How to get your company to appear on ChatGPT

Where the answers come from

When ChatGPT searches the web it reads real pages and cites the ones it uses. Perplexity and Google's AI answers do the same. Three things have to happen for you to appear: the engine must be able to enter the site, find a page that answers the question, and trust it enough to cite it. This work is called GEO, Generative Engine Optimization.

First check: can the bots get in?

OpenAI uses three different programs, and mixing them up is a common mistake:

• OAI-SearchBot decides whether the site can appear in ChatGPT search: OpenAI says sites that block it are not shown in answers;
• GPTBot collects content to train models and has no effect on search;
• ChatGPT-User opens a page when a user asks it to.

Your site may be blocking them without anyone having decided so: a robots.txt copied from another site, a security plugin, a firewall or a Cloudflare rule. I check all of these and read the server logs to see who really gets in.

Then there is JavaScript. Many of these bots don't run it, so a site that builds its text in the browser is an empty page to them. The important text must be in the HTML. On sites made with visual builders or JavaScript frameworks, this is the first thing to verify.

Second check: is there a page to cite?

An AI engine cites precise sentences. "Innovative solutions for your business" answers no question. "I repair boilers in Cantù and nearby towns, on site within 48 hours" does.

• One page per service, saying what you do, for whom, where and how fast.
• Frequently asked questions written the way a customer would ask them, with short, complete answers.
• Honest comparisons: "X or Y" is one of the most common questions. My pages under Before you decide exist partly for this reason.
• schema.org structured data with name, address, hours, services and VAT number.

Third check: do others talk about you?

AI engines trust what they find repeated elsewhere: your Google Business Profile, trade directories, local press articles, reviews. Name, address and business must be the same everywhere. If you appear under three different names in three places, the engine struggles to see that they are all you.

Don't forget Bing: it has its own free tool for site owners, Bing Webmaster Tools, which imports the site straight from Search Console.

What I promise and what I don't

Nobody can guarantee a citation in ChatGPT, and anyone who promises one is selling you a guess. Answers change from one person to the next and from one day to the next. I can remove the blocks, write the missing pages with you and track over time which questions you appear for. The rest is on the SEO and AI visibility page. If the site isn't even on Google, start from website not showing on Google.

Frequently asked questions

Can I pay to appear on ChatGPT?

Not in normal answers: citations come from the pages the engine finds. Ads are something else, separate from the answers.

If I block GPTBot, do I disappear from ChatGPT?

No. According to OpenAI, GPTBot collects content for training models. For search, OAI-SearchBot is what counts. You can block the first and let the second in.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

I can add one, it costs little, but so far the big engines have not said they use it. Readable pages and letting the bots in come first.

How can I see if it's working?

People arriving from a citation show up in your statistics with chatgpt.com as the source, if the tool records it. Then you repeat the same questions at regular intervals, knowing that answers change from person to person.

Is this different from SEO?

It is largely the same work. Google's AI answers come from its index, and ChatGPT and Perplexity read pages like a search engine does. A site Google understands well already has a head start.

Read more

• The service: SEO and AI search
• More pages like this: Websites with a problem