Start by asking the question yourself
Start by finding out what ChatGPT already says about your market. Open a new browser window, sign out of everything, and type in the question a customer would type. Not the name of your business. The question.
- Best [your service] in Dubai
- Who should I call for [your service] in Abu Dhabi
- How much does [your service] cost in the UAE in 2026
- [Your service] near [your neighbourhood]
- Is [your service] safe in the UAE, and who does it well
Sign out first and use a private window. Signed in, the answer is shaped by your own history and your business will look better placed than it is. Screenshot every answer with the date visible. That set of screenshots is your baseline, and it is the only number worth comparing against next month.
Five questions, not one
Being named once is luck. We measure 5 agreed questions per market because each one pulls its answer from a different place: a price question from pages that publish prices, a near me question from map profiles, a reviews question from review platforms. See the whole library in the 60 questions UAE buyers ask AI.
What ChatGPT actually reads
Two things. First, what it learned when it was trained, which you cannot edit. Second, what it finds on the web while it is answering, which you can. The second one is where the work is, and when ChatGPT searches the web it uses Bing.
- Your own pages, if they say plainly what you do and where you do it
- Your Google Business Profile and your Bing Places listing
- Reviews, mostly Google reviews, and what they say in words
- The listings and directories that matter in your trade, such as Property Finder and Bayut for property, or Doctify for clinics
- News and long-lived articles on sites like Gulf News, Khaleej Times and The National
None of that is a ranking. It is a reading test. If a machine cannot tell from your site what you sell, which emirate you are in, what it costs and how to contact you, it cannot put you in an answer, however well you rank on Google. Semrush found that when ChatGPT search cites a page, that page ranks 21st or worse on Google almost 90% of the time (Semrush, July 2025). Position one is not the same job.
Fix your pages first
One page per service, per city. A single services page that lists fourteen things gives a machine nothing to match a question to. A page called what you do, in the city you do it in, gives it everything.
- Say the service and the city in the first sentence, in the words buyers use, not in your brand words
- Publish a price or a real range in AED. Pages that hide the price behind a form get left out of price answers
- Answer the five questions you get asked on every enquiry call, in plain sentences a 12 year old could follow
- Put your full address with the emirate, your +971 number and your opening hours on every page, not only on contact
- Show your licence or permit number where your regulator expects it, such as a DHA, DoH or MOHAP number for a clinic or a Trakheesi permit on a Dubai property listing
Write it in English and in Arabic if you can. The Consumer Protection Law requires consumer facing advertising data to be in Arabic, with other languages allowed in addition (UAE Federal Law No. 15 of 2020), and Google's AI Mode has answered in Arabic since October 2025 (Google, October 2025). In our checks most UAE business websites still have no Arabic version at all.
Then fix the listings
Your name, address and phone number have to be identical everywhere a machine can find them. One office, one spelling, one number. If your Google profile says Suite 402 and your site says Office 402 and your Bayut profile says something else again, you have handed a machine a reason to doubt all three.
- Claim and complete the Google Business Profile: category, hours, services, photos, and a description that names the service and the city
- Claim Bing Places, because that is what ChatGPT search reads. See why ChatGPT search runs on Bing
- Match the Arabic spelling of your business name across every listing, not just the English one
- Use one +971 number in international format everywhere, not a mix of 04, 800 and mobile numbers
- Fix the trade listings that carry weight in your industry, then stop. Ten good listings beat a hundred thin ones
Give it reasons to name you
Reviews are the part most owners already have and waste. A five star review that says nothing tells a machine nothing. A review that names the service, the branch and the outcome is a sentence an answer can be built from. Ask for that, in those words, at the moment the customer is happiest.
Reply to every review, good and bad, in the language it was written in. Your reply is text a machine can read, it is usually the only place your service words and your location appear together on a review platform, and it is free. More on this in the reviews AI reads.
One thing you must not do
Do not buy reviews and do not write your own. Under the Consumer Protection Law an advertisement that carries false or misleading information is an offence, and the UAE Media Council has taken action over unsubstantiated advertising claims. It is also the fastest way to lose a Google profile you spent years building.
Measure it every month
Run the same 5 questions, in the same three tools, from a fresh logged-out session, on the same day each month. Save the screenshots with dates. Count how many answers name you, out of thirty. That single number is the only honest measure of AI visibility, and it is the one our guarantee is written against.
Expect movement. Answers change week to week, which is why a one off check proves nothing and a monthly series proves everything. If you would rather not run it yourself, leave us your number and we run the first month for you. You keep the screenshots either way.