How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT

ChatGPT can only recommend a business it finds in the sources it reads. When a buyer asks it for a provider or a product, ChatGPT searches the web, reads a handful of pages and builds its answer from what they say. Getting recommended starts with three fixes: let ChatGPT's crawler in, answer buyers' questions on your own pages, and be present in the sources ChatGPT reads for your industry.

How ChatGPT finds a business

For questions about current options, ChatGPT search looks things up on the web and cites its sources. It reaches websites through its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot. Across the industries we measure, it leans on sources it treats as reliable: official and reference sites such as consumer magazines, professional associations and official gazettes. Other engines read differently: Google's AI Overviews cite YouTube most.

Fix 1: let the engines in

OpenAI states that sites that block OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers, so check that your robots.txt and your hosting allow it. For Google's AI answers, your pages need to be indexed and able to show with a snippet.

Fix 2: answer the buyers' questions on your own pages

An engine can only repeat what a page says. Give each question your buyers ask its own page, with the answer first and the specifics an answer needs: what you offer, where, for whom, at what price range, with what guarantee and what proof.

Fix 3: be in the sources your industry's answers use

A business that others name gives the engine more than one source to rely on. Find out which sites the AI answers cite in your industry (reviews, directories, press, reference sites, video) and be present there.

How people search for this

Few people ask Google the direct question: «how to rank in ChatGPT» gets about 140 searches a month in the US, likely because people ask the AI itself. On Google the topic goes by its general name: «AI SEO» gets about 6,600 searches a month in the US (Google Ads, October 2026). Its formal name is generative engine optimization.

The sources AI answers cite in each industry are on the industry cards of Epica.