What an AI assistant reads before it recommends a business

How AI assistants decide which business to recommend

A visitor asks ChatGPT where to eat near Arawak Cay. A homeowner in Freeport asks who can fix a leaking roof. The assistant answers with a name, maybe two. Neither of them sees the list the name came from.

The assistant builds its answer from what it can find about each business at that moment. That means listings, websites, reviews, and webpages other people have written. The companies that build these assistants now say in their own help centres what they read. Their answers differ, and so does what has reached The Bahamas.

What Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode read

AI Overviews are the short summaries at the top of some Google results. AI Mode is Google’s chat-style search. Google says both are “rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems.” In plain terms, they start from the same store of webpages that ordinary Google search uses.

Google names two things a business controls. The first is the Business Profile. Google’s guidance for site owners lists “Checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date” as a best practice for these features. Merchant Center is Google’s tool for shops to list their products. A second Google guide says a Business Profile “can help your products and services to be visible in both AI responses and other Google Search results.”

The second is the website. Google asks site owners to put important content on the webpage as text. It also asks that any structured data, the labels some websites add in their code for search engines, match what the webpage shows. Hours that appear only inside a photo of a flyer are not text.

Google’s AI can also split one question into several searches. Google calls this “query fan-out.” A question like “a quiet place for a birthday dinner in Nassau that takes bookings” can become a search for each part. A business that writes down its hours, its prices and how to book gives each of those searches something to match.

As of 25 September 2026, Google’s AI Mode help article lists The Bahamas among the countries where AI Mode is available. The same article warns that AI Mode “doesn’t always get it right.”

What Google Maps’ AI reads: your listing and your reviews

Google has added Gemini, its AI model, to Google Maps. The feature is called Ask Maps. When it launched in March 2026, Google said Maps builds its answers from information about places, “including reviews from our community.” It promises “insider tips from real people.” Google tells developers the same thing about its Maps-based answers: they use places data and user reviews as sources.

What customers write in a review can become part of the answer. A review that says the snapper was fresh and the staff found a table by the water gives an assistant something specific to pass on. A one-word review gives it very little.

Reviews count in Google’s ordinary local results as well. Google’s Business Profile help says “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” It also says “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” Asking for reviews has its own rules, set out in how to ask customers for Google reviews within Google’s rules.

Ask Maps is not confirmed here yet. Google says it is rolling out in “over 150 countries and territories in English,” but it does not name The Bahamas. Open Google Maps on your own phone to see whether you have it.

How ChatGPT chooses which business to recommend

ChatGPT is supported in The Bahamas, according to OpenAI’s list of supported countries. For a local question, ChatGPT search may use the customer’s rough location, and share it with the search providers it uses. OpenAI names Microsoft and Shopify among them. OpenAI also says ChatGPT may share the customer’s location with “trusted third-party providers” that supply local information, “such as nearby business listings.” It does not name those.

Yelp says it supplies ChatGPT directly, and that its reviews, ratings, photos and business details already appear inside ChatGPT. That is why many US guides tell owners to claim their Yelp listing. The advice does not carry over. Yelp’s list of countries does not include The Bahamas or any other Caribbean country. Yelp also says it offers limited help with Yelp listings outside the US and Canada.

BrightLocal studied local AI answers for businesses in the US, the UK and Australia, where Yelp is widely used. It found that Yelp was ChatGPT’s most-cited local source. Google’s AI cited Google Business Profiles most. Apple’s business listings were also among ChatGPT’s top sources, though far behind Yelp, and Apple Business lists The Bahamas for location management, so a business here can claim and edit its Apple Maps place card.

Unless one of its unnamed listing partners covers The Bahamas, ChatGPT finds most businesses here through web search. That means the business’s own website, webpages that repeat its Google details, news stories and local directories. Of those, the website is the one the business controls. For restaurant bookings, OpenAI also says ChatGPT may show reservation times from OpenTable, which it lists as available worldwide. It adds that availability varies by restaurant and location.

Do you need llms.txt, schema or an AI search package?

Agencies now sell packages that promise to get a business into AI answers. They are sometimes called GEO or AEO, short for generative engine optimisation and answer engine optimisation. Many rest on special files and code. Google’s guide for site owners, last updated in July 2026, lists what you can set aside for its AI search:

• llms.txt and other AI files. An llms.txt file is a text file some agencies add to a website for AI tools. Google says site owners do not need new AI files or markup, “as Google Search itself doesn’t use them.”
• Special schema markup. Schema is code that labels facts on a webpage for search engines. Google says “there’s no special schema.org markup you need to add” for its AI answers. It still counts ordinary structured data as good practice.
• Splitting webpages into small chunks. Google says there is no need to break content into tiny pieces for AI to understand it.
• Rewriting webpages just for AI. Google says you do not need to write in a special way for its AI features.
• Chasing mentions. Google says seeking inauthentic mentions across the web is not as helpful as it might seem.
• Tools that promise rankings. Google says “No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems.”

This is Google speaking for Google Search. OpenAI has not published a similar list for ChatGPT. Its help article asks one thing of site owners: let OAI-SearchBot, the program that reads websites for ChatGPT search, reach the website, and check that the web host does not block it. Beyond that, Google points an owner to ordinary webpages and the Business Profile, and OpenAI to a website its crawler can reach.

What happens when your details disagree

An assistant repeats what it reads. Say your Google listing, your website and an old directory webpage give different hours. The assistant may repeat the wrong one. Herringbone Digital studied 600 US small businesses. Only a little over half published their hours one way; the rest had two or three versions in different places. Most of the ones with no hours on their own website had a Google listing set to “Open 24 hours,” and the AI answers repeated it.

Google asks each business to be represented “as it’s consistently represented and recognized in the real world across signage, stationery, and other branding.” When your business phone number is different on Google and Facebook shows how to make every door match.

AI assistants that call and book for customers

In the US, Google’s AI now does more than read. Google says that if a business does not list details such as its earliest appointment or what is in stock, “Google will make a call to get those answers for you.” Its Business Profile help says these automated calls work “only in select regions and languages.” In the US, that is every state but five. Owners there can turn the calls off in their profile settings. In May 2026, Google said calls on a customer’s behalf for home repair, beauty and pet care would reach everyone in the US that summer. Google’s Business Profile help names only the US for these calls, and its AI Mode help does not list The Bahamas for dining reservations. Google has not said whether the calls will reach The Bahamas.

What these agents look for is useful anywhere. Google says it calls when the details are not online. Hours, prices, what is in stock and how to book, written on your listing and your website, answer the question before anyone has to phone.

Does AI search matter for a business in The Bahamas?

AI Mode and ChatGPT are both available here. A customer in Nassau or Marsh Harbour can ask either one for a business today. The index does not count how many people here do, and it does not test what assistants say about a business. What it does measure is the doors assistants read.

The Four Digital Doors overview puts the change in one line: Customers can ask an AI assistant instead of or alongside a search, and it reads the same doors they check. The two sources Google names are the two doors the index most often found open. In the 2026 edition, it found a Google listing for about six in ten businesses, more than any other door. Claiming a listing is what gives the business control over what an assistant reads there.

An unclaimed listing is still read, with whatever it happens to say. Until someone at the business claims it, changes come only as suggestions, which Google reviews before they show. Who should own your Google Business Profile, and how to keep control explains how to claim it.

The website is the second door Google names. The index counts a website as open only if it loads when read, and a link that does not load gives an assistant nothing to read.

In the same edition, for about one business in five, the index found none of the Four Digital Doors open. Not found means the index did not find the door in public sources. It does not mean the business has none, and why a reading can say “Not found” for a door that is open explains how that happens.

The doors an assistant reads are the doors the index measures.

A neighbour’s tourism board offers a useful test. On 23 September 2026 the Jamaica Gleaner reported a warning from Kristopher DaCosta of the Jamaica Tourist Board: “there is a real possibility that AI disproportionately recommends the businesses that are easiest for machines to understand.” His test is five questions: “Can a machine determine who you are, where you’re located, what you offer, whether the information is current, and how someone books with you?” The board also said it cannot yet put a number on how much business AI sends its way. Ask his five questions of your own listing and website.

To see what assistants already say about your business, and how to correct a wrong answer, read how to check what AI assistants tell customers about your business.