How to get your business to show up in ChatGPT

To get your business to show up in ChatGPT, make sure OpenAI's search crawler is allowed to read your site, get your pages indexed in Google and Bing, keep your business details identical everywhere they appear, write pages that answer customer questions in the first two sentences, and earn mentions on other trusted sites. Then test what ChatGPT says about you once a month and write it down. Nobody, including us, can guarantee that ChatGPT will name your business, and anyone who promises a placement is guessing. What you can do is remove every reason for it to skip you.

How ChatGPT finds businesses to mention

When someone asks ChatGPT something like "who builds websites for dentists in Albuquerque," it can search the web, read a handful of pages and write an answer with links. Whether your site is among those pages depends on two things: whether OpenAI's systems can read it at all, and whether your pages and your reputation elsewhere make you a good answer to that question.

OpenAI documents its crawlers in one place, its overview of OpenAI crawlers. The one that matters for being found is OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says it is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features, and that sites opted out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers (though they can still appear as plain navigational links). The page tells you how to let the crawler in. It doesn't say how answers are ranked, and it describes no form for submitting a business.

So, to the question owners ask most often: can you submit your business to ChatGPT? Not in the way you submit a sitemap to Google. You make your site readable and worth quoting, and you make sure other sites say the same good things about you.

Let the search crawlers in

Start with the five-minute check. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt in a browser. It's a short text file that tells crawlers what they may read.

• Look for a section that starts User-agent: OAI-SearchBot followed by Disallow: /. That blocks ChatGPT search from your whole site. Remove it.
• Look for User-agent: * followed by Disallow: /. That blocks every crawler, Google included. It sometimes gets left behind after a site was built on a staging server.
• If you see no robots.txt at all, crawlers treat the site as open, which is fine.

OpenAI runs a separate crawler, GPTBot, for collecting training data. The two settings are independent, so you can allow OAI-SearchBot for search and still block GPTBot if you'd rather your content not be used for model training. That's a reasonable choice for many businesses, and it doesn't affect search.

Two more things can block crawlers without touching robots.txt. Some security plugins and firewall services block unfamiliar bots by default, and OpenAI recommends allowing requests from its published IP ranges. If you use a firewall service or a hosting company with bot protection, ask them whether OAI-SearchBot gets through. OpenAI also notes that after you change robots.txt, it can take about 24 hours for its search systems to adjust.

Get indexed in Google and Bing

AI answers lean on the same web that search engines index. If Google can't find a page, it's a fair bet that other tools are struggling with it too.

Google is plain about this for its own AI features. Its guide to AI features and your website says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. It also says you don't need special AI text files or new markup.

Three jobs here:

• Verify your site in Google Search Console and check the Page indexing report. Your homepage, every service page and your contact page should be indexed.
• Submit your sitemap.
• Set up Bing Webmaster Tools too. It's free and takes about ten minutes if you import your Search Console settings. OpenAI doesn't publish the full list of sources behind ChatGPT search, so being in a second large index is cheap insurance.

If your Google listing has its own problems, our guide to why a Google Business Profile isn't showing up covers the common causes.

Say the same thing about your business everywhere

When ChatGPT describes a business, it pieces the description together from whatever it reads. If your site says you're in Rio Rancho, your Google profile says Albuquerque, and an old directory listing has a phone number you dropped in 2021, you look like three different companies. A tool trying to give a confident answer may well pick a competitor whose details agree.

Write down the facts you want every listing to agree on:

• Business name, written the same way everywhere.
• Address or service area.
• Phone number and email.
• What you do, in one plain sentence.
• Hours, if they matter to customers.

Check your website, your Google Business Profile, your Bing Places listing, Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn and any industry directories. Fix the ones that are wrong, starting with the ones you control.

Reviews belong here too. Recent, specific reviews on Google and the directories in your trade give any tool something concrete to repeat about you. Ask happy customers for them, reply to them, and don't buy them.

Write pages that answer questions first

A page that buries its answer under three paragraphs of welcome text is hard for anyone to quote, human or machine. Pages that state the answer at the top are much easier to quote.

Look at your main service pages and ask whether a stranger could answer these from the first screen:

• What exactly do you do?
• Who is it for?
• Where do you work?
• Roughly what does it cost, or how is it priced?
• How do I get started?

If the answers are there but buried, move them up. If they're missing, add them. A short FAQ on each service page, written from the questions customers ask you on the phone, does a lot of work here.

Structured data helps search engines read your business details, and it's worth having LocalBusiness or Organization markup that matches what's visible on the page. Google says plainly that no special schema is needed for its AI features, so treat structured data as tidy housekeeping. It won't buy you a spot.

Get mentioned on other sites

ChatGPT reads more than your own site. Your site saying you're good is one voice. A local news story, a chamber of commerce listing, a supplier's case study, a podcast interview or a "best of" roundup from a credible local blog are others, and they carry more weight because you didn't write them.

You can't fake this part, and you shouldn't try. Some realistic places to start:

• Trade associations and local business groups you already belong to.
• Partners and suppliers who might feature your work.
• Local press, when you have real news.
• Industry directories that people in your field use.

Owners on Reddit describe testing ChatGPT and finding that it recommends competitors with a bigger footprint around the web. That matches what you'd expect: more independent mentions give the tool more reasons to bring you up.

Test what ChatGPT says about you

Keep a free prompt log. Once a month, open ChatGPT (ideally while logged out, or in a temporary chat so your history doesn't steer it) and ask the questions a customer would ask:

1. "Who are the best [your service] providers in [your town]?"
2. "What is [your business name]?"
3. "[Your business name] reviews."
4. "Is [your business name] good for [a specific job you do]?"

Paste each answer into a spreadsheet with the date. Note whether you're named, whether the facts are right, and which sites ChatGPT linked. Those linked sites tell you where it's getting its picture of your market, and they're often the places worth getting listed or mentioned.

Answers change from one run to the next, so don't panic over a single result. Look for the trend over a few months. You don't need a paid prompt-tracking tool to do this for one business.

How long it takes

A robots.txt fix can take effect within about a day for ChatGPT search, according to OpenAI. Indexing new pages in Google can take days to weeks. Building a reputation across other sites takes months. If you're starting from a site that blocked crawlers and had thin service pages, give it a season before judging.

What nobody can promise

No agency controls what ChatGPT says. OpenAI's documentation explains how to allow its crawler and says nothing about how answers are ranked. Treat any offer of guaranteed AI mentions the way you'd treat a promise of a guaranteed first place on Google.

The same goes for us. Our SEO service works on the foundations above for Google, Maps and AI search, and we say plainly that we can't guarantee a position. An Ortha SEO audit starts from $59, paid in full before work starts, and includes a structured data and AI-search check alongside the technical review and a prioritized fix list. Monthly SEO starts from $300 a month. Both are on our pricing page, and if you want to know how those numbers compare with the market, we covered that in how much SEO costs for a small business.

If you'd like us to check whether ChatGPT can read your site and tell you what to fix first, send us a few lines about your business.

FAQ

Can I submit my business to ChatGPT?

There's no submission form for ChatGPT's search answers. OpenAI's crawler documentation tells you to allow OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt file. After that, your site, your listings and mentions on other sites decide whether you come up.

Does robots.txt affect whether ChatGPT can show my site?

Yes. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. Changes can take about 24 hours to take effect.

If I block GPTBot, will I disappear from ChatGPT?

No. GPTBot is for training data and OAI-SearchBot is for search. OpenAI treats the two settings independently, so you can block one and allow the other.

Does Bing matter for ChatGPT?

OpenAI doesn't publish a full list of where ChatGPT search results come from. Bing Webmaster Tools is free and quick to set up, so it's worth registering your site there along with Google Search Console.

How do I check whether ChatGPT mentions my business?

Ask it the questions your customers would ask, once a month, in a temporary chat. Record the answers, whether you're named and which sites it links. Watch the trend over several months.

Can anyone guarantee a ChatGPT mention?

No. Be wary of anyone who says they can. Good SEO work can make your site easier to find and quote, but nobody outside OpenAI controls what ChatGPT recommends.