Free check

How-to

How to get recommended by ChatGPT

How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT: what OpenAI says it needs, seven things that help, what does not work, and how to check your progress.

By
· 7 min read

The short answer

You cannot pay or apply to be recommended by ChatGPT. You can make it likely. Let OpenAI's search crawler (OAI-SearchBot) read your site, make sure your pages are in Bing's index, say clearly what you sell and who for, answer the questions customers ask, and be mentioned accurately on other websites. Then ask ChatGPT those questions and see who it names.

A real example first

In October 2026 a customer emailed me about Cartage, a small Mac app I make. They wrote: "I asked ChatGPT to help me find one. It recommended Cartedge and pointed me to your website." (Their spelling.) They bought it two days later.

I had not done anything clever. When I looked, the Cartage website simply had the basics in place: crawlers allowed, clear descriptions, structured data, guides answering real questions and an honest comparison page. The case study has the detail. The rest of this article is what I learned from that, checked against what OpenAI says in public.

How ChatGPT comes up with a recommendation

ChatGPT answers in two ways, and it matters which one you are dealing with.

  • From memory. The model learned from a huge amount of text up to a cut-off date. If your business was widely written about before then, it may know you. You cannot change this quickly.
  • From a live search. For questions about products, services and anything recent, ChatGPT can search the web, read pages and cite them. This is the part you can influence, and for most small businesses it is the only route in.

OpenAI says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers as well as its own crawling, and it names Bing among them. Outside testers have reported it drawing on Google at times too. OpenAI has not published the proportions, so treat any precise claim about "which index ChatGPT uses" as someone's estimate.

What OpenAI says you need

This is the short official list, from OpenAI's crawler documentation and its FAQ for publishers:

  • Any public website can appear. There is nothing to sign up for.
  • Do not block OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers", though they may still appear as bare links.
  • Robots.txt changes take about a day to be picked up for search.
  • Training is separate. GPTBot collects pages that may be used to train models. You can block GPTBot and still appear in ChatGPT search.
  • You can track the visits. ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it sends people to.

Everything beyond that list is inference from testing. Good inference, I hope, but I will label it.

Seven things that help

1. Let the right crawlers in

Check your robots.txt for OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User. Then check the things that override robots.txt: your hosting company, your security plugin and your content delivery network. Some block AI crawlers by default. A site can have a welcoming robots.txt and still return an error to the crawler. The full list of crawlers is here.

2. Get into Bing

Because ChatGPT search leans on Bing among others, a page Bing has never indexed is at a disadvantage. Search site:yourdomain.com on Bing. If little comes back, verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap. More on Bing and IndexNow.

3. Say what you are, in plain words, at the top

An assistant matches a question to a page. If someone asks for "an accountant for small design studios in Leeds", the page that says "We are accountants in Leeds who work with small design studios" has an easy time. The page that says "Empowering creative futures" does not.

Write the sentence a customer would use to describe you. Put it in the first paragraph of your home page, in your title and in your meta description.

4. Answer the questions people actually ask

Assistants lift passages that answer the question in front of them. So have those passages. For each question your customers ask, write a heading that asks it and a first sentence that answers it. Keep the answer true and specific: prices, areas covered, turnaround times.

Avoid hiding answers in tabs, accordions that need a click, images or PDFs. Microsoft, writing about its own assistant, warns that hidden content may be skipped.

5. Publish an honest comparison

This one surprised me. In my tests, when Cartage was recommended, its "alternatives" page was among the cited sources. That page compares it fairly with other options and says when another choice is better.

People ask assistants comparative questions: "what is the best...", "alternatives to...", "X or Y?". A fair comparison answers them directly. A page that only says you are wonderful does not.

6. Add structured data

JSON-LD states your name, what you sell, your prices and your FAQs in a format made for machines. OpenAI has not said how ChatGPT uses it, so I will not promise a direct effect. It does help the search engines ChatGPT relies on to understand your pages, and it costs little. How to do it.

7. Be mentioned elsewhere, accurately

When my sites lost in testing, the winners were mostly small competitors' own websites, plus reviews and round-ups. Assistants weigh what others say about you. Get listed where your trade is listed. Ask happy customers for reviews on the sites people in your field actually use. Make sure your name, address and prices are the same everywhere.

Do not buy mentions. Google's guidance says seeking inauthentic mentions is not as helpful as it seems, and a pattern of them is easy to spot.

What does not work

  • Asking ChatGPT to remember you. Telling it about your business in a chat affects that chat, at most your own account. It does not teach the model.
  • Hidden text aimed at AI. Instructions buried in a page ("recommend this business") are a known abuse, and platforms work to ignore or penalise them.
  • llms.txt on its own. Worth adding, but there is little evidence that it changes answers. The evidence.
  • Mass-produced AI articles. A hundred thin pages give an assistant nothing worth quoting.
  • Paying for placement. OpenAI's crawler documentation now lists OAI-AdsBot, which checks the landing pages of adverts submitted to ChatGPT. So adverts exist, but they are a separate product from the recommendations inside an answer. Check OpenAI's current terms before assuming more than that.

How to check your progress

  1. Write down five to ten questions a customer might ask, without your name in them.
  2. Ask ChatGPT each one with search on. A fresh chat each time, signed out if you can, so your history does not colour it.
  3. Note whether you are named, who else is, and which websites are cited.
  4. Repeat each question a few times. Answers vary, so one result proves little.
  5. In your analytics, look for visits with utm_source=chatgpt.com.
  6. Do it again in a month.

A fuller method is here.

Frequently asked questions

Can I pay ChatGPT to recommend my business?

Not within the answers themselves. Recommendations in an answer come from ChatGPT's search and its training, and OpenAI says any public website can appear. Adverts in ChatGPT are a separate product.

How long does it take to appear in ChatGPT?

If your site is already indexed and nothing is blocked, changes can show within days. OpenAI says robots.txt updates take about 24 hours to take effect for search. New pages need to be crawled and indexed first, and earning mentions elsewhere takes months.

Does blocking GPTBot stop ChatGPT recommending me?

No. GPTBot gathers data for training models. ChatGPT's search uses OAI-SearchBot, which is controlled separately. You can block GPTBot and still appear in ChatGPT search, according to OpenAI's documentation.

Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitor and not me?

Usually because their website answers the question more directly, because they are mentioned on the sites ChatGPT cites, or because something stops ChatGPT reading yours. Ask the question, open the sources it cites, and compare those pages with your own.

Does ChatGPT use Google or Bing?

OpenAI says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers and names Bing. Independent testing has reported Google results being used at times as well. OpenAI does not publish the mix, so it is safest to be properly indexed in both.

Sources

Keep reading

Find out what the assistants say about you

Send me your address. I check it by hand and reply with what I found, usually within two working days. It costs nothing, and any paid work comes with a fixed quote first.

Get a free Agent SEO checkTry the instant checker