How AI assistants pick which business to name
When someone in Dubai asks ChatGPT "best physiotherapist in JLT" or asks Google and gets an AI Overview, the assistant runs web searches, reads the pages that come back and writes an answer from them. It recommends what those pages say. Three things decide whether you are in that answer:
- Can its crawler reach your site?
- Do the pages it reads mention you, with enough detail to match the question?
- Do several independent sources agree? An assistant that sees your clinic on your site, on Google Maps, in two "best of" articles and on a review site has more to work with than one that sees only your Instagram.
"GEO" (generative engine optimisation) is the name agencies give this. The official documentation is shorter than the sales pitch.
What OpenAI, Perplexity and Google actually say
| Platform | What the docs say | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT search | OAI-SearchBot surfaces sites in ChatGPT search; sites that opt out "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers". GPTBot is only for model training | Allow OAI-SearchBot. Blocking GPTBot is a separate choice |
| Perplexity | PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in results; robots.txt changes take up to 24 hours | Allow PerplexityBot |
| Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | A page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet; "no additional requirements" and no new files or markup | Normal SEO; nothing extra |
| Google, local | Business Profiles "can help your products and services to be visible" in AI responses | Complete, verified profile |
Google's AI features are live here: AI Overviews reached the UAE in 2025, and AI Mode rolled out across MENA in English from August 2025, with an Arabic version announced on Google's regional blog.
The llms.txt question
llms.txt is a proposed file that lists your key pages for language models. Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI says you don't need "new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in Google Search", and Search Engine Journal reported in May 2026 that the guide lists llms.txt among things to skip. OpenAI's crawler page doesn't mention it either.
Our view: it costs ten minutes and hurts nothing, so we add one when we build a site. It is the last item on the list, not the first.
The checklist, in order of impact
- Unblock the search crawlers. Read your robots.txt and your CDN or firewall settings. Cloudflare switched its default to blocking AI crawlers on 1 July 2025, and some security plugins do the same; one toggle can remove you from ChatGPT and Perplexity.
- Finish the Google Business Profile. Category, services, hours, photos, reviews with replies. Google says profiles feed AI responses; see our local SEO plan.
- Write one page per service, in plain sentences. "We do physiotherapy for runners in JLT, sessions are 45 minutes, AED X" is quotable. "Holistic wellness journeys" is not. Google's guide says unique, first-hand content matters most.
- Answer the questions people ask the assistant. Price ranges, areas served, languages spoken, parking, whether you take insurance. Put them on the page, not in a PDF or an image.
- Get mentioned where assistants look. A Q4 2025 study of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Mode found Yelp cited 3.4 times more often than the next local directory in the US. The UAE equivalents are your industry platforms, local media and "best of" lists in Time Out Dubai or What's On. The study was commissioned by a vendor; treat the ratio as a direction, not a law.
- Use the same name everywhere. If your licence says one spelling, the profile another and Instagram a third, an assistant may treat them as three businesses.
- Add structured data for your business type. It doesn't create rankings, but it removes ambiguity about who you are.
A monthly prompt test
No tool shows you ChatGPT "rankings" reliably, because answers change by wording, location and history. A simple manual log works better than a dashboard:
| Step | How |
|---|---|
| Pick 10 prompts | 5 category ("best [service] in [area]"), 3 comparison ("[you] vs [competitor]"), 2 brand ("is [you] good?") |
| Run them in 3 places | ChatGPT with search on, Perplexity, Google with an AI Overview |
| Use 3 languages if your clients do | English, Arabic, Russian |
| Log per prompt | Named? Position in the list? Which sources were cited? |
| Repeat monthly | Same prompts, private window, logged out where possible |
The cited sources column is the useful one. It tells you which websites the assistant trusts for your category, which is your PR and listings to-do list.
What nobody tells you
Your Instagram barely counts. Assistants read web pages. A business that lives only on Instagram gives them a bio and captions to work with. Instagram is good for many things; being cited by ChatGPT isn't one of them.
Negative pages travel too. If the top results for your name include a complaint thread, an assistant asked "is [you] reliable?" will find it. Reply to criticism publicly and calmly where it appears.
Paid "AI placement" is not a product. As of October 2026 we know of no way for a UAE business to buy a mention inside a ChatGPT or Perplexity answer, and Google says no one can pay for a better local ranking. Ads exist around answers in some markets; they are labelled as ads.
Vladimir Chernyshev, GM: GEO is mostly SEO with a new name and a new audience. The businesses that will win AI answers in Dubai are the ones with detailed websites, honest reviews and real press. That is good news for small businesses: you can't outspend a chain on Instagram, but you can out-explain it on your own site.
