Most people who find a local business through ChatGPT get there because ChatGPT used Bing to look it up.
Not Google. Bing.
Google and ChatGPT are competitors. ChatGPT is made by OpenAI, and Microsoft put a few billion dollars into OpenAI, and Microsoft owns Bing. So when ChatGPT goes looking for a local business, it searches Bing.
Your Google listing, no matter how well set up it is, does not help you there.
What Bing Places is
Bing Places for Business is the same idea as your Google Business Profile, but for Bing. Your business name, address, phone number, hours, photos, category. Same thing, different search engine.
Most trade businesses have never set it up. Which means if someone asks ChatGPT for a plumber in their suburb right now, and you are not on Bing Places, you are not even in the running.
It takes half an hour and costs nothing.
How to do it
Go to bingplaces.com. Sign in with a Microsoft account. If you do not have one, make one. It is free and takes two minutes.
Once you are in, Bing will ask if you want to import your Google Business Profile. Say yes. It pulls your business name, address, phone number, hours and category across automatically. You check it over, fix anything that is wrong, and verify the listing.
Verification is by phone, email, or postcard. Phone is the fastest.
That is it. Your business is now on Bing, and anything that searches Bing, including ChatGPT, can find you.
What this will and will not do
It will not guarantee that ChatGPT names you when someone asks. Nobody can promise that, and if someone tries to sell you that as a service, walk away. What a Bing listing does is make you eligible. Without one, you are not.
It also puts you in front of the people who use Bing directly. That is a smaller crowd than Google, but it is a real one. Edge browser on Windows defaults to Bing. Plenty of people use it without thinking about it, including a lot of the older customers who tend to ring rather than fill in a form.
Why most businesses have not done this
Because nobody told them to. Google Business Profile gets talked about constantly. Bing Places does not. So most local businesses are invisible on Bing through no fault of their own. They just never heard about it.
That is the opportunity. The window where your competitors also have not done it will not stay open forever.
Half an hour, no cost, done once. Do it this week.
