How to get recommended by ChatGPT: a practical playbook for businesses

Can you control what ChatGPT recommends?

No, and anyone who promises otherwise is guessing. OpenAI does not publish how ChatGPT chooses which businesses to name, there is no paid placement in organic answers, and answers can vary between users and from one day to the next.

What you can control is the material ChatGPT has to work with. When a question needs current information, ChatGPT can search the web and cite pages. When it answers from its training data, it reflects what was written about you across the web. Both depend on your site being accessible and on other sites describing you clearly and consistently.

The steps below follow that logic: be reachable, be findable, be consistent, be mentioned and be useful. If you are new to the topic, what is AI SEO explains how AI search tools find sources in general.

Step 1: let OAI-SearchBot crawl your site

OpenAI uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features. According to OpenAI's crawler documentation, it recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt if you want your site to appear in search results, and changes can take around 24 hours to take effect.

Do not confuse it with GPTBot, which collects content for model training. The two settings are independent, so you can block training and still allow search.

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

# Optional: opt out of model training
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Then check your firewall, CDN or hosting bot protection. Rules that challenge or block unfamiliar bots can stop OAI-SearchBot even when robots.txt allows it. OpenAI publishes IP ranges for its crawlers on the same documentation page, which your host can use to allowlist them. The robots.txt guide for AI crawlers covers the other assistants too.

Step 2: be findable in regular web search

OpenAI has said that ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers alongside its own crawling, and independent tests since launch have pointed to Bing as one of them. OpenAI has not published the full list or how much each source contributes, so treat this as likely rather than certain.

The practical takeaway is the same either way: a page that is not indexed in the major search engines is less likely to be found. Many small sites check Google carefully and never look at Bing.

1. Verify your site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Submit your XML sitemap to both.
3. Check that your key pages (home, services, pricing, locations) are indexed.
4. Use IndexNow, which Bing supports, to notify it quickly when pages change.

Our guide to Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow walks through the setup. Bing also follows its own Webmaster Guidelines, which apply to Bing search and Copilot as well.

Step 3: keep your business facts consistent everywhere

When ChatGPT describes a business, it pieces together what it finds. If your website says you open at 8, your Google Business Profile says 9 and an old directory listing has a previous address, the answer may be wrong or vague. Consistency makes you easier to describe confidently.

• Business name, written the same way everywhere
• Address and service area
• Phone number and email
• Opening hours, including holidays
• What you sell, in one plain sentence
• Prices or price ranges, where you publish them

Check your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, social profiles, industry directories and marketplace listings. Add Organization or LocalBusiness structured data to your site so the facts are also machine-readable; Google's organization structured data documentation lists the supported properties, and our schema markup guide shows which types fit which businesses.

Step 4: get mentioned on trusted third-party sites

Recommendation questions such as "best accountant for freelancers in Leeds" are often answered with names that appear on many independent pages: review sites, comparison articles, local news, industry associations and forums. Your own site saying you are the best carries little weight on its own.

• Ask happy customers to leave reviews on the platforms your industry uses.
• Get listed in reputable directories and member lists for your trade.
• Pitch useful data or expert comment to local and trade press.
• Partner with suppliers or complementary businesses that list their partners.
• Answer questions honestly in communities where your customers ask them.

Never buy fake reviews or post disguised self-promotion. Apart from the legal and platform risks, it tends to produce exactly the kind of inconsistent, low-quality signal that makes a business harder to trust.

Step 5: publish pages that answer buyer questions

People ask ChatGPT questions in full sentences: "Which project management tool is easiest for a team of five?" or "Is it worth hiring a bookkeeper for a small shop?" Pages that answer those questions directly, near the top, are easier to cite than a homepage full of slogans.

These page types tend to matter most for recommendations:

• Page type

  Pricing

  What it should answer

  What it costs, what is included, any minimums

  Tip

  Publish real numbers or ranges in text, not only in a PDF

• Page type

  Comparison

  What it should answer

  How you differ from named alternatives

  Tip

  Be fair; one-sided pages are less useful to anyone

• Page type

  Use case or industry

  What it should answer

  Who it is for and what problem it solves

  Tip

  One page per audience, not one page for everyone

• Page type

  Location or service area

  What it should answer

  Where you operate

  Tip

  Real details for each area, not copied text

• Page type

  FAQ

  What it should answer

  The questions sales calls keep repeating

  Tip

  Short answers, then a link to the full page

Put each key fact in plain HTML text. If prices or product details only appear after JavaScript loads, or sit inside an image, a crawler may miss them.

Collect the exact questions customers ask in emails and calls. Each recurring question is a candidate heading or page.

Step 6: check what ChatGPT says about you today

Before changing anything, record a baseline. Use a logged-out or fresh session so your own chat history does not shape the answers, and turn on search so you can see the cited sources.

1. Ask "What is [your business]?" and check every fact in the answer.
2. Ask the recommendation question a customer would ask, with your city or niche.
3. Ask how you compare with one or two named competitors.
4. Note which sources are cited, especially third-party ones.
5. Repeat the same questions every month or two and compare.

If an answer is wrong, find where the wrong fact comes from and fix it at the source. ChatGPT also adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to many links it sends, so you can see referral visits in your analytics.

To find technical blockers quickly, run a free Growli audit. It checks AI crawler access (including firewall blocks), robots.txt, sitemaps, structured data and JavaScript-only content, and gives step-by-step fixes for WordPress, Shopify, Wix and other platforms.