How to show up when your customer asks ChatGPT 'who's the best electrician near me?'

Picture a fella in Naas whose immersion just packed in. Two years ago he'd have Googled 'electrician Naas' and rung the top result. This year, there's a fair chance he opens ChatGPT instead and types 'who's a good electrician near Naas?' — and whoever it names is who gets the call. No search results page, no ten blue links to compare. Just one answer, and you're either in it or you're not.

When I show tradesmen the result of that exact question for their own trade and county, the most common answer the AI gives is nobody by name. It hedges. 'I can't recommend a specific electrician, but here's how to find one.' That's not bad luck — it's an opening. Somebody is going to fill that gap. The only question is whether it's you or the lad down the road.

How the answer actually gets decided

The assistants aren't pulling names out of the air. They're leaning on the same signals that have always mattered for local trust, just read by a machine instead of a person:

• Reviews — how many, how recent, how good. This is the heavyweight. A business with thirty recent, genuine reviews is far easier for an AI to recommend with confidence than one with three from 2022.
• Consistency — your name, address and phone matching everywhere the AI looks: Google, directories, your own site. Mismatches make it nervous, and a nervous AI stays vague.
• Structured data and an llms.txt — the machine-readable basics that tell the assistant plainly what you do and where, so it doesn't have to guess.
• A real web presence — a site that actually says what you do, where, and proves it, rather than a one-page brochure that could be any trade in any county.

The honest part about timing

I won't tell you this happens overnight, because it doesn't, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Reviews build over months. Citations settle in. The AI's picture of you sharpens gradually as the signals stack up. What I can tell you is that it compounds — every review, every consistent listing, every month of being the active one nudges the odds in your favour, and that lead is very hard for a latecomer to close.

Where to start

Start by finding out where you stand. Then do the unglamorous basics relentlessly: ask every happy customer for a review, get your Google profile right and keep it active, make sure your details match everywhere, and give the machines a clean llms.txt to read. That's most of the battle, and most of your competitors aren't doing it.