How to Get Your Business on ChatGPT (and Get Recommended)

1. Check what ChatGPT says about you today

Open ChatGPT and ask the questions your customers ask. Not "Tell me about my company," but real buyer questions:

• "Who's the best [your service] in [your city]?"
• "I need [your service] for [a specific situation]. Who should I call?"
• "What should I look for when hiring a [your type of business]?"

Write down who gets named and which websites it links to. Try the same questions in Gemini and Perplexity. That's your starting line.

2. Make sure AI tools can read your website

ChatGPT's search uses OpenAI's own crawler, called OAI-SearchBot, to read websites. If your robots.txt file, security plugin or firewall blocks it, ChatGPT can't see your pages. Ask your web person to check that AI crawlers are allowed.

Also make sure your important information is written as real text on the page, not only inside images or PDFs. AI tools read words.

3. Say plainly what you do, where and for whom

Your homepage should answer four questions in the first screen: who you are, what you do, where you work and who you help. Then give each main service its own page. A painter with one page for "interior painting," one for "exterior painting" and one for "cabinet painting" is far easier for AI to recommend than a painter with one page called "Services."

4. Answer your buyers' exact questions

AI tools love specific answers. In one example Rob shares in his video, a homeowner asked ChatGPT which painter was good with older homes, like a house built in 1924. ChatGPT recommended a painter whose online presence was built around exactly that kind of work. The homeowner clicked through, called and booked an estimate.

Make a list of the specific questions you hear on sales calls. Answer each one on your website, with the answer in the first two sentences and real details after.

5. Make your business details match everywhere

Your business name, address, phone number, services and hours should be identical on your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, Bing Places, the Better Business Bureau, industry directories and social profiles. When everything agrees, AI tools are more confident about who you are. When details conflict, they hesitate.

6. Earn reviews that mention specifics

"Great job!" helps a little. "They repainted our 1920s craftsman in Pasadena and matched the original trim" helps a lot. Reviews that mention the service, the situation and the location give AI tools the details they need to match you to a question. When you ask for reviews, ask customers to mention what you did for them.

7. Get mentioned on other trusted websites

AI tools trust what other sites say about you, not just what you say about yourself. Good places to earn mentions:

• Local news stories and community sites.
• Your industry association and chamber of commerce.
• Podcast interviews and guest articles.
• Respected directories in your field.

Skip the shortcut of blasting one press release to dozens of sites. Real, relevant mentions build trust. Copy-and-paste ones don't.

8. Track the clicks, not just the mentions

Being named is step one. What pays is the visit. In Google Analytics, look for traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com. Over 16 months, we tracked 2,476 of those visits across 18 websites, and ChatGPT sent 87% of the ones we could trace to a source. See the full AI Referral Traffic Report, or what those visits taught us about earning the click.

Then repeat step one every month to see whether more of your buyers' questions name you.

Want the full picture, or want it done for you?

For the bigger picture, read our guide to AI search optimization. It explains how AI tools choose businesses and how to measure results. If you'd rather hand it off, our AI search optimization service does the research, the pages, the outside mentions and the monthly tracking. Or start with a free Growth Leak Audit, and Rob will show you where you stand.