Most small business owners have claimed their Google Business Profile. It is the obvious one, and rightly so. But there is a second listing, free and quick, that almost nobody bothers with, and it has quietly become one of the most important things you can do to get found on AI. It is your Bing Places listing. Here is why it matters far more than it used to, and how to sort it in an afternoon.
Why Bing suddenly matters
For years Bing was the search engine people joked about ignoring. That joke is out of date. Bing is now the pipe behind a whole ecosystem of AI tools.
When someone asks ChatGPT “who does web design near me in Swindon” or “find a reliable developer in Wiltshire”, ChatGPT does not have a live map of every local business in its head. For real-time local questions it reaches out to the web, and the index it reaches into is Bing. The same is true of Microsoft Copilot, the Edge browser, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Alexa. One Bing listing puts you in front of users across all of them, and Bing is estimated to drive around 30% of AI-referred local traffic. That is a large slice of the AI audience most businesses are invisible to.
Put simply: your Google Business Profile helps you show up in Google’s AI answers. Your Bing Places listing helps you show up in ChatGPT’s. You want both, and only one of them is usually done.
How ChatGPT decides who to name
It helps to picture what actually happens when someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a business like yours. It does not pull a single source. It synthesises an answer from a few:
- Your website, if it can find and read it clearly.
- Your Bing Places data, which is a structured, verified fact about you sitting right in the index it searches.
- Review and directory platforms such as Yelp and TripAdvisor that Bing indexes prominently.
If those sources agree, ChatGPT is confident enough to name you. If they disagree, or if you are simply missing from the index it searches, it plays safe and names someone else. A verified Bing Places listing gives the machine a clean, trusted data point to anchor on, which is exactly what tips a recommendation your way.
The detail that quietly costs businesses recommendations
There is one factor worth pausing on, because it sinks more businesses than a missing listing does: consistency. AI recommends the businesses whose details agree everywhere it looks. One phone number on your website, a different one on Bing, an old address on a directory, and the machine has a reason to doubt all of them. When an AI is unsure, it does not guess, it skips you for a safer answer.
So the goal is not just to have a Bing listing, it is to make your name, address and phone number (your “NAP”) identical across your website, Bing Places, your Google Business Profile and every directory you appear on. Down to the punctuation. This is unglamorous housekeeping, and it is one of the highest-return jobs in AI visibility.
How to claim and complete your Bing Places listing
The whole thing is free and mostly a one-off. Set aside an afternoon.
- Go to Bing Places for Business and sign in with a Microsoft account. If you already have a Google Business Profile, Bing lets you import its details directly, which does most of the work in one step.
- Claim or add your business. Search for it first in case a listing already exists unclaimed.
- Complete every field. Business name, exact address, phone, website, hours, categories, services and a proper description. Do not leave gaps, completeness is a trust signal.
- Match your details exactly to your website and Google Business Profile. Same name, same address format, same phone.
- Add photos and a clear description of what you do and where you serve.
- Verify the listing (usually by post, phone or email) so it counts as confirmed rather than unverified.
- Keep it current. Update hours, services and details whenever they change, so the data never drifts out of agreement with everywhere else.
While you are at it, make sure you are present and consistent on the big directories Bing indexes, and keep gathering genuine reviews, since reputation is a major part of why AI recommends some local businesses and ignores others and shapes what AI says about you.
Do not forget the Google side
Claiming Bing is the forgotten half, not the whole job. Google’s AI answers still run on your Google Business Profile, so the two work as a pair. If you have not optimised the Google side for AI yet, read how to optimise your Google Business Profile for AI search and do both. Together they cover the two indexes nearly every AI assistant draws from.
The bottom line
ChatGPT and its cousins answer local questions using Bing, and most businesses have never claimed their Bing Places listing, which means they are invisible in that index. It is free, it takes an afternoon, and paired with consistent details across the web it gives the AI a trusted, verified fact to name you from. Claim it, complete it, match your details everywhere, and you have closed one of the easiest and most overlooked gaps in AI visibility.
Want to know whether ChatGPT can actually see and recommend your business today? Start by checking whether your business appears in AI search, then read how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT for the full method. Or let us do the audit for you: see our AI services, or book a free AI visibility chat and we will check every listing and tell you exactly where you are being skipped.