Gyms and fitness studios
No contract, a class before work, a day pass for Saturday. The answer comes back as a few names.
Someone new to the area asks an assistant for a gym near the office with a day pass, a spin class before seven and women-only hours on weekday mornings. The reply names a few gyms. Each condition in that question is one the gym itself sets.
The conditions in a gym question are mostly terms and times: the monthly price, the minimum term and how to cancel, a day pass or a trial class, the timetable, staffed hours, women-only hours, childcare, parking. An answer can repeat those terms about your gym only when something it reads states them, and the one place you state all of them in your own words is your site.
How your customers ask
What people type before a first visit
A gym question is a list of conditions
Each question above sets conditions before it names a place. Terms: how long the commitment runs, what a month costs, whether one visit can be bought alone. The workout: spin, yoga, pilates, strength, or a floor with enough racks. The hour: open at five, staffed after nine. The way in: parking, childcare, a step-free door.
With web search on, an AI assistant runs searches, reads some of the pages they return and writes a reply with a few names. It can pass a condition on accurately only if something it read states it, and terms need the most care: an answer that calls a gym month to month when it sells [n]-month memberships sends someone to the desk expecting a deal that does not exist.
What the site states, and the page each fact lives on
| The person asks | What the gym states | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| What does it cost? | Each membership and its price, such as [price] per month; any joining fee; what each includes; the date prices apply from | A prices page in HTML |
| Am I tied in? | The minimum term, the notice to cancel, how to cancel, freezes and their cost, in the contract's words | The prices page, beside each membership |
| Can I try it first? | Day pass, drop-in and trial terms: price, what is included, whether to book, minimum age | A first-visit page |
| Is there a class I want, when I can go? | The weekly timetable as text: day, start time, class, length, level, coach, room | A timetable page, as well as the booking app |
| What is on the floor, and who coaches? | Equipment by area, with counts where people wait; each coach, what they teach, and each credential as the certifying body writes it | Facilities and coaches pages |
| When is it open, and when is someone there? | Hours for each day; staffed hours where they differ from access hours; holiday hours posted ahead | The contact page, the footer and every listing |
| Are there women-only or quiet hours? | The days and times, the areas they cover, who may attend under your policy | A page of its own, linked from the timetable |
| Can I bring my kids, and can I park? | Childcare hours, ages and cost; parking, transit, a step-free entrance, accessible changing rooms | The first-visit and contact pages |
| Which gym is this? | One name, address and main number; with several sites, a page for each | Every page and every listing |
Two rules hold across the table. Terms go on the page as the gym's own ("our minimum term is [n] months"), never as the law, because contract and cancellation rules differ by jurisdiction and your counsel checks the wording. And classes are described without health claims: what a class is and who teaches it, not what it will do for anyone.
ExerciseGym: the schema.org type, and where it sits
Schema.org has a type for the trade, and we checked it there: ExerciseGym, described in full as "A gym." Its path runs Thing, Organization, LocalBusiness, SportsActivityLocation, ExerciseGym, with a second line through Place, so it takes every property a LocalBusiness has. There is no type for a yoga, pilates or cycling studio; ExerciseGym is the nearest fit, with the class types stated in the page text.
Write the structured data as JSON-LD. Google's local business page requires two properties, the name and the address, and recommends the phone, hours, coordinates, price range and URL. It keeps aggregateRating for sites that collect reviews about other businesses, and under its review snippet rules a business that controls the reviews about itself is ineligible for stars, so the gym's node carries no rating. Quote real reviews as text, with a first name, the date and the platform.
Memberships become Offers with a price and a currency; the template, with classes, is in the timetable and prices article.
Where 9,483 small business sites left the facts out
Our audit of 9,483 small business websites sent an AI crawler of our own, running no JavaScript, to each site's homepage, contact page and about page, across 40 trades and 90 metros in the US, Canada, Europe and the UAE, in late August and early September 2026. It publishes no figure for gyms alone; each number is the whole sample's.
61.5% of the sites had no question-and-answer content of any kind, and 50.7% had a heading phrased as a question with no answer beneath it that a machine could isolate. On a gym's site that gap would be a question about canceling with nothing under it.
43.1% were inconsistent about who and where they are across those three pages. 36.9% gave more than one phone number, and 34.1% had no postal address a machine could parse.
17.8% carried no schema.org markup at all, and most of the rest described the website, not the business. 3.0% rendered their content only in JavaScript and 2.1% kept real content, such as the price list or the service menu, in a PDF; a timetable kept only in a booking widget would be in the same position. 7.2% served our crawler a challenge page.
For 9,240 of the businesses we also asked Claude, with web retrieval on, one buyer question from their trade and metro: 14.9% were named. One question, one assistant, one day: a direction, not a gym rate.
Where to start on a gym's site
- Run the crawler access check and view the timetable page with scripts off; what stays behind the member login is in how ChatGPT reaches a gym's pages.
- Put the terms on one prices page as text: each membership, its price, the minimum term, how to cancel, the day pass, the trial.
- Publish the timetable and the equipment list in the HTML, dated, as the timetable and prices article lays out.
- Give each offering you want to be asked about, such as women-only hours or a boutique format, a page with its own policies.
- Make hours, staffed hours and holiday hours match on the site and every listing, under one name, address and number.
- Add ExerciseGym markup that repeats the pages and says nothing they do not.
- Take a first reading with a fixed panel of questions by class, terms, time and place, as AI visibility for gyms sets out and our methodology scores it; from Google ranking to AI answer covers what changed.
Go deeper
The work, one article at a time
Fundamentals
AI visibility for gyms: named for the right class, on the right terms
Content & Answer Pages
Class timetable, prices and equipment: a gym's pages, written as text
AI Engines
How ChatGPT reaches a gym's pages, and why the member app stays shut
Strategy & Planning
Women-only hours, training after injury, a boutique format: a page each
Fundamentals
From Google ranking to AI answer: what changes for a gym, and what stays
Questions an owner raises before changing the site
Our prices change with every promotion. Should they be on the site at all?
The standing prices should. Publish each membership at its regular price with the date it applies from, and a promotion beside it as a dated line: "[offer], until [date]". A site with no prices leaves an answer to find one elsewhere, perhaps on an old flyer. A dated price is one any reader can place in time.
We are open 24 hours but the desk is empty after nine. Which hours do we publish?
Both, labeled. Access hours say when members can get in; staffed hours say when someone can sell a day pass or help on the floor. Those are different questions. Put both on each location page and keep every listing in line.
Should our cancellation terms be public, or stay in the contract?
Public, in plain words, beside the membership they belong to: the minimum term, the notice period, how to cancel, what a freeze costs. Someone deciding whether to join may ask an assistant how canceling works at your gym, and with nothing of yours to go on, the answer has only what other people have written about it. Have your counsel check the wording.
We are a one-room studio with three class types. Is all this for us?
Most of it, in a smaller form: the timetable as text, class pack, drop-in and trial prices, the late-cancel rule, what to bring and where the door is. There is no floor to describe. Write each class under the name people type, such as reformer pilates or hot yoga, with your own name for it beside that.