When people talk about AI search for local businesses, the conversation almost always centers on ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. Both deserve attention. But there is a third AI search channel that most contractors and service businesses have not thought about at all: Microsoft Copilot.
Copilot is built into every Windows 11 device, integrated into Microsoft Edge, available as a mobile app, and embedded in Bing search results. That is an installed base of over a billion devices. And unlike ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews, Copilot has a very specific, well-documented relationship with local business data: it pulls almost all of its local business recommendations directly from Bing Places.
If your Bing Places listing is unclaimed, incomplete, or inaccurate, you are invisible to Copilot's local recommendations. Fixing that takes less than thirty minutes and costs nothing.
What Copilot actually does with local business queries
When someone uses Copilot to ask "who are the best HVAC companies near me" or "find a plumber in Wilmington NC," Copilot draws on a combination of Bing search index data, Bing Places business listings, and web content it has crawled. The local business recommendations it surfaces are heavily weighted toward Bing Places listings because that is Bing's structured local business database.
This is different from ChatGPT, which has a more complex data sourcing approach and does not have a direct equivalent of Bing Places as a primary data source. For Copilot specifically, the Bing Places listing is the clearest, most direct lever you have.
Copilot's consumer market share for local business queries is modest — most estimates put AI tool usage for local business recommendations at around 45 percent of consumers, with Copilot accounting for a fraction of that. But the fraction is growing, it costs nothing to optimize for, and the optimization you do for Bing Places also benefits your organic Bing search rankings — which themselves feed ChatGPT's browsing feature.
Claiming your Bing Places listing
Go to Bing Places for Business and search for your business. If it appears (Bing often auto-generates listings from data it has crawled), claim it. If it does not appear, create one.
The claiming process requires verifying that you are the business owner through email verification or a phone call with a PIN. It typically takes less than fifteen minutes. Once claimed, you can update every field.
Business name. Use your real, legal business name. Do not add keywords to your business name ("Best HVAC Service Wilmington NC") — this violates Bing's guidelines and can get your listing removed.
Address. If you have a physical location, enter it precisely. If you are a service area business (which most contractors are), set your service area rather than a specific address, or use your office address and define a service radius.
Phone number. Use your primary contact number. Consistency with Google and your website matters — the same phone number across all platforms is a trust and accuracy signal.
Categories. Select the primary category that best describes your business and add secondary categories where applicable. Bing's category options are similar to but not identical to Google's — pick the closest available match.
Description. Write a clear, complete description of your services, your service area, and what makes your business different. Avoid keyword stuffing. Write for a human reader and the keywords will be naturally present.
Services. List specific services explicitly. "HVAC installation, HVAC repair, furnace replacement, air conditioning installation, heat pump service, duct cleaning" is more useful to Copilot's matching algorithm than just "HVAC."
Hours. Enter accurate hours. Include emergency availability if applicable.
Photos. Add at least ten photos: your vehicle or equipment, completed work, your team, and your physical location if you have one. Bing Places photos appear in Bing Maps results and can appear in Copilot responses that include visual content.
Optimizing your website for Bing indexing
Copilot does not only use Bing Places data. It also uses Bing's web index. A website that is properly indexed by Bing, loads quickly, and clearly describes your services and service area will appear in Bing search results and can contribute to Copilot responses.
Bing uses a different crawler than Google (Bingbot versus Googlebot), but the indexing signals are similar: a crawlable site, descriptive page titles and meta descriptions, clear service descriptions, and local signals like your city and service area mentioned naturally on relevant pages.
If your website has a robots.txt file that blocks certain crawlers, verify that Bingbot is not accidentally excluded. A common technical oversight is blocking AI-related crawlers by name while intending to block only specific scrapers — Bingbot itself should be allowed to crawl your public pages.
You can check how Bing indexes your website through Bing Webmaster Tools, which is the Bing equivalent of Google Search Console. It is free, shows which of your pages are indexed, and flags technical issues that might prevent Bing from crawling your site correctly.
The connection between Bing Places and ChatGPT
Here is the piece most local businesses do not know: ChatGPT's browsing feature uses Bing as its primary search data source. When ChatGPT searches the web to answer a query, it is largely searching through Bing's index. Your Bing Places listing and your Bing SEO therefore have a downstream effect on what ChatGPT can find and recommend when users ask it for local business recommendations.
This means that Bing Places optimization is not just about Bing and Copilot. It is also a contributing factor in your ChatGPT visibility. The optimization overlap is significant: improve your Bing presence and you improve across multiple AI search channels simultaneously.
We cover the ChatGPT and AI search picture more broadly in our guide to getting recommended by AI search tools.
How Copilot uses structured data from your website
Structured data — machine-readable markup that describes your business type, location, services, and hours — helps both Google and Bing understand what your website is about. For Copilot specifically, LocalBusiness schema markup on your website gives Bing's AI systems clearly formatted information to draw on when constructing local business recommendations.
Adding schema markup requires some technical work on your website, but most modern website platforms support it through plugins or built-in schema settings. If your website is built on a platform that makes schema easy to add, it is worth doing — the effort is moderate and the benefit extends across multiple channels.
Setting realistic expectations
Copilot is not your most urgent local SEO priority if your Google Business Profile is unclaimed, your reviews are weak, or your website is not mobile-friendly. Fix those first — they drive more calls. But once the fundamentals are in place, Bing Places takes thirty minutes to claim and complete, and the payoff compounds over time as Copilot adoption grows.
The businesses that establish presence on emerging AI channels early tend to hold those positions as usage grows. The cost of early optimization is low; the cost of trying to break in after competitors have established themselves is higher.
For a full view of the AI search landscape and how local businesses can position themselves across all of it, read our AI search vs. traditional SEO guide.
What to do this week
Here is a straightforward action list:
Claim your Bing Places listing. Go to bingplaces.com, find your business, and claim it. Complete every field — categories, services, hours, photos, description. Set your service area accurately.
Set up Bing Webmaster Tools. Verify your website and check that Bing is indexing your key pages correctly. This takes less than an hour and gives you an ongoing window into your Bing search performance.
Check your website's robots.txt file. Make sure Bingbot is not accidentally blocked. Your webmaster or web developer can confirm this quickly.
Confirm your NAP consistency. Your business name, address, and phone number should be identical on Google, Bing, Yelp, your website, and everywhere else it appears. Inconsistencies reduce the location authority signals that both Bing and Google use.
Ready to get found across every search channel?
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Book a call and we will walk through your current visibility across search channels and show you where the gaps are. See pricing tiers.