How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT

To get your business recommended by ChatGPT, you need ChatGPT to find your pages and to find them useful. There is no form to submit and no way to buy a place in the answer. What you control is whether OpenAI's search crawler can read your site, and whether your pages answer your customers' questions better than anyone else's. This guide covers both, with what we measured on our own business, and a simple monthly test.

How does ChatGPT choose which businesses to mention?

When ChatGPT searches the web, it builds its answer from pages OpenAI's search crawler has read, and it favors pages that answer the question directly. OpenAI names that crawler OAI-SearchBot and says it is used "to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features". Sites that block it are not shown in ChatGPT's search answers.

Being readable is the entry ticket. Being chosen depends on the page: a clear answer near the top, specific facts with their source, and a structure a machine can lift, such as a short definition, a list of steps, or a table.

Which OpenAI crawlers should you allow?

You should allow OAI-SearchBot if you want to appear in ChatGPT's search answers. OpenAI documents three crawlers and one ad checker, each with a different job:

Source: OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers", checked September 28, 2026.

Check two places: your robots.txt file, and your host's bot settings. Many hosts and security services now have switches for AI crawlers. When we set up louisseo.com on Cloudflare, the dashboard had separate settings for search, agent, and training bots; we allowed all three.

Can you pay to appear in ChatGPT?

You can pay for an ad, but not for a recommendation. OpenAI runs ads on ChatGPT and documents a crawler, OAI-AdsBot, that checks the landing pages of submitted ads. The answer itself is not for sale, and anyone who promises to place you inside it is selling something they do not control.

What should your pages contain?

Your pages should contain the answer a customer is looking for, stated plainly, with facts only you can give. In practice:

1. One page per service and, if it matters, per place you serve. Say what you do, for whom, where, and roughly what it costs.
2. The answer in the first two or three sentences, before any story.
3. Specifics: prices or price ranges, timelines, materials, the process, the limits.
4. Sources for any number that is not yours, with the source named and linked.
5. A short FAQ in your customers' own words.

What did this look like for Ring Mint?

For Ring Mint, a custom engagement ring business using Louis's method, AI assistants drove about half of the conversions its analytics could see. Between May 25 and September 27, 2026, Google Analytics recorded 31 key events on ringmint.com, and 15 came from the AI assistant channel, where ChatGPT was the main referrer in the week we checked. One article did most of the work: it answers a question people were asking, whether the diamonds in TikTok live auctions are real, and on September 28, 2026 it was on Google's first page for "tiktok diamonds real". One business is not a rule, but it shows the same page can win both Google and ChatGPT.

How do you check if ChatGPT mentions you?

Check by asking ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, every month, and writing down who gets named. Use search-enabled ChatGPT, ask the same five to ten questions each time, and record three things: whether you are mentioned, which page is cited, and who is cited instead. Answers vary from one session to the next, so treat each check as a sample, not a ranking. The pages cited instead of yours show you what your page is missing.

Louis runs this check every month for clients and reports it next to Google results. See what is included in each plan, or read how much SEO costs for a small business.