How to get your business mentioned in ChatGPT and other AI search tools

The honest starting point

You cannot pay for, guarantee or trick your way into ChatGPT answers. What you can do is make your business easy for AI tools to find, understand and trust: let the right crawlers in, write clear answer-first pages, keep your details consistent everywhere and earn genuine mentions on trusted sites.

This is close to good SEO, with a stronger focus on clarity and consistency. Our short FAQ gives the one-minute answer. This guide gives the steps.

Step 1: Let the right crawlers reach your site

OpenAI’s documentation on its crawlers describes OAI-SearchBot as used for search indexing, and GPTBot as connected to training data. Its help centre notes that publishers may need to update robots.txt so OAI-SearchBot has access, as explained in the publishers and developers FAQ.

1. Open your robots.txt at yourwebsite.com/robots.txt.
2. Check it does not block the crawlers you want, and that important pages are not blocked.
3. Decide separately whether you want to allow or block GPTBot, since that relates to training.
4. Make sure your pages load without needing a login and are not hidden behind scripts that crawlers cannot read.

Our technical SEO checklist covers robots.txt, sitemaps and indexing.

Step 2: Write pages that answer questions clearly

• Put a direct answer under a question-style heading, then add detail and proof.
• Explain who you serve, where, what you do and how it works, in plain words.
• Add FAQs that reflect real customer questions.
• Use lists and tables for comparisons and steps.
• Keep facts accurate and dated, and name the author.

Our AEO guide shows the format in detail.

Step 3: Keep your business details consistent

AI tools draw on many sources, so mismatched details can make you harder to describe accurately. See our profile checklist.

Step 4: Earn genuine mentions on trusted sites

• Get real reviews on Google and relevant directories, by asking customers and following each platform’s rules. See our reviews guide.
• Contribute useful articles or quotes to trade publications and local media.
• List your business in reputable directories that fit your field.
• Do not buy links, fake reviews or mass directory listings. They do not help and can harm you.

Step 5: Help machines read your pages

Add accurate structured data for your business and articles, as in our schema markup guide. Google explains how its AI features relate to your site in AI features and your website, and the advice is the same: helpful, original content on a technically healthy site.

A note on llms.txt

Some sites publish an llms.txt file that lists key pages for AI tools. It is a proposed convention, and we have not seen the major AI providers confirm that they use it to decide what to mention. It is harmless to publish, but do not rely on it, and do not neglect the basics above.

Step 6: Measure what you can

• In Google Analytics, look for referral traffic from AI tools. OpenAI says ChatGPT adds a chatgpt.com source parameter to referral links.
• Ask new customers how they found you, including “I asked an AI tool”.
• Test a few questions your customers would ask, on several AI tools, and note whether and how you are described, and whether the details are right.
• Fix wrong details at the source, such as an outdated listing.

Our GA4 guide shows how to set up reports.

Mistakes to avoid

• Paying anyone who guarantees ChatGPT rankings.
• Blocking crawlers by accident.
• Stuffing pages with keywords or made-up claims.
• Letting old details linger on old listings.
• Ignoring your customers’ real questions.

The bottom line

Be crawlable, be clear, be consistent and be mentioned by trusted sources, then measure what happens. Those steps help both classic search and AI answers.

If you would like your business checked for AI search readiness, our free growth audit is a good start, or read about our SEO, AEO and GEO service.