AI assistants answer "near me" questions from pages they can crawl and understand. Getting ready means letting the right crawlers in, stating your business facts as plain text and in LocalBusiness structured data, answering buyers' common questions directly on the page, and keeping those facts identical everywhere they appear.
Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in its AI features beyond normal SEO best practice: crawlable, indexable pages with helpful content. Other assistants run their own crawlers (OpenAI's GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot, Anthropic's ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot), and each documents how robots.txt controls it.
For a local business, the practical work is the same work that helps regular search, done carefully: clear facts, clear pages, nothing hidden behind scripts or images.
What does the work include?
| Crawler access | A robots.txt that allows the search and AI crawlers you want, and doesn't block pages by accident. |
|---|---|
| Facts in HTML | Name, address, phone, hours, services and areas as text, not images or script-rendered widgets. |
| Structured data | LocalBusiness (or a subtype) JSON-LD that matches the visible page. |
| Answer-first content | The questions buyers ask, answered in the first sentence under a clear heading. |
| llms.txt | An optional plain-text summary of your site for language models, following the llmstxt.org proposal. |
How is it done, step by step?
- 1
Check what crawlers see
View the page source, not the rendered page. If your phone number isn't in it, crawlers may not see it either.
- 2
Open the door
Allow the crawlers you want in robots.txt. Blocking Google-Extended affects Gemini training and grounding, not Google Search.
- 3
State the facts once, clearly
Footer NAP, a services list, and JSON-LD that matches.
- 4
Answer questions
Price factors, what you accept, how fast you deliver: one clear answer each.
What should you have at the end?
Whoever does this work, you yourself or someone you hire, these are the things you should be able to hold in your hand afterwards:
- A robots.txt review
- A list of facts that are hidden in images or scripts
- LocalBusiness JSON-LD for your site
- A list of buyer questions to answer, with suggested pages
What won't we do?
These shortcuts break search engines' rules, mislead buyers, or both. If anyone offers them to you, say no.
- Promise that an AI assistant will mention you
- Hidden text written for bots
- Fake Q&A or invented reviews
- Separate pages for bots and people
Can I do this myself?
Yes. Start here:
- Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and read it; look for Disallow: / under any user-agent.
- Right-click your homepage, choose View Source, and search for your phone number.
- Run the free grader for the structured data and on-page checks.
Want it done for you? A human-reviewed audit service is planned but not open yet. Join the waitlist and we'll contact you when it opens.
Questions
Do AI assistants use local SEO signals?
They cite pages with clear, structured business facts that they're allowed to crawl, so the same fixes that help local search help them.
Is llms.txt required?
No. It's a proposed convention, not a standard any search engine requires. It's cheap to add and harmless.
Should we block AI crawlers?
That's a business decision. If you want assistants to be able to recommend you, let them crawl the pages that describe your business.