Will ChatGPT Recommend Your Pub? How AI Search Picks Venues

Try this. Open ChatGPT and type: "What's a good dog-friendly pub with a beer garden in [your town]?"

Are you in the answer?

If you are, brilliant. If you aren't, you're not alone, and it's fixable. More and more people are skipping the list of blue links and asking an AI tool for a straight answer. ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude and Siri are all being asked where to drink, eat and watch the match. Those tools pick a handful of places and leave everyone else out.

Here's what we know about how they choose, and what you can do about it.

First, the honest bit

No AI company publishes exactly how it decides which pubs to recommend. Anyone who tells you they've "cracked the ChatGPT algorithm" is selling something. What we can see is a clear pattern in the places that get recommended, and it lines up with common sense.

How AI tools find out about you

AI assistants don't visit your pub. They build a picture of you from what's written about you online. Broadly, that comes from:

1. Search engine data. Tools like ChatGPT search the web (largely through Bing and other providers) when they need current, local information. Google's AI Overviews and Gemini lean on Google's own index and Business Profile data.
2. Map and business listings. Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, and the hours, categories and attributes inside them.
3. Reviews, and not just on Google. Research by local search specialists Whitespark found that when ChatGPT explained its local picks, it pointed to reviews. Facebook, Yelp and TripAdvisor showed up a lot. For pubs and breweries in the UK, add Untappd and TripAdvisor to that list.
4. Your website. What you say about yourself, how clearly you say it, and whether the details match everywhere else.
5. Everyone else talking about you. Local news, "best pubs in…" lists, CAMRA guides, blogs, Reddit threads, event listings.

The AI then tries to match all that to the question. "Dog-friendly pub with a beer garden near the station" needs to find a place that clearly is dog-friendly, clearly has a beer garden, and is clearly near the station. If that information isn't written down somewhere it can read, you're invisible to the question.

What gets a pub recommended

Ask these tools enough questions and a pattern shows up. The places that get picked tend to have:

1. Consistent, complete listings

Same name, address, phone and hours across Google, Bing, Apple, Facebook, TripAdvisor and your website. When the sources disagree, AI tools get less confident and tend to recommend someone else.

2. Lots of reviews, in lots of places

Volume, freshness and spread matter. A pub with 400 Google reviews and nothing anywhere else looks less established than one with good reviews across Google, TripAdvisor, Facebook and Untappd.

3. Specifics written in plain English

AI answers questions, so it needs answers to find. Does your website actually say:

• "Dogs welcome inside and in the garden"?
• "Step-free access and an accessible toilet"?
• "Sunday roasts served 12–5pm, booking recommended"?
• "Two minutes' walk from the train station"?
• "We show every Six Nations match"?

If it's only in a photo, a PDF or someone's memory, it probably doesn't count.

4. Structured data

Structured data (or schema) is code on your website that labels your information for machines: this is a pub (BarOrPub), this is a brewery (Brewery), these are the opening hours, this is the menu, this is the address. It doesn't guarantee anything, but it removes guesswork.

5. A reputation beyond your own website

When the local paper, a beer blogger, a tourism site and a "best beer gardens" roundup all mention you, AI tools see an established, trusted place. The same signals that help with traditional SEO help here, just more so.

What doesn't work

• Stuffing your site with keywords. AI tools are good at spotting waffle.
• Fake reviews. Against the rules on every platform, and a huge risk to your listings.
• Hoping your Instagram covers it. Instagram is great for regulars. It's not where AI tools go to work out your opening hours.
• Paying for placement. There's currently no way to buy your way into an organic ChatGPT recommendation.

This has a name: GEO

All of this is called GEO, or generative engine optimisation. It's SEO's younger sibling. Where SEO aims to get you ranked in a list of links, GEO aims to get you mentioned in an AI-written answer. The foundations overlap a lot. GEO puts more weight on consistency, reviews spread across platforms, plain-English facts and your reputation beyond your own site.

A five-minute test you can do today

1. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google (look for the AI Overview at the top) a few questions a customer might ask: "best pub for Sunday lunch in [town]", "dog-friendly taproom near [area]", "where to watch the rugby in [town]".
2. Note who gets mentioned.
3. Ask the AI why it picked them. Take the answer with a pinch of salt, as these tools aren't always reliable about their own reasoning. It'll still often point to reviews, listings or articles.
4. Compare their online presence with yours. That's your to-do list.

Want us to check for you?

At BEVV, GEO for hospitality is one of our three core services. We run AI visibility audits for pubs, taprooms and breweries, showing you where you appear, where you don't, and exactly what to fix. Start with a free chat. The first pint's on us.