Ivy At Yours

Blog · 11 October 2026

No website, just Instagram? How AI assistants can still find your business

Plenty of good local businesses don't have a website. The bakery takes orders by DM, the nail tech posts her work on Instagram, the mobile mechanic gets every job from a Facebook page. For years that was fine, because customers found them by scrolling.

Now some people ask an AI assistant instead: "find me a dog groomer near me who's open Saturday." This post explains, in plain terms, how those assistants find local businesses today and what you can do, for free, if your business is only on social media.

Short version: AI assistants mostly find businesses through search engines and map listings, not by browsing Instagram. So the job is to make sure your social profile and a few free listings are visible to search engines, and that they all say the same thing.

How AI assistants find local businesses

When you ask ChatGPT about something local, it searches the web. OpenAI's help page says ChatGPT "can also use location information to find local results", and that it "sometimes partners with other search providers": it rewrites your question into searches and sends them to those providers.

In other words, the assistant usually isn't looking at Instagram itself. It is looking at what search engines and listing sites have already collected about your business.

A 2025 test by Search Engine Land looked at how ChatGPT answered local questions. The writer found that it ran a Bing search, gathered the top web results and then chose a few sources itself. The sources it cited included business websites, Yelp, Reddit and local city guides. Asked how it chose, ChatGPT told the writer it preferred sources that were "verifiable and linkable", and it named Facebook business pages among the sites it trusts. The same test found ChatGPT did not see the business listings on Bing's own maps. That test is over a year old and these tools change often, so treat it as a picture of the general approach, not a rulebook.

The takeaway for a business with no website: you need to show up in the places search engines read. That starts with your social profile, and free map listings help people who search on Google, Bing and Apple Maps directly.

Step 1: Make your Instagram business profile visible to search engines

This is the part most people miss. Instagram's help centre says it generally asks search engines like Google and Bing not to index photos and videos on Instagram. (To "index" means to collect a page so it can show up in search results.)

There is an exception. Search engines are allowed to index public posts and reels from accounts that meet all of these conditions:

This covers public posts and reels from 1 January 2020 onwards. So if you run your shop from a personal account, search engines are asked to skip it, which leaves the AI assistants that rely on them with nothing to find.

Instagram also explains how to turn this off in your privacy settings. If you want to be found, check that it's still on.

Write your Instagram bio for people and machines

Your bio matters even more once search engines can read it. Put these in plain words:

Posts help too. A caption that says "Full groom for a large dog in Riverside, booked for Saturday morning" tells a search engine more than a caption made only of emojis.

Step 2: Claim your free map listings

Map listings are where search engines show the basic facts about a business: your name, what you do, where you serve, your hours and how to contact you. They also give your Instagram somewhere official to be linked from.

Google Business Profile

Google says you can add or claim your business at no charge, at https://business.google.com/add. You add your business details and choose a way to verify them. The profile then has fields for your service area, hours, phone number, website and social media links. Google's help pages list a website as one field among many, not as a requirement.

That last field matters if Instagram is your website. Google lets you add one link from each of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X and YouTube. Google notes social links are only "available in select regions" for now, so you may not see the option yet.

If you work from home or travel to customers, you can hide your address and show a service area instead. Google's help page explains how to turn off "Show business address to customers".

Bing Places for Business

Microsoft says listing your business on Bing Places is free, at https://www.bing.com/forbusiness. It puts you on Bing Search and Bing Maps. The 2025 test above found ChatGPT didn't read these listings, so do this for people searching on Bing, not as a way into ChatGPT.

Apple Business

Apple's version (it used to be called Apple Business Connect) puts your business on Apple Maps, which iPhones use by default. It has a "Virtual Business" option for businesses without a shopfront, which Apple's page describes with examples like an online store or a taco truck. Start at https://business.apple.com.

Step 3: Say the same thing everywhere

An assistant that finds your Instagram, your Google profile and your Bing listing will compare them. If your hours, phone number or service area are different on each, it has no way to tell which one is right.

Pick one version of your details and copy it exactly:

Reviews may help too. In the 2025 test, ChatGPT told the writer it preferred sources that showed an average star rating. Ask happy customers to leave a review on your Google profile.

What this won't do

Sources