How to get recommended by ChatGPT

Last checked: Oct 20, 2026. OpenAI's guidance below is quoted from its own documentation (linked in each step). Tool prices are from each vendor's pricing page on that date.

ChatGPT recommends products it can find, understand, and see others vouch for. Nobody can guarantee a spot. OpenAI itself says ChatGPT "ranks search results using multiple factors" and "placement is not guaranteed" (OpenAI Help Center). But most of what stops a small product from being recommended can be fixed. Work through these steps in order.

1. Check where you stand today

Write down 10 to 20 questions a real buyer would ask, such as "what's the best tool for…" or "alternatives to [competitor]". Ask each one in ChatGPT, in a fresh chat, and record:

• whether your brand is named, and at what position in any list
• which competitors are named instead
• which websites are cited, when ChatGPT searches the web

Do this at least twice. Answers vary between runs, so one run is a snapshot, not a verdict. MentionSweep's free score runs 10 questions like this on ChatGPT and Gemini for you.

2. Let OpenAI's search crawler in

OpenAI uses different crawlers for different jobs (Overview of OpenAI Crawlers):

User agent	What it's for	What to do
OAI-SearchBot	Surfacing sites in ChatGPT's search features	Allow it. OpenAI: sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers"
GPTBot	Crawling content that may be used to train OpenAI's models	Your choice. OpenAI says each setting is independent of the others
ChatGPT-User	Visiting a page when a user's request in ChatGPT needs it	Generally allow. OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply because a user triggered the visit, and that it isn't used to decide what appears in search
OAI-AdsBot	Checking landing pages submitted as ChatGPT ads	Only matters if you advertise in ChatGPT

Check three things:

1. Your robots.txt doesn't block OAI-SearchBot (look for Disallow: / under User-agent: * too).
2. Your host, CDN or firewall doesn't block OpenAI's published IP ranges (openai.com/searchbot.json). OpenAI's help center says to "confirm that the website host or content delivery network allows traffic from OpenAI's published searchbot IP addresses." Bot-protection settings often block it without you knowing.
3. You've waited about a day. OpenAI says it "can take ~24 hours from a site's robots.txt update" for its systems to adjust.

3. Get indexed by regular search engines

OpenAI says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers" and rewrites your question into targeted queries it sends them. For how those providers handle queries, it points to Microsoft's and Shopify's privacy policies (OpenAI Help Center). So being indexed in regular search, Bing included, is part of being findable.

• Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console, and submit your sitemap.
• Use IndexNow to tell search engines when pages change. It's supported by Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep (indexnow.org).
• Search site:yourdomain.com to see what's indexed. New sites can take days to weeks to appear.

4. Say plainly what you are

AI assistants can only recommend you for a category if your site clearly says you belong to it. On your homepage, in plain text:

• one sentence: "[Brand] is a [category] for [who]"
• what it does, who it's for, and what it costs, with real numbers
• the problems it solves, in the words your buyers use
• if your name or category is easy to confuse with something else, say what you are not

Avoid relying only on vague taglines. "The future of work" doesn't tell anyone, human or AI, what you sell. Our own checks below show how easily assistants mix up similar names and categories.

5. Publish pages that answer buyer questions

When buyers ask ChatGPT for recommendations, they ask things like "best X for Y", "X vs Y", and "alternatives to X". Write pages that answer those questions directly:

• Comparison and alternative pages: "[You] vs [competitor]" and "[Competitor] alternatives". Be fair. Say who each option suits and when the competitor is the better pick. A one-sided page is easy to spot.
• A clear pricing page with plan names, prices and limits in text, not only in images.
• An FAQ with short, direct answers (1 to 3 sentences each).
• Dates and sources. Say when facts were last checked and link to where they came from.

Use the question as the heading and answer it in the first sentence.

6. Make sure crawlers can read your pages

Many crawlers don't run JavaScript the way a browser does. Check that:

• your key text (what you do, pricing, FAQs) is in the HTML the server sends, not loaded later by scripts
• every page has its own <title>, meta description and canonical URL in the <head>
• important pages aren't behind a login, a cookie wall or a bot challenge

A quick test: curl -A "OAI-SearchBot" https://yourdomain.com/ and check that the output contains your title and main text.

7. Get mentioned on the sites AI cites

AI assistants lean on what other sites say about you. When ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini cite sources for your category's questions, those sources are your shortlist:

• Directories and review sites in your category (for software: G2, Capterra, AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, plus niche directories)
• "Best [category]" roundups. Ask the author to consider you, with a short, factual pitch.
• Communities where your buyers ask for recommendations. Answer helpfully and disclose that you work on the product.

Only collect real reviews from real customers. Fake reviews break platform rules and can get you delisted.

8. Add structured data

Add schema.org JSON-LD for your Organization, your Product or SoftwareApplication (with prices), and FAQPage on pages with FAQs. It states your facts in a machine-readable format. No one outside OpenAI can confirm how much it affects ChatGPT, so add it as cheap hygiene, not as a shortcut.

9. Re-check, then repeat

Ask the same questions again 2 to 4 weeks after you ship changes. Keep the question list fixed so results are comparable, and look at trends over several runs, not single answers.

What we saw in our own checks (small sample)

We track a fixed set of 8 buyer-style questions about our own category. On Oct 19 and Oct 20, 2026 we sent them to OpenAI's API (model gpt-5-mini), once without web search and once with OpenAI's web search tool. That's 2 setups × 2 days, so 4 answers per question. These are API answers, not the ChatGPT app, and the sample is far too small for percentages. Still, three patterns showed up on both days:

• Similar names get mixed up. Asked for "alternatives to Otterly.AI" (an AI search monitoring tool), all 4 answers treated it at least partly as a meeting-notes app like Otter.ai and listed transcription tools. Both answers with web search asked which Otterly we meant, then listed meeting tools anyway. On Oct 20 a meeting recorder was even the first pick under the AI-search option.
• Vague category words get read the wrong way. Asked "What is the best AI visibility tracker?", all 4 answers opened by asking what we meant or by listing tools for monitoring machine-learning models. Only one (with web search, Oct 20) named any AI search visibility tools, as the second of two readings.
• A new brand gets nothing, or a guess. Asked "What is MentionSweep?" on our launch day and the day after, the answers with web search said they couldn't find us and suggested a different product with a similar name. On Oct 20 the answer without web search described a social-listening platform, which MentionSweep is not.

The fix for all three is steps 4 and 7: say exactly what you are (and what you're not) in plain words, and get other sites to say the same.

Ways to track it

Option	Cost (checked Oct 20, 2026)	Good for
By hand in a spreadsheet	Free, plus your time	A first look, very small budgets
MentionSweep	Free score (10 questions, ChatGPT and Gemini); $29 one-time Full Report (50 questions, adds Perplexity); Monitor $39/month (weekly); Agency $149/month for 5 brands	A one-time check with a fix list; weekly monitoring
Otterly.AI	From $29/month (Lite: 15 prompts, daily, on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot)	Daily tracking on several AI search engines
Peec AI	From $95/month (Starter: 50 prompts, choose 3 models, daily; USD prices shown to US visitors)	Marketing teams that want daily dashboards
Profound	Free trial (50 prompts daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews); Enterprise custom	Large companies

Summary checklist

• Wrote 10 to 20 buyer questions and recorded today's answers
• OAI-SearchBot allowed in robots.txt and at the CDN/firewall
• Site added to Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console, sitemap submitted
• Homepage says what you are, who it's for, and the price, in plain text
• Comparison, alternatives, pricing and FAQ pages published, with dates and sources
• Key content readable without JavaScript; unique titles and descriptions
• Listed on the directories and review sites AI cites in your category
• Organization, Product and FAQPage structured data added
• Re-check scheduled for 2 to 4 weeks out

Sources

• OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers and searchbot.json (checked Oct 20, 2026)
• OpenAI Help Center, Searching the web with ChatGPT (checked Oct 20, 2026)
• OpenAI Help Center, Ads in ChatGPT (checked Oct 20, 2026)
• IndexNow (checked Oct 20, 2026)
• Otterly.AI pricing, Peec AI pricing, Profound pricing (checked Oct 20, 2026)
• Our own checks: 8 fixed questions sent to the OpenAI API on Oct 19 and Oct 20, 2026, as described above

Last checked: Oct 20, 2026.