You get your business on ChatGPT two ways: by being known before it searches, and by being easy to find when it does. Some questions it answers straight from what it learned, so I wouldn't count on search alone. Start by asking ChatGPT what it already knows about you, and if you'd like the background first, read how ChatGPT gets its information.
Check what ChatGPT already says about you
This is the first thing I look at when someone asks us about their business. Before you change a single page, find out what you're starting from.
Ask two questions in a Temporary Chat set to Unpersonalized. First, what does ChatGPT know about your business, with no web search? Then ask the way a customer would, something like "Who does kitchen remodels near me?", and see who it names. I walk through the steps in how to check where your business stands.
Write down what it gets wrong or leaves out. Old hours, a service you dropped, the wrong town, nothing at all. That list is your to-do list.
Get your business described the same way everywhere
As I see it, ChatGPT knows you mostly through what other people and other sites say about you. Your website is one voice among many. The job is to make those places agree.
Here's where I'd start:
- Your Google Business Profile, filled in all the way, with the right categories and hours.
- The directories in your field, plus the big ones like Yelp and TripAdvisor where they fit.
- Your name, address and phone number, written the same way everywhere.
- Reviews, and replies to them.
- Local news and trade press that describe what you do in plain words.
Yext, a company that sells listings software, looked at 6.8 million citations in AI answers to local questions about finance, food, health care and retail, in July and August 2025. Yext ran the questions itself, at the locations of its own clients and prospects, through each AI company's API rather than the apps people use. About 86% of the citations came from sources a business owns or can manage: its own website, and listings it can claim and correct.
About 86%
Of citations in AI answers to local questions came from a business's own website or listings it can manage
That's Yext's business, so I'd keep that in mind. Still, in that study, the places you control were the places that got cited. Getting them to agree is a big part of entity SEO.
If I only had one afternoon, I'd spend it here. Each fix is small, and they help with Google too.
How to show up in AI search beyond ChatGPT
The AI tools don't lean on the same places. In the same Yext study, Gemini took 52% of its citations from businesses' own websites. OpenAI's model took 49% from listings, and Google was the listing site it cited most. Perplexity leaned on industry directories: they made up 24% of its citations when people asked for "the best" of something without naming a business.
What people ask changes it too. When the question was a plain "what's near me," websites were the top source for all three, at over 40%. When people asked for the best, OpenAI's model turned to directories.
I wouldn't pick one tool to chase. The same work covers all three: a clear website and good listings, including the directories your customers use. That's what our AI search optimization work is: getting your business named when buyers ask, in search, on social, and in AI.
Make your website easy to find and quote
When ChatGPT does search, your site has to be reachable and easy to read. A few things I check:
- Your robots.txt lets in OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says sites that block it won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Blocking GPTBot is a separate setting. It only tells OpenAI not to use your pages for training. I list the other AI crawlers to allow in what we add so AI assistants can find you.
- Each main page answers one question a customer asks, in the first few lines. "Do you work in my area?" should have a plain answer on the page.
- Your Google ranking is still worth working on. In Kurt Fischman's February 2026 working paper, pages in Google's top spot got cited by ChatGPT and Gemini far more often than pages lower down. It tested older models, so I treat it as a lead.
Schema markup is worth getting right, though I wouldn't count on it alone. I wrote up what schema does and doesn't do for AI.
Fresh pages do seem to get more attention. Seer Interactive studied AI bot visits to more than 5,000 pages in 2025, and nearly 65% of the visits went to content published within the past year. Seer found it varied by industry, though. I'd update a page when the facts change, and leave the date alone when they don't. Our citation-ready content work is built on pages like that.
Show up where people talk about your kind of business
People ask each other for recommendations, and AI tools read some of those threads. In Profound's study of citations from August 2024 to June 2025, Reddit was Perplexity's most-cited site, at 6.6% of its citations.
For local questions, it's a smaller slice. Yext found forums made up just over 2% of citations when the questions were about businesses near the person asking. I wouldn't drop everything for Reddit. If people in your field trade advice there, though, answer questions as yourself, plainly, and say who you are. I'd never post as a "happy customer." It's dishonest, and I don't think it's worth the risk to your name.
The same goes for your own social profiles. They're another place that describes you, so they should match the rest. That's where social search comes in.
Can you rank in ChatGPT?
No, not in a fixed spot. People search for how to rank in ChatGPT, but there's no set list to get to the top of.
SparkToro tested this in January 2026 and found ChatGPT almost never gave the same list of brands twice, and the order changed even more. I go through that study in how we tell if AI search work is working.
The person asking changes the answer, too. ChatGPT can use what it remembers about someone and roughly where they are. I wrote about that in what comes after persona marketing in AI search.
So I don't think about rank here. I think about how often you're named, and whether you're described right. I'd be wary of anyone who promises you the top spot. Nobody controls that list.
How you'll know it's working
Pick ten questions your customers ask. Once a month, ask each one a few times in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, using a Temporary Chat set to Unpersonalized in ChatGPT. Write down who gets named and how you're described. One answer is one draw, so watch the pattern, not a single miss. If you'd rather use software, we compare the tracking tools in our AI visibility tools directory.
Don't stop at clicks, either. People can hear your name in an answer and call you without ever visiting your site. Our measurement page covers what to track besides traffic.
If you'd rather we take a look, the AI Search Game Plan shows where you stand in Google and in AI answers, who comes up instead, and what to do first.
Where to start on getting your business on ChatGPT
Ask ChatGPT what it knows about you. Fix your Google Business Profile and your top three listings so they match. Make sure your robots.txt isn't blocking OAI-SearchBot. Then pick one page and make it answer the question your customers ask most.
None of it is clever. It's the same work that's always helped people find you. The difference, as I see it, is that an AI assistant pulls all of it into one answer. So the places that disagree about you matter more than they used to.
Common questions
How do I get my business on ChatGPT?
Make sure ChatGPT can learn about you and find you. Get your business described the same way on your website, your Google Business Profile, the directories in your field and in local or trade press. Then make sure your site lets in OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI's search crawler, and answers the questions your customers ask.
Can I pay to get my business into ChatGPT's answers?
You can pay for an ad, but not for the answer. OpenAI started testing ads in the US on February 9, 2026, and businesses in the US and Canada can now buy them in its Ads Manager. The ads show below ChatGPT's response on the Free and Go plans, labeled as sponsored. OpenAI's help center says ads "do not influence ChatGPT's answers" and advertisers "have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT's responses." It said the same again on October 5, 2026. Getting named in the answer comes from what ChatGPT knows and finds about you.
Does my business need a Wikipedia page?
No. Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest guideline strongly discourages editing articles about yourself or your business, and paid editing must be disclosed. If your business doesn't meet Wikipedia's rules for having a page, I'd skip it and put the time into your listings, reviews and press.
Does Google Business Profile matter for ChatGPT?
It looks that way. In Yext's study of 6.8 million citations in AI answers to local questions, July and August 2025, nearly half of the citations from OpenAI's model came from listings, and Google was the listing site it cited most. Yext ran its questions through OpenAI's API, which isn't quite the ChatGPT app. Still, keeping your profile complete and current is one of the first things I'd do.
Sources
- Yext. AI Citations, User Locations, & Query Context. October 2025. Data from July 1 to August 31, 2025.
- Kurt Fischman. Does Schema Markup Predict AI Citation? Working paper, February 2026.
- OpenAI. Overview of OpenAI crawlers.
- Seer Interactive. Study: AI Brand Visibility and Content Recency. June 25, 2025.
- Profound. AI Platform Citation Patterns. June 2025, updated August 2025.
- SparkToro, Rand Fishkin. AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products. January 28, 2026.
- OpenAI Help Center. ChatGPT search.
- OpenAI Help Center. Ads in ChatGPT. Checked October 16, 2026.
- OpenAI Help Center. Ads Manager Availability. Checked October 16, 2026.
- OpenAI. Building advertising for the way people use AI. October 5, 2026.
- Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. Checked October 16, 2026.
- OpenAI Help Center. Temporary Chat FAQ. Checked October 16, 2026.
Curious how your business looks on Google and in AI answers?
Plate Lunch Collective is an AI SEO agency that gets brands named when buyers ask, in search, on social, and in AI. If you'd like to talk it through, we're easy to reach.
Hayden Bond
Hayden Bond, in SEO since 2004, founded Plate Lunch Collective, an AI SEO agency that gets brands named when buyers ask, in search, on social, and in AI.
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