promise that, because each engine makes its own choices and changes often. What Cited Locally does is fix the signals published research links to local citations, and give you a tracker to see whether your visibility is moving.
Setup takes about 10 minutes. The week 1 tasks usually take under five hours in total, and most are one-time.
Yes. The schema and robots.txt are generated for you, and each step says where they go. If someone else manages your site, send them the Toolkit tab.
There are directory lists for India, the US and the UK, plus a general set for other countries. It covers 12 categories: dentists, restaurants, salons, lawyers, home services, gyms, hotels, real estate, accountants, retail, coaching and auto repair.
In your own browser. Nothing you enter is sent to us.
Ten minutes to find out whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI can find and recommend your business. We'll email it to you from support@mywishcometrue2025.xyz, with a $5-off code if you want the full app later.
Get the 7-point checklist by email, plus $5 off Cited Locally. No spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime.
Lifetime access · Secure Razorpay checkout