How to Get Your Business on ChatGPT

This guide is part of our free local SEO checklist. The claim steps themselves are in claim your business in ChatGPT.

How ChatGPT Picks the Businesses It Names

When someone asks ChatGPT for "a plumber in Austin" or "the best family dentist near me", it usually searches the web first, reads a handful of pages, and writes a short list. We measured 693 of these local answers across 1,390 free scans between July and November 2026 (the data):

• About three in four answers came after a live web search. What ChatGPT can find and read decides what it says.
• The median answer names 5 businesses. 61% name five or more. There are no ads and no page two.
• ChatGPT named the business asked about 19% of the time. When it cited that business's own website, it named it 98% of the time. When it did not, 7%.
• Citations are scattered. 2,519 citations went to 2,031 different domains. Google Maps pages were the single most-cited site, in 8% of answers, followed by review platforms, trade directories and "best in town" lists.

So there are four jobs: claim the profile, make your site quotable, be on the few sites your trade is cited from, and measure. In that order of effort, not of importance: the second one matters most.

Step 1: Claim Your Business in ChatGPT, If You Can

Since 10 November 2026, OpenAI's Business Hub (chatgpt.com/business-hub) lets a business claim the listing ChatGPT shows for it, correct the details, and see mentions, website clicks and discovery topics (OpenAI). It is free at launch and it is a beta.

Two things OpenAI says that most launch-week posts skip. Claiming "doesn't guarantee increased visibility or give you direct control over ChatGPT's independent recommendations". And a published profile cannot be deleted. Claim it to get your facts right and to read the counts, not to rank. The step-by-step is in claim your business in ChatGPT.

Step 2: Make Your Website the Page ChatGPT Quotes

This is the lever behind the 98% figure. ChatGPT names businesses whose pages it has just read. Give it one page per location that answers a buyer's questions in plain text:

• The facts, once, in text. Name as on your sign, street address, phone, opening hours, the services you sell and, where you can, prices or price ranges. Not in an image, not only in a PDF, not only in a footer script. The same facts as your Google Business Profile and your ChatGPT profile.
• Let the bot in. ChatGPT's search crawler is OAI-SearchBot. If your robots.txt blocks it, your pages cannot be cited (OpenAI bots). Check with the free AI crawlability checker.
• Answer the questions people ask. "Do you do emergency call-outs?", "How much is a crown?", "Do you take my insurance?" One short paragraph each, under a heading that is the question. These are the passages an engine quotes.
• Policies and proof on the page. Delivery and returns for a shop, guarantees and licences for a trade, credentials for a clinic. Business Hub asks for your policies; ChatGPT reads them from your site.
• LocalBusiness schema that matches the text. Same name, address, phone and hours in the markup as on the page. Use the free local SEO schema tool.

If you serve several towns, each needs a real page, not the same page with the town swapped. Our service area business SEO guide covers how.

Step 3: Be on the Sites ChatGPT Reads for Your Trade

Of the local answers we measured, 23% cited at least one directory, review or map site. Which ones depends on the trade: Google Maps and the Better Business Bureau across the board, Houzz, Angi and HomeAdvisor for home services, Clutch and GoodFirms for agencies and B2B services, Birdeye and other review platforms for clinics and restaurants, Justdial in India, Checkatrade and Yell in the UK.

• Your Google Business Profile first. It is the most-cited single source in local answers. Our Google Business Profile checklist is the field-by-field version.
• Then the three or four sites that show up for your trade and town. Ask ChatGPT your own money question and look at the sources it lists. Claim and complete those profiles, with the same name, address and phone as everywhere else (NAP consistency).
• Reviews on those sites, steadily. ChatGPT summarises what reviewers say. Ask every customer, never only the happy ones (how to get more Google reviews).
• Skip the long tail. 1,782 of the 2,031 cited domains appeared once. Two hundred directory submissions will not move this.

Step 4: Ask ChatGPT Yourself, and Keep a Log

Business Hub's insights are aggregated: mentions, website clicks, profile views and discovery topics over 7 or 28 days, only above a threshold OpenAI does not publish, and never the prompts themselves. Useful as a trend line, useless for finding out which question you lose or who is named instead. Keep your own list:

1. Write 10 questions a real customer would ask: "emergency electrician in [town]", "best [service] near [landmark]", "[service] cost in [town]".
2. Ask them in ChatGPT once a month, logged out or in a fresh chat. Note whether you are named, who else is, and the sources it lists.
3. Tag your website link in every profile with UTM parameters. Links from ChatGPT arrive with utm_source=chatgpt.com, so GA4 shows real visits where Business Hub shows only clicks.
4. Answers change from run to run. One answer proves nothing; the log over three months does.

What SEOmatic Does Here (and Does Not)

SEOmatic does not claim or edit your ChatGPT profile: there is no API, and OpenAI requires the owner or an authorised representative to do it. What it does: a free AI visibility scan asks ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Overviews your buyers' questions and shows who is named and what is cited. Then its agents make the changes above on your own site, with your approval, and measure the next scans against the questions they left alone.