How do you get recommended by ChatGPT?
You give ChatGPT clear, consistent facts about your business in the places it looks, then keep them up to date. There's no form to fill in and no switch to flip.
When someone asks "who should I use for a new website in Leicestershire?", ChatGPT either answers from what it learned in training or searches the web first. For questions about buying something, it usually searches. It turns the question into two or three searches, reads the top results, checks the shortlisted businesses' own websites, then writes a short list with a reason for each name.
That reason is lifted from whichever page said it most clearly. So the job is to make sure the clearest page is yours, and that every other source agrees with it.
Where does ChatGPT look before it names a business?
It looks at search results, then at the pages those results point to. Training data has a cut-off, so it won't know your new prices or a service you added last month unless it searches.
When ChatGPT searches, it leans on Bing. A business that ranks well in Google but has never been set up in Bing Webmaster Tools can be missing from the results ChatGPT reads.
The pages it reads are a mix: business websites, "best agencies in" style lists, directory profiles such as Clutch, Google Business Profiles and reviews, and Reddit threads. Your own site is only one of them.
Answers also change between people, between questions and from one day to the next. Location, memory and how the question is worded all play a part. That's why one test in one chat tells you very little.
What does ChatGPT check before it recommends you?
It checks the same things a careful buyer would. If a fact isn't written down anywhere it can read, you're left out of the comparison.
- What you do: your services, named plainly, one page each.
- Who it's for: the kind of customer and the size of job you take on.
- Where you are: your address, and the areas you serve.
- Price: a "from" price where you can give one. "Contact us for a quote" gives it nothing to compare.
- Speed: how long the work takes.
- Proof: results with a timeframe on them, press coverage and reviews.
- How to start: a phone number, a booking link or a form.
What is the step-by-step method?
These are the ten steps we work through, in this order. The first five are on your own site. The rest happen everywhere else.
- Write your facts down once: a one-line description, your services, areas, "from" prices, turnaround and how to start. Use the same wording everywhere from now on.
- Put those facts on your site in plain text, near the top of each service page, so they can be read without JavaScript.
- Answer the question straight after each heading, in one or two sentences an assistant could quote.
- Add a "from" price where you can, even if the final figure depends on the job.
- Add structured data: Organization or LocalBusiness, Service and FAQPage schema that match the words on the page.
- Check robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, and that bot protection or a CAPTCHA isn't turning it away.
- Set up Bing Webmaster Tools and Bing Places, submit your sitemap and turn on IndexNow, so new pages are picked up within hours.
- Get listed where ChatGPT reads: Google Business Profile, Clutch and the directories in your sector, with the same name, address and phone number on each.
- Ask happy customers for reviews. They decide close calls.
- Track it: run the same set of buyer questions every month, and log who gets named and which sources are cited.
Which OpenAI crawlers need access to your site?
OpenAI runs three, and they do different jobs. Blocking the wrong one is one of the most common reasons a business never shows up.
- OAI-SearchBot finds pages for ChatGPT search. Block it and your pages can't appear in ChatGPT's search answers.
- GPTBot collects data for training future models. You can block it and still appear in ChatGPT search.
- ChatGPT-User fetches a page when someone asks ChatGPT to look at it.
How long does it take to get recommended by ChatGPT?
There's no fixed timeline. Fixes to your own site can be read as soon as the pages are crawled again. Directory listings, reviews and mentions in comparison lists build up over months.
We've seen how fast AI answers can move once the facts are in place: up to 40x more appearances in Google's AI answers in 3 months across the accounts we run. That's Google's AI answers rather than ChatGPT, but the work behind it is the same: clear facts, comparison pages, structured data and digital PR.
Can anyone guarantee a ChatGPT recommendation?
No. OpenAI doesn't publish how ChatGPT picks businesses, and its answers change between people and days. Be wary of anyone selling a guaranteed placement.
What you can control is everything ChatGPT reads: the facts on your site, whether its crawler can get in, where you're listed and what customers say about you. Get those right and you give it every reason to name you.
Is this different from SEO?
It builds on SEO rather than replacing it. ChatGPT reads pages that rank in search, so ranking still matters.
What changes is the finish line. SEO aims for a click from a list of results. Getting recommended means being the business ChatGPT names in one answer, with a reason. That puts more weight on plain facts, prices, consistent listings and reviews.