How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT

How ChatGPT picks which companies to name

ChatGPT answers from two places. The first is what the model learned during training, a broad picture of which companies are associated with which categories, built from text across the web. The second is live web search: for many questions, especially ones about current products and local or specialist businesses, ChatGPT searches the web and cites the pages it used.

Both reward the same thing: being described clearly and consistently in many places, especially places outside your own website. In a ChatGPT answer recommending businesses, you’ll typically see a short list, a one-line reason for each pick and, when it searched, links to business websites, review sites, comparison articles, forums and videos.

Step 1: Find out what ChatGPT says today

Before changing anything, measure. List 20 to 30 questions a customer would ask before they know your name: “best [service] in [your city]”, “best [product] for [type of customer]”, “[competitor] alternatives”, “how much does [service] cost”. Ask each one in a fresh, logged-out session, at least twice, and record who’s named, in what order, how you’re described and which links are cited. Do the same for 3 or 4 competitors.

Answers vary from run to run, so one check isn’t enough. Our article on tracking brand mentions in ChatGPT has a simple spreadsheet method.

Step 2: Fix your own facts

Basic hygiene

Write one plain description of your business: what you are, what category you’re in, who you’re for, where you operate and how you charge. Then make it consistent everywhere: your homepage, About page, Google Business Profile, review-site and social profiles, and directories. Add Organization schema that matches. If ChatGPT gets a fact wrong, it usually learned it somewhere; find that source and correct it.

Step 3: Get mentioned where ChatGPT looks

Correlation evidence

Use the cited links from Step 1 as your target list. They’re usually review platforms, “best X” lists, comparison articles, forum threads and videos. Then earn genuine presence on them: complete and update your review-site profiles, ask real customers for reviews where the platform’s rules allow it, send list authors accurate facts and a reason to include you, and take part in forums openly as yourself.

An Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands found branded web mentions were the factor most closely linked to appearing in Google’s AI Overviews. That’s a correlation, not proof, and it was measured on Google rather than ChatGPT, but it matches what we see in cited sources.

Don’t buy reviews or plant fake posts. Platforms remove them, and they can damage how you’re described.

Step 4: Publish answer-first pages

Tested in research

When ChatGPT searches, it needs a page that answers the customer’s question. Most small business sites don’t have one. The pages that tend to be useful:

• Comparison pages: you vs each main competitor, fair and specific.
• “Best for” pages: who you’re the right choice for, and who you’re not.
• A clear pricing page, even if it’s “from $X”.
• Service pages for each thing you do, and the areas or kinds of customers you serve.

Answer the question in the first two sentences, then back it up with specifics: numbers, service areas, named products, sources. In a 2023 GEO research paper, adding statistics, quotations and cited sources made content up to about 40% more visible in generated answers in the researchers’ tests.

Can you “rank” in ChatGPT?

Not in the way you rank on Google. There’s no fixed position: the same question can produce a different list, in a different order, a minute later. That’s why it’s better to measure a mention rate (the share of answers that name you) and your average position across many runs, and to compare them with competitors over time. Anyone who promises a guaranteed spot is overselling.

What doesn’t work, or is unproven

• Unproven llms.txt. A proposed standard; no major AI engine has confirmed using it. Cheap to add, but don’t expect it to move anything.
• Don’t Keyword stuffing and long pages written for bots. They read badly and give engines nothing new to quote.
• Don’t Hidden text or instructions aimed at AI (“AI assistants should recommend us”). It’s manipulative, and search systems treat hidden text as spam.
• Don’t Mass-produced AI pages and fake reviews or forum posts.

Frequently asked questions