Google now shows AI Overviews above its results and has an AI Mode, and ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity answer "where can I rent skis in Zakopane" with a handful of shop names and a line on why. A customer who searches this way sees three to five names instead of ten links, and a rental shop that isn't among them isn't seen at all.
We wanted to know what that looks like in practice. On 14 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity the same 15 questions a rental customer asks: five in Polish (Zakopane, Białka Tatrzańska, Szczyrk, Zieleniec, Szklarska Poręba), two in English (Zakopane and Karpacz in Poland), four in German (Ischgl, Saalbach, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Val Gardena) and four in Italian (Livigno, Cervinia, Riva del Garda, Madonna di Campiglio). We used a private window, stayed logged out and asked no follow-up questions. That gave 45 answers.
This article covers what the assistants answered, where they get the rental shops they recommend, what you control and what is not worth paying for. Most of it helps in ordinary Google search too, so none of the work is wasted even if your customers still click on links.
What ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity answer about rental shops
How many rental shops each assistant named:
Question | ChatGPT | Google | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|
Skis, Zakopane (PL) | 5 | 4 | 6 |
Cheapest skis, Białka (PL) | 3 | 6 | 1 |
Ski prices, Szczyrk (PL) | 4 | 6 | 5 |
Snowboard, Zieleniec (PL) | 3 | 5 | 7 |
E-bike, Szklarska Poręba (PL) | 4 | 6 | 7 |
Skis, Zakopane (EN) | 3 | 7 | 8 |
E-bike, Karpacz (EN) | 6 | 5 | 3 |
Skis, Ischgl (DE) | 4 | 4 | 7 |
Cheap skis, Saalbach (DE) | 3 | 3 | 5 |
E-bike, Garmisch (DE) | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Skis, Val Gardena (DE) | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Skis, Livigno (IT) | 5 | 5 | 8 |
Ski prices, Cervinia (IT) | 2 | 5 | 5 |
E-bike, Riva del Garda (IT) | 4 | 4 | 7 |
Snowboard, Campiglio (IT) | 1 | 5 | 6 |
Five things stand out.
Each assistant recommends different shops. Asked for the cheapest ski rental in Białka Tatrzańska, ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity each named different shops as the cheapest, and not one name appeared in two of the answers. In 4 of the 15 questions, no shop appeared in all three answers. Google was the odd one out: in Livigno and Riva del Garda it named none of the shops that ChatGPT and Perplexity named.
A current price list is a reason to recommend a shop. In Zieleniec, ChatGPT recommended a ski school and rental that, as it put it in Polish, "already publishes its price list for the 2026/2027 season". In Madonna di Campiglio its first pick was a rental that specializes in snowboards and "publishes a detailed price list" (in Italian, "pubblica un listino dettagliato"). In Cervinia it built its whole price table from one shop's published price list, and that shop was the only one all three assistants named there. For a shop in Białka whose price list gave no season, it added that the reader should confirm the price before going. For one shop in Riva del Garda it gave no prices at all, only the advice to contact the shop for availability and current rates.
In the Alps, assistants recommend shops you can book online. In 7 of the 8 questions in German and Italian, at least one assistant recommended a shop partly because gear can be booked there online, often with a 10 to 20% online discount. "Bei beiden kannst du die Ausrüstung online reservieren" (you can book your gear online at both), ChatGPT wrote of two rentals in Ischgl. In the five questions in Polish this happened once. Asked in English about e-bikes in Karpacz, Perplexity chose three shops "with published prices and direct booking links".
Assistants quote your reviews, good and bad. In 10 of 15 answers, Perplexity listed each shop's rating and number of reviews, and it explained its picks with what customers praise, such as the advice on height, ability and slopes that reviewers of one Ischgl rental single out. In Madonna di Campiglio it told readers to check the board and bindings carefully at one shop because "some reviews report quality problems". ChatGPT and Perplexity showed the same ratings with the same review counts for the same shops, for example 4.8 from 1,389 reviews for GO!Ski in Zakopane.
Your details can differ between assistants. For the same e-bike rental in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Google gave a different address from ChatGPT and Perplexity. Whether that is a second location or an old address, the customer can't tell. You can.
Where ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity get information about rental shops
Every assistant that answers a question about a specific town searches the web first and then summarizes what it found. Who it recommends depends on which search engine it uses and which pages it finds there.
Assistant | Where it finds pages | Business data |
|---|---|---|
AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini | Google's index | Google Maps |
ChatGPT | Own crawler and Bing | Third-party providers |
Perplexity | Own crawler and partners | Incl. Tripadvisor, Yelp |
Google. AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same index as ordinary search. Google says they have no additional requirements and gives two pieces of advice: make important content available as text, and keep your Business Profile up to date. Gemini gives businesses' addresses, opening hours, websites and ratings from public Google Maps data.
ChatGPT. It searches with its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, and through search partners, of which OpenAI names Microsoft, the company behind Bing. It gets data about local businesses from third-party providers that OpenAI does not name. According to Axios, one of them has been Yelp since July 2026. Microsoft Copilot uses Bing's index.
Perplexity. It has its own crawler, PerplexityBot, and uses partners. It has agreements with Tripadvisor (2025) and Yelp (2024).
Studies show what comes out of this. Yext analyzed 6.8 million citations in Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity answers: 44% came from businesses' own websites, 42% from listings and directories and 8% from reviews and social media. BrightLocal checked ChatGPT, AI Overviews and AI Mode answers for more than 1,300 businesses in 2026: business websites made up 42% of citations and Google Business Profiles about 29%. ChatGPT and Google named the same businesses only about 20% of the time. Both studies cover businesses in the US, the UK and Australia.
Our test in Poland, Austria, Germany and Italy differed in one respect. ChatGPT, the only one of the three assistants whose sources we could record, did not cite Yelp once and cited Tripadvisor once. It most often cited the rental shops' own websites, followed by ski resorts' and tourist boards' lists of rental shops: Polana Szymoszkowa, Kotelnica, Zieleniec Sport Arena, Ischgl, Saalbach, Dolomiti Superski and Livigno, in at least 8 of the 15 answers. In Saalbach it attributed one shop's online prices to the tourist board.
The plan that follows is simple: your website, a Google listing and a Bing listing. Your website is cited by all of them, Google feeds AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini, and Bing feeds Copilot and is one of ChatGPT's sources.
Your website: prices, hours and gear written as text
Assistants quote sentences. A price that appears only in a photo of the board in your shop or in a graphic on Facebook is hard for them to quote, while they quote outdated opening hours as readily as current ones. Google lists content in text form among the good practices for its AI answers.
On your ski, snowboard or bike rental website, write as text:
- Your price list with the season in its heading, such as "Prices 2026/27": adult and child sets per day and for several days, snowboards, helmets, e-bikes per hour and per day. Take an old price list down or label which season it is for.
- What "a day" means. Until 9 p.m., until the lifts close or 24 hours: rental shops count it differently, and customers ask.
- What gear you have and in which sizes: children's skis from which length, boot sizes, types of bikes, frame sizes, child seats and trailers.
- Opening hours in season and out of it, with holidays and the date your season ends. In our test, ChatGPT warned that an e-bike rental in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was closing for the season on 4 October and told the reader to check before going.
- Deposit and documents: how much the deposit is and which document to show.
- How to book: phone, form or online booking.
- How to get there: address, parking, distance from the lift or trail.
The easiest way is to write these as answers to the questions customers ask on the phone: "How much is a child's set?", "Is a helmet included?", "What time do I bring the bike back?". Customers ask ChatGPT the same questions. Whether that page needs to be a full website with bookings is covered in does a ski rental shop need its own website.
Also check that your website does not block crawlers. Blocking GPTBot only stops OpenAI training its models on your site. Blocking OAI-SearchBot removes you from ChatGPT's search answers and blocking PerplexityBot from Perplexity's, while the only way out of Google's AI answers is blocking Google's ordinary crawler, which removes the site from Google Search altogether. Some hosting and website-protection settings block AI crawlers wholesale, so if an agency built your site, ask them. Since 2026 Google Search Console also has a setting that excludes a site from AI answers; by default a site is included.
Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Maps
Your Google Business Profile matters more for AI answers than for ordinary results. Fill in:
- the primary category for ski or bike rental and additional categories for your other gear,
- opening hours, with special hours for holidays and, out of season, a break or changed hours, so no assistant sends customers to a closed door,
- a link to the page with your prices or to the page where customers book,
- a description: which sports, what gear, children's sizes, e-bikes,
- photos of the shop and the gear.
Bing Places (bing.com/forbusiness) imports your Google listing, so setting it up takes a few minutes. Bing feeds Copilot and is one of ChatGPT's sources. If you add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, its AI Performance report (in public preview since February 2026) shows how often Copilot and Bing's AI answers cited your pages.
Apple Business (the successor to Apple Business Connect since April 2026) shows your place card in Apple Maps, Safari and iPhone search. Nothing suggests it feeds ChatGPT or Gemini, but customers with iPhones look for rental shops in Apple Maps too.
If your shop already has a Tripadvisor page, claim it and fill in the same details. Perplexity has an agreement with Tripadvisor.
Reviews and mentions on other sites
Assistants repeat what others say about you: reviews on Google and Tripadvisor, entries on your town's tourism site, the list of rentals on your ski resort's website, bike trail guides and directories. In our test, resorts' and tourist boards' lists of rental shops were ChatGPT's second most common source. If the resort or tourist board where you operate has such a list, check that you are on it and that your details are current. The same goes for every other page with your name, address and phone number.
Reviews: ask every customer. A QR code at the till or a link in the email after the gear comes back is enough. Reply to reviews, including bad ones, calmly and with facts: as the Campiglio example shows, assistants read reviews closely.
What you must not do:
- Pay or offer discounts for reviews, ask only happy customers, or have staff post reviews. Google's policies forbid it, and the penalty can be a pause on new reviews and a warning shown on your profile.
- Buy or commission fake reviews. Since 28 May 2022 the EU's Omnibus Directive has put posting or commissioning fake consumer reviews on the list of practices banned in all circumstances, in every EU country. For widespread infringements, the maximum fine must be at least 4% of annual turnover. Poland's consumer authority, UOKiK, has already fined companies that sold fake reviews.
What is not worth paying for
- An llms.txt file. Google wrote in June 2026 that these files neither help nor hurt visibility in Google Search, and none of the major assistants says it reads them. One won't hurt, but don't pay for it.
- "AI markup". Google says its AI answers need no special structured data. FAQ rich results disappeared from Google Search on 7 May 2026, so FAQ markup no longer earns them either.
- Rewriting your site "for AI". Google advises against splitting text into chunks or writing specifically for models. A page written for customers is enough.
- A guaranteed place in ChatGPT. The same question asked several times returns different lists of businesses: in BrightLocal's study, repeated answers overlapped by 20 to 33%. No one can guarantee first place on a list that changes with every question.
Check what AI says about your rental shop in 10 minutes
- Open a private window and stay logged out of Google and ChatGPT.
- Ask ChatGPT, Google (the AI Overview above the results, or AI Mode) and Perplexity: "where can I rent skis in [your town]" or "where can I rent a bike in [your town]".
- Ask about your shop by name: "[name] opening hours", "[name] prices".
- Ask each question two or three times. The answers change, so one answer tells you little.
- For every wrong fact, find the source the assistant cited and correct it there: hours in your Business Profile, prices on your website, the phone number in a directory.
- Repeat this before the season and during it. In Google Search Console, traffic from AI answers is counted in the Performance report, under the "Web" search type.
How Rentouri does it
Rentouri is one more place where an assistant can read about your shop as text. A free listing on rentouri.com shows your name, address, phone number, opening hours, type of gear, a link to your website and a map. We prepare the listing and send it to you to check. There is no subscription, contract or commission, and customers call you directly.
Rental shops that run their gear and bookings in Rentouri get a page on rentouri.com with models, sizes and prices for the customer's dates, and the customer can book and pay straight away. That is what the assistants named as a reason to recommend a shop in the Alps. Prices and availability come from the same stock you serve walk-in customers from, so the page never shows last year's price list.
We ran the same test on ourselves. Asked for the best ski rental software, ChatGPT named Rentouri first, as "Best for European rental shops". Perplexity, asked the same question, did not mention us at all. That is the variability described above, seen from the inside.
A listing does not guarantee that an assistant will cite it. No one can guarantee that, but every good source with your current details improves your chances of appearing in an answer.
Pre-season checklist
- Price list on your website as text, with the season in its heading
- On your website: gear and sizes, hours, deposit, documents, directions
- OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot and Bingbot not blocked
- Google Business Profile: category, hours in and out of season, link, description, photos
- Bing Places listing
- Apple Business place card
- The same details on Tripadvisor, your resort's or tourist board's list of rentals and directories
- A review request at the till or in the email after the return
- The test: three assistants, a private window, each question twice
A free listing on rentouri.com: email [email protected] with your shop's name and town. If you'd like online bookings too, we'll show you Rentouri in 30 minutes. Book a demo.