Get Found on ChatGPT - A Simple Guide for Business Owners

ChatGPT is used by 800 million people every week. When someone asks it to recommend a business in your industry, yours should appear. To get found, you need to be indexed in Bing, allow OpenAI's search bot, have a clear description of what you do, build brand mentions, and ideally have a YouTube presence.

Why ChatGPT matters for your business

ChatGPT holds 78% of the AI search market. It processes over 2.5 billion prompts daily and drives 87.4% of all AI referral traffic. People are using it to find businesses, compare services, and make buying decisions. If you are not in its answers, your competitors probably are.

How to get found

1. Submit your site to Bing

ChatGPT pulls its information from Bing, not Google. If you are not in Bing's index, ChatGPT cannot find you. Go to Bing Webmaster Tools, add your site, and submit your sitemap. Also create a Bing Places listing for your business. This is the single most important step.

2. Allow OAI-SearchBot

Check your robots.txt file (yoursite.com/robots.txt). If it blocks OAI-SearchBot or GPTBot, ChatGPT cannot crawl your site even if Bing has indexed it. Remove any lines that block these bots.

3. Write a clear description

Your homepage needs to clearly say what you do. Not clever marketing copy. Not vague mission statements. A plain sentence like: "We provide [service] for [audience] in [location]." AI systems extract answers from text, so the clearer you write, the better you appear.

4. Build brand mentions

Brand mentions across the web correlate at 0.664 with AI citations. This is three times stronger than backlinks (0.218). Get your business mentioned on industry sites, review platforms, forums, and news articles. The more places that talk about you, the more confident AI becomes in recommending you.

5. Get on YouTube

YouTube mentions have the strongest correlation with AI visibility at 0.737. Create videos about your expertise, your services, or your industry. Even simple talking-head videos help. YouTube is owned by Google, indexed by Bing, and referenced by every major AI platform.

Check where you stand

Before doing anything, find out whether ChatGPT already mentions you. Open ChatGPT, ask about your industry, and see if you appear. For a thorough check across all six AI platforms, request a free AI visibility audit.

For the full technical guide, read how to get cited in ChatGPT.