How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT

ChatGPT recommends businesses it can find, describe and trust. To get recommended, make your website clearly say what you do, for whom and where; make every other description of your organisation online agree with it; earn mentions and reviews in sources ChatGPT already trusts; and let its search crawler read your site. Then check every month with the same set of prompts.

That is the short version. Here is how each part works, and what to do first.

How ChatGPT chooses who to recommend

When someone asks ChatGPT “who is a good accountant for small businesses in Milton Keynes?”, the answer comes from two places.

• Live search. For questions like this, ChatGPT usually searches the web, using OpenAI’s own crawler (OAI-SearchBot) and search partners. It reads the pages it finds and cites some of them in its answer.
• What it already knows. The underlying model learned from a huge amount of public text. If your organisation is described often and consistently across the web, the model has a picture of you. If not, it has nothing to go on.

The steps below work on both.

Seven steps to get recommended

1. Ask ChatGPT about yourself first

Before changing anything, ask it the questions your buyers would ask. “Best web agency for membership organisations in the UK.” “Who builds Umbraco websites in London?” “Recommend an AI agency for a professional services firm.” Note whether you appear, what is said and which sources are cited. Save the prompts: you will reuse them every month.

2. Let the crawler in

Check your robots.txt. Some sites block AI crawlers wholesale, sometimes by accident through a plugin or CDN setting. To appear in ChatGPT search results, OAI-SearchBot needs access. GPTBot is OpenAI’s training crawler and can be allowed or blocked separately; blocking it does not stop you appearing in ChatGPT search.

3. Say plainly what you do

Your homepage and service pages should state, in the first lines, what you do, who it is for and where. “We build conversion-first websites for UK membership bodies” gives a model something to repeat. “We craft digital experiences that inspire” does not.

Give each main service its own page, with prices or price ranges where you can publish them, and real examples.

4. Make your details consistent everywhere

Your name, address, phone number, services, founding date and leadership should read the same on your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Companies House, directories and review platforms. Inconsistency makes a model less confident, and less confident models name someone else.

5. Earn mentions in places ChatGPT trusts

Look at the sources ChatGPT cites when it recommends your competitors. They are often comparison articles (“the best X in the UK”), sector directories, trade press, review platforms and client case studies. Getting into those sources, accurately described, is the most reliable way to change who gets named. A mention does not need a link to count.

6. Collect reviews where buyers check

Reviews on Google, Clutch, Trustpilot or your sector’s own platforms give a model specific, third-party evidence about you. Ask happy clients for reviews that mention the service and the outcome, not just “great to work with”.

7. Make your site easy to quote

Write in self-contained paragraphs that name their subject. Add Organization, Service, Review and FAQ structured data. Publish an llms.txt file that summarises who you are and links to your key pages. Answer the common questions directly, as we describe in what is AEO.

What not to do

• Do not stuff pages with “best” claims. Calling yourself “the best agency in London” on your own site is not evidence. Third parties saying it is.
• Do not publish dozens of thin AI-written pages. They dilute your site and do nothing for trust.
• Do not buy fake reviews. Beyond being illegal under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, they put everything else at risk.

How long it takes

Fixes ChatGPT sees through live search, such as clearer service pages, can show up within weeks once pages are recrawled. Changes to what the model “knows” take longer, because they depend on new mentions being published and picked up. Plan on three to six months for a clear shift.

Getting help

This is the core of generative engine optimisation. Our GEO service runs the prompt audit, fixes the gaps on and off your site, and reports every month which assistants name you and what they say. If you want to see it first, ask ChatGPT about Kickass Online and look at what comes back.