How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT: A Checklist
No one can promise a recommendation from ChatGPT, but most small businesses lose visibility to avoidable problems: blocked crawlers, vague pages and missing business details. This checklist fixes those in order, starting with the cheapest.
Getting recommended by ChatGPT means making sure its search crawler can read your site, that your pages answer buyer questions plainly, and that trusted sites confirm who you are.
- Make sure AI search crawlers are allowed in robots.txt.
- Publish an llms.txt and structured data that state who you are.
- Answer buyer questions in the first two sentences of each page.
- Get listed and reviewed where buyers in your market look.
- Measure weekly with real buyer questions; do not guess.
Is your site readable by AI crawlers?
Start here, because nothing else matters if the crawler cannot read your pages. OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot as the crawler that surfaces websites in ChatGPT's search features, and says robots.txt controls it (OpenAI). Use the AI crawler checker to see the verdict for every major AI crawler and the exact robots.txt line behind it. Then read the crawler guide to decide what to allow. For Google's AI features the rule is the same in spirit: a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode (Google).
Does your site say who you are, in a way a machine can read?
Assistants quote what is stated clearly. Check that your homepage names your business, what you offer, where you operate and how to contact you, and that structured data (Organization or LocalBusiness, or a more specific type such as Dentist or Restaurant) declares the same facts. The AI-readiness audit checks these and shows what is missing. Publish an llms.txt generated by the llms.txt generator as a cheap extra.
Do your pages answer the question in the first two sentences?
Write each key page the way you would answer a customer on the phone: the answer first, details after. Use headings phrased as the questions buyers ask ("How much do dental implants cost in Kraków?"), keep prices and conditions visible, and add an FAQ. Short, factual, quotable sentences are easier for an assistant to reuse than slogans.
Are you present where buyers and assistants look?
Assistants answer "best X in Y" questions from many sources, not only your site. Complete and keep consistent your name, address and phone on the maps, directory and review sites of your market, and ask satisfied customers for reviews. Which sites matter depends on your industry and country; our industry pages list typical places to start. This part of the checklist is our working approach, not a published ranking rule.
How do you know it is working?
Ask the assistants the questions your customers ask, in their language and for your city, and record who is named, in what order and which sources are cited. Repeat weekly, because answers vary between runs. The free AI Visibility Check does this for you with 10 real buyer questions across ChatGPT and Perplexity and shows your score against three competitors. Learn the background in what GEO is.
What is the order of work?
- Run the AI crawler checker and unblock any search crawler.
- Run the AI-readiness audit and fix the failed checks that cost least: contact details, structured data, meta descriptions.
- Publish an llms.txt.
- Write or rewrite five pages or FAQ answers so the first sentence is the answer.
- Complete your directory and map listings and ask for five reviews this month.
- Run the free check now and again in four weeks and compare.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay ChatGPT to recommend my business?
None of the documentation we cite describes a way to buy organic recommendations. What you can do is remove technical barriers, publish clear information and be present on the sites buyers use.
How long until ChatGPT mentions my business?
It varies. Access changes can take about a day to register, since OpenAI says OAI-SearchBot can take about 24 hours to adjust after a robots.txt update. Content and listing changes take longer, and nothing guarantees a mention, so measure weekly.
Do I need to be technical to do this?
No. The first three steps use free tools and copy-and-paste files. Hand the fixed robots.txt, the llms.txt and the structured data to whoever edits your website.
Does this work for Perplexity and Gemini too?
The same foundations apply: crawlers must be able to read your pages and the pages must be clear. Each engine has its own crawlers and controls, which the crawler guide lists with sources.
Does ChatGPT recommend your business?
Run the free AI Visibility Check: 10 real buyer questions, ChatGPT and Perplexity, your score against 3 competitors. No signup.
Keep reading
- AI Crawlers Explained: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBotWhat GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended do, and whether to allow or block each one in robots.txt.
- How AI Assistants Choose Which Businesses to RecommendHow ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude find businesses to recommend: what the engines document, what they keep secret, and what you can influence.
- llms.txt: What It Is and How to Write One for Your Sitellms.txt is a proposed plain-markdown file that tells AI assistants what your site is about. What the spec says, a worked example and a six-step guide.
- What Is GEO? Generative Engine Optimization ExplainedGEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is how you get ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini to name your business. A plain-English guide and a six-step start.