A guest on the Marina walkway at nine in the evening can ask an assistant where to eat and get a shortlist back. In the answers we logged it ran to between four and seven places, each with a reason attached.
The short version: most of those answers stated what a venue is, where exactly it is, whether it is open tonight and what is on the plate. Those are the facts the assistants had to work with.
What the nine answers contained
Across the nine answers the same short list of facts kept doing the work, and none of it was clever. We asked three questions, twice to ChatGPT and once to Google's AI Mode: where to eat in Dubai Marina tonight, the best places for a business lunch near DIFC and whether a table could be booked, and which Italian restaurants near Downtown Dubai are open now and what they serve. One account, one evening in September 2026. A tenth attempt thought for over six minutes and returned nothing, counted here as a failure rather than quietly replaced. Far too small to be a study, and one answer arrived with no sources at all. We logged what the assistants said and checked none of it, and we did not test whether publishing any of it better changes who gets named.
Hours carried the answers about tonight. In the ChatGPT runs on the two "open tonight" questions, closing times were mostly attributed rather than asserted: "the listing shows Sunday hours until 1:00 AM", "its own site lists dining until midnight", "Official hours list weekends until 1 AM". In the first Marina run they came per venue with one hedge covering the lot. Google's AI Mode stated them flat: "Open on Sundays until 5:00 AM". One run warned the guest that "Closing times can change on the night", and another ruled two venues out, one because it shuts one day a week, one because a published page gave a reopening date. The three business-lunch answers carried no opening hours at all.
Dishes, not cuisines, wherever the menu came up. In the two "what do they serve" runs and in two of the three AI Mode answers the plates were named: white-truffle risotto, Frutti di Mare pizza, gnocchi alla Sorrentina, lamb khinkali, handmade focaccia. In the Marina runs the menu was only a cuisine label, and in the DIFC runs it was the set lunch, with days, time window, courses and price. The dish lines carried citations most often to venue websites, but also to a delivery platform, a QR menu host, a mall's site and a social profile.
On booking, the assistants split four ways. In the two ChatGPT business-lunch runs the assistant rendered live bookable slots for three dates, party size already filled in. On the Marina question it declined for the whole shortlist: "I currently don't support checking reservation inventory for the five restaurants above, so for tonight I'd book directly or call before heading over." The Marina AI Mode answer quoted an availability line, "Availability: Tables are open for booking online tonight for two people at 9:30 PM and 9:45 PM", and the DIFC one gave a phone number, in one case a WhatsApp number, with an offer to check availability given a date and a party size.
The card facts were on show. Rating, category, price band and open status sat alongside the text, compressed onto one card line. AI Mode also wrote its own groupings, among them one for alcohol-free waterfront lounges and one for late-night casual eating, and built two comparison tables: one of cuisine, key feature and price level, the other of location, cuisine style and what each place is best for.
What does an assistant need to know about your restaurant?
Strip the nine answers down and the same four things hold most of them up: what a venue is, where exactly it is, when it is open tonight, and what is on the plate. Booking came up in most answers but not all, so it has a group of its own below.
The checklist
Six groups: hours, the Business Profile, the menu, the booking route, the facts that have to match everywhere, and the markup. The first five an owner can work through in an afternoon. The last one is not yours to do. Not every Google field named below appears on every profile, so check your own dashboard before assuming one exists.
Which hours do you have to set?
In five of the six answers about tonight, every venue came with a closing time. Three Google fields hold yours: regular hours for a normal week, special hours for the days that differ, and More hours for the services on their own clock.
- Regular hours are current, which Google says gives customers "up to date and accurate hours of operation for a normal week" (Google Business Profile Help).
- Ramadan goes in before the month starts. Daytime service, iftar and suhoor run on a different clock from your normal week, and the dates move every year, so last year's settings are no use. If the whole month differs, change the regular hours and set a reminder to change them back.
- Special hours are set for Eid, National Day, New Year and any night you close early. Google's field covers "days when you have unusual hours, such as holidays or special events" (Google Business Profile Help).
- The "More hours" fields are filled for the services that run on their own clock, which Google lists as "delivery, takeout, drive through and pickup" (Google Business Profile Help).
- The same hours everywhere, on your site, your delivery listings and the mall or hotel page, since any of them can be the one cited.
What do you fix on your Google Business Profile?
The profile is where an assistant reads your category, your building, your attributes and your phone number.
- The name on the profile is your venue's name, with no added keywords.
- The category matches what you actually serve, with secondary categories for the rest.
- The address places you inside the building, not only on the street: which mall, which floor, which hotel. In the answers, a location was usually a building, a floor, a mall or a landmark.
- Write the description in plain sentences, saying what a guest actually gets. One answer's source panel quoted a listing description word for word.
- Attributes are ticked honestly, and only where they match what your licence permits: outdoor seating, alcohol-free, shisha, family-friendly, wheelchair access, valet.
- Dietary and halal information is written where a machine can read it, in the menu text rather than in a waiter's head: which dishes are vegetarian, which are vegan, and whatever you state about halal. Publish only what holds on every service, and take the wording for anything about halal or allergens from whoever certifies you.
- The phone number is one a guest reaches at 9pm, plus the WhatsApp number if you book that way.
- Photos show the room, the terrace and the food: Google asks for "your interior, exterior, and the overall dining experience" (Google Business Profile Help).
How do you publish a menu an assistant can quote?
Where the answers got into menu detail they named dishes, and every dish line carried a citation to a page.
- The menu is text on a page, not only a PDF or a picture, with the dish names written out and a line on the ones you are known for.
- Prices on the page are what you charge today. Publish only prices you will honour.
- Set menus have their own block: name, days, time window, price, number of courses. In the two ChatGPT business-lunch runs, that block was what the answer quoted.
- Brunch has its own block too, covering what your licence permits you to publish: the day, the sittings, each package, its price and what it includes, the deposit and the cancellation rule. A brunch that exists only as a weekend graphic gives an assistant no text to read.
- The menu editor on your profile is filled in: Google's version is "a detailed menu with sections, dishes, descriptions, and prices" (Google Business Profile Help).
- If your menu lives behind a QR service, its page is public and readable without an app. A QR menu host was a cited source in our check.
That is the part Lunasol, the agency that owns this publication, files under Content: "Direct answers, quotable lines, FAQ blocks and schema on every page" (Lunasol).
How does a guest get a table?
The assistants showed a bookable slot, quoted an availability line, gave a number, or told the guest to call.
- If you take reservations through a platform, open your listing as a guest would and check that slots appear for the next seven days, at the times you actually seat people. Live slots appeared for some venues and not others. If yours shows none, ask your platform why.
- If you do not take online bookings, say so and give the number. In one AI Mode answer the phone number, and in one case a WhatsApp number, was the booking route quoted for every venue.
- If you take orders on the profile, the link has to survive a tap on a phone. Google offers this as "Accept online food orders through your Business Profile" (Google Business Profile Help). Not every profile has it.
- Large-group and private-dining rules are on the site, not only in your inbox: the largest table you seat, the group size that triggers a set menu, and who to contact.
- Your walk-in, minimum-spend and age policies are written down, in whatever form you are permitted to apply them. One answer stated a venue's minimum age and that it requires reservations.
Where else do your facts have to match?
An assistant cites whichever source it found. In our runs that was usually the venue's own site, but not always, and the pages you do not control still matter.
- Name, address, phone, hours and menu agree across your site, your profile, delivery and reservation platforms, the mall or hotel page and your social bios.
- Your delivery listings name the same dishes as your own menu. Prices may legitimately differ between channels; the dish names and descriptions should not. A delivery listing was the cited source for a venue's dishes twice, both in one answer.
- Old branches, closed concepts and previous names are closed or merged, not left live.
- The mall or hotel listing is correct. You usually cannot edit it yourself, so this one is an email. Send tenant relations the block you want live: name, floor and unit, cuisine, hours, phone and menu link, as text they can paste. A mall's site and a hotel group's site were both cited in our check.
- One person owns this list by name and holds the logins to match. In a small group, make it one person across all branches.
Keeping the same facts in every source is what Lunasol calls Signals: "Entities, brand mentions, consistent facts and structured data across the sources models actually read" (Lunasol).
What do you hand to your web person?
Everything above you can do yourself. This last part is somebody else's ten minutes, so send it as a request instead of letting it sit: your opening hours, menu URL, price range, address and coordinates, marked up as structured data on your restaurant page.
- Mark those five up on the page. Google lists opening hours, the menu URL and the coordinates among its recommended properties for a local business, and treats the address as required. For food establishments menu is "the fully-qualified URL of the menu", and the coordinates require "at least 5 decimal places" (Google Search Central).
- A reservations property exists in schema.org but is not documented on that Google page, so treat it as extra rather than as something Google asks for.
- Then check it yourself. Google's own instruction is to "Validate your code using the Rich Results Test and fix any critical errors" (Google Search Central). Read what the tool reports, not what you were told. It will not show every property, so a gap in the report is not always a gap in the markup.
What would stop an assistant quoting your restaurant?
Four things follow from what we saw, though we tested none of them directly: a menu with no text to read, hours that disagree, a status you forgot to update, and a booking link that cannot be followed.
- A menu that is an image has no text on the page to quote. In our runs the dish lines always carried a citation to a page.
- Hours that disagree across your site, your profile and a delivery platform give an assistant more than one figure. Which one wins, we do not know.
- A holiday you forgot to set leaves the wrong status published, and published closure data is exactly what ruled two venues out of one answer.
- A booking link behind a login cannot be followed from an answer. That one we could not check at all.
Test it yourself
Run three questions close to the ones we used, with your own district and cuisine in the brackets:
- "Where should I eat in [your district] tonight?"
- "Best places for [the occasion you serve] near [your district], and can I book a table?"
- "Which [your cuisine] restaurants near [your district] are open now and what do they serve?"
Then read the answers as an auditor. Are you in them? If you are, is the cuisine right, the location right, the closing time right, the price band right? If not, whose facts filled the gap, and which of those do you publish worse than they do?
Do it when your own year moves: after a menu change, before Ramadan and again before Eid, when summer hours start and end, and after any renovation or move.
This article is general information about listings and website content. It is not legal, licensing, food safety, advertising or tax advice. AI products and Google's features change without notice and differ by country, so what we saw that evening may not be what you see.
Product names are used here for identification only: ChatGPT is a product of OpenAI, Google Search, AI Mode and Google Business Profile are products of Google, and WhatsApp is a product of Meta. AI Visibility is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
Checklist prepared by Lunasol. If you would like a second pair of eyes on your own listings, Lunasol offers a free AI visibility check of your public listings, by WhatsApp or email.
AI Visibility is owned by Lunasol.
