How to get ChatGPT to recommend your business
ChatGPT names a business from what its model learned in training or from a web search it runs while answering. OpenAI's pages describe no way to submit a business for either, and say placement isn't guaranteed. What's in your hands is whether its search crawler can reach and read your site. Then count how often answers name you, because one answer can't tell you.
Checked against the studies and help pages it cites on October 13, 2026.
How ChatGPT comes to name a business.
An answer that names a business gets the name from one of two places. Which one decides what you can change, and how fast.
From what the model learned
OpenAI says its models learn from publicly available web pages, from data it gets through partners, and from what users and trainers provide.[1] Each model stops learning at a cutoff: the three flagship models on OpenAI's list on October 13, 2026 give April 30 or May 18, 2026.[2]
From a web search
ChatGPT may search the web when a question would benefit from current information. It typically rewrites the question into one or more search queries, sends them to partner search providers, and may follow with narrower ones.[3]
Written anew each time
OpenAI says there is an inherent element of randomness in how a model responds, so the same question may yield different answers.[1] Search adds more: ChatGPT can use an approximate location from your IP address and, with memory on, saved memories when it writes its queries.[3]
Named is not the same as cited
Recommended means the answer's text names you as an option. Cited means the answer links one of your pages as a source. In a 2026 audit of product advice, most of the domains ChatGPT showed as sources were editorial and review sites, so the page behind a recommendation is often someone else's.[4] Citations have their own guide.
What is in your control, and what isn't.
Four things decide whether ChatGPT can name you. You hold the first two, part of the third, and none of the fourth.
Yours: let the search crawler in
To be eligible for ChatGPT's search results, OpenAI says to let OAI-SearchBot crawl your site and to confirm that your host or CDN allows traffic from its published IP addresses.[3, 5] The AI crawler checker tests both, and the crawler guide covers the other crawlers.
Yours: text a crawler can read
Vercel's 2024 study of crawler traffic found OpenAI's crawlers fetching pages without running JavaScript, so text that scripts add is missing for them.[6] The free GEO audit shows what those crawlers get from your pages.
Partly yours: who else mentions you
In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, how often other sites mention a brand tracked with how often AI named it more closely than any link metric did: correlations of 0.66 to 0.71 across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews, against 0.27 between Domain Rating and ChatGPT. Ahrefs adds that correlation isn't causation, and that these may only be marks of a brand that is already strong.[7]
Not yours: how ChatGPT ranks
OpenAI says ChatGPT ranks search results on multiple factors meant to help people find relevant, reliable information, and that placement is not guaranteed. Its page lists no factors.[3] Nobody outside OpenAI can promise you a mention.
A recommendation moves from one answer to the next.
Two studies and our own runs asked the same questions again and compared who got named.
chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI gives the same list of brands twice, in SparkToro's study of 2,961 runs.[8]
question-and-engine pairs named the same product first in every run, when we asked the same questions again within about an hour.
average overlap between the products ChatGPT recommended when one request was repeated, where 1 means the same products every time. Google's AI Overviews scored 0.421.[4]
of the domains ChatGPT showed as sources for product advice were editorial and review sites, in the same audit.[4]
SparkToro and Gumshoe ran 12 prompts through ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI with about 600 volunteers, 2,961 runs in all (published January 2026). The study isn't peer-reviewed, and Gumshoe sells AI tracking.[8] The audit (September 2026) evaluated 1,536 responses to product questions from ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews; its authors call their labels for kinds of source exploratory.[4]
Our figure comes from the answers GEOFast recorded for its two demo projects (4 runs within 66 minutes for trygeo.fast, 3 within 62 for plausible.io), on 6 engines in US English, leaving out questions about the brand itself: 737 answers. A pair counts when every run answered it and one answer named a product first.
Can you submit your business to ChatGPT?
Not for a recommendation. OpenAI's pages describe one step that makes a site eligible for search, and one feed for products.
No form for a mention
OpenAI's help page on search gives site owners one step: let OAI-SearchBot crawl the site. It describes no way to submit a business, a brand or a page.[3]
Merchants can send a product feed
OpenAI takes applications from merchants to share a product feed for ChatGPT's shopping results, which are live for users in the U.S. Shopify and Etsy catalogs are already included. OpenAI says a feed isn't needed if ChatGPT already crawls your site, and that it gives you more control over how your products appear.[9]
Local results come through other providers
For questions about nearby places, ChatGPT may share your location with third-party providers of business listings, and it shows restaurant availability from OpenTable, Resy or Yelp. The page doesn't name the listing providers.[3]
How long changes take.
It depends on which route the answer took. Neither comes with a date.
About a day for crawler access
After you change robots.txt, OpenAI says its search systems can take about 24 hours to adjust.[5]
A newer model for what it learned
What a model learned stops at its cutoff, so a page published after that date can reach an answer only when ChatGPT searches.[2]
No date for a mention
None of OpenAI's pages cited here says how long it takes for a business to start being named, and the studies are snapshots: none followed a business over time.
How to measure it honestly.
One answer is one draw. Count many, asked the way your buyers ask.
Count a rate, not a position
SparkToro's authors concluded that the share of answers naming a brand, across dozens to hundreds of prompts run several times, is a reasonable metric, and that a ranking position in AI is not.[8]
Ask what buyers ask, several times
Use questions that don't name you, in a temporary chat, and start a new chat for each try. The guide to checking ChatGPT by hand has the five steps and how many answers make a number.
A free first look
GEOFast's free GEO audit checks what AI crawlers can read on your site. It then asks ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini three buyer questions once each, and with a free account six once each: 18 answers, a first look rather than a measurement.
Counted for you
AI visibility tracking asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI your questions on a schedule, the same way each time, and shows each rate with its 90% range.
Questions about ranking in ChatGPT.
Can I submit my business to ChatGPT?
Not for a recommendation. OpenAI's help page gives site owners one step to be eligible for ChatGPT's search results, letting OAI-SearchBot crawl the site, and describes no way to submit a business. Merchants can apply to send a product feed for its shopping results.
How long does it take to rank in ChatGPT?
OpenAI gives no timeline for being named. A robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to reach its search systems. What a model learned in training stops at its cutoff date, so newer pages can reach an answer only when ChatGPT searches the web.
Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my business?
Start with what you can check: whether OAI-SearchBot can reach your site, and whether your text is in the HTML your server sends. Then ask your buyers' questions several times. One answer that leaves you out proves little, because the next can name different brands. Six reasons ChatGPT leaves a site outRun the free GEO audit
Is there a number one position in ChatGPT?
Not a fixed one. In SparkToro's study, the chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI gave the same list of brands twice was under 1 in 100, and its authors concluded that a ranking position in AI isn't a sound metric. Count how often answers name you.
Is being recommended by ChatGPT the same as being cited?
No. Recommended means the answer's text names you as an option. Cited means the answer links one of your pages as a source. Either can happen without the other. How to get cited by ChatGPT
Where each fact comes from.
Each numbered source is the page a fact comes from: published studies and the AI companies' own help pages, read on October 13, 2026. The answers above repeat facts marked in the guide. Help pages change, so check them before you act.
- 1OpenAI: How ChatGPT and our foundation models are developedhelp.openai.com/en/articles/7842364-how-chatgpt-and-our-foundation-models-are-developed
- 2OpenAI: Modelsdevelopers.openai.com/api/docs/models
- 3OpenAI: Searching the web with ChatGPThelp.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-searching-the-web-with-chatgpt
- 4Uberti-Bona Marin et al., arXiv: “If I Had to Buy Just ONE: Galaxy S26 Ultra”: Auditing AI-Generated Product Recommendationsarxiv.org/abs/2609.18729
- 5OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI Crawlersdevelopers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
- 6Vercel: The rise of the AI crawlervercel.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-ai-crawler
- 7Ahrefs: Top Brand Visibility Factors in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews (75k Brands Studied)ahrefs.com/blog/ai-brand-visibility-correlations/
- 8SparkToro: NEW Research: AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products; marketers should take care when tracking AI visibilitysparktoro.com/blog/new-research-ais-are-highly-inconsistent-when-recommending-brands-or-products-marketers-should-take-care-when-tracking-ai-visibility/
- 9OpenAI: Power product discovery in ChatGPTchatgpt.com/merchants/
Keep reading
- The free GEO auditA free GEO audit of up to 300 pages: AI crawler access, JavaScript rendering, 21 checks and fixes ranked by impact, with code. No sign-up.
- AI visibility tracking across six AI enginesTrack how often ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude name you, put you first and cite your site, with a 90% range on every rate.
- AI visibility tools, comparedEvery tool we have checked, by starting price.
- What is GEOGEO, generative engine optimization, in plain words: how AI answers pick their sources, what research shows helps, and how to measure your AI visibility.
- AEO vs GEO vs SEOAEO vs GEO vs SEO: where each name came from, what Google and Microsoft say, the work all three share, and the four things that change with AI answers.
- Check if ChatGPT mentions your brandCheck by hand in five steps, see why one chat can't measure it (answers change, memory, location, leading questions), and where ChatGPT and Claude do help.
- Find the competitors ChatGPT recommendsA method for finding who ChatGPT recommends instead of you: which questions to ask, how many times, how to count the names and work out your share of voice.
- Does ChatGPT give everyone the same answer?No. ChatGPT writes each answer afresh and can use your memory, location, a web search and your plan's model. OpenAI's own pages, and our repeat-run numbers.
- AI visibility metricsMention rate, first-pick rate, citation rate, share of voice and sentiment: what each one counts, how to work it out, and why each needs a range.
- Get cited by ChatGPTHow ChatGPT search finds and picks the pages it links, from OpenAI's docs, what makes a page usable as a source, and which kinds of pages our data shows cited.
- Why ChatGPT doesn't show your websiteSix reasons ChatGPT leaves a site out, in the order to check them: robots.txt, firewalls, noindex, JavaScript, Bing's index and who the pages it reads name.
- Does ChatGPT use Google or Bing?What OpenAI documents about where ChatGPT search gets results (Bing, its own crawler and index), what is only reported about Google, and what it means for you.
- Rank in Google's AI OverviewsWhat Google says you need to show up in AI Overviews, how query fan-out and nosnippet work, and what studies show: 38% of cited pages rank in the top 10.
- Rank in Google AI ModeWhat sets Google's AI Mode apart from AI Overviews: query fan-out, follow-ups, a custom Gemini and Search Console's counts, and how often the two cite one page.
- Perplexity SEOHow Perplexity finds, reads and cites pages: its two crawlers, what its docs say and leave out, the Cloudflare dispute, studies, and what our runs show.
- Which AI crawlers to allowWhich AI crawlers feed ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's answers, which only train models, and what the 1,529 of 1,605 cited sites we could read allow.
- robots.txt for AI crawlersCopy-ready robots.txt rules that keep AI search crawlers in and training crawlers out, how each crawler reads the file, and the mistakes that lock AI out.
- What is llms.txt?llms.txt is a Markdown file that tells AI agents what a site holds. Its format, a real example, who reads it today, and what studies show about its effect.
- Firewalls that block AI crawlersCloudflare, Vercel, AWS WAF and others can turn AI crawlers away even when robots.txt lets them in. Where each setting lives and how to let crawlers through.
- Do AI crawlers render JavaScript?Google's and Bing's crawlers render JavaScript. OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity don't say, and Vercel's 2024 study found theirs don't. Our data on cited pages.
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