How to get your brand recommended by ChatGPT
To rank in ChatGPT, get your brand named on the websites ChatGPT reads for your topic, and keep your site open to its search bot. ChatGPT names brands it learned about in training and brands it finds on web pages while it answers. So get onto the pages it uses, make your own site clear, and check the answers often.
This work is sometimes called ChatGPT SEO. It is one part of LLM SEO, which covers all the AI tools that write answers.
What does it mean to rank in ChatGPT?
ChatGPT doesn’t show a page of ten links. It writes an answer. When someone asks a buying question, like “what’s the best accounting software for a small shop?”, the answer often names a few brands and says why each one fits.
Ranking in ChatGPT means your brand is one of the names in that answer. The best result is being the brand it recommends first. Some answers also link to web pages. Those links can go to your site, but more often they go to other sites that talk about you.
How does ChatGPT choose which brands to recommend?
ChatGPT gets brand names from two places:
- What it already learned. ChatGPT was trained on a huge amount of text from the web. Brands that many sites write about are brands it already knows.
- What it finds while it answers. When a question needs current facts, ChatGPT searches the web. It turns the question into one or more short searches, reads the pages that come back, and builds its answer from them.
Both show up in our study of 10,000 AI answers. When ChatGPT named brands it already knew, 85% of those mentions had no link to the brand’s own website. In one answer about gaming headsets, ChatGPT named three well-known headset brands. It linked to two review sites and to none of the brands’ own sites.
Brands ChatGPT already knows show up a lot: in our study, 61.07% of the brands an AI named with web search turned off also showed up in ChatGPT’s answers to the same questions.
Source: Web Asset Builders study of 10,000 US keywords, August–September 2026.
The lesson is simple. ChatGPT often names you because of what other sites say about you, not because of your own website.
What our study found about ChatGPT
We checked 10,000 US keywords in ChatGPT on 4 September 2026 and got 9,988 valid answers. We checked the same keywords in Google on 25 August 2026, including its AI Overviews (the AI summaries at the top of some Google results). Here is how ChatGPT compared:
| What we measured | ChatGPT | Google AI Overviews |
|---|---|---|
| Links next to brand mentions that went to other websites | 57.58% | 80.69% |
| Links next to brand mentions that went to the brand’s own site | 42.42% | 19.31% |
| Linked pages that were also in Google’s top 10 | 10.87% | 49.83% |
| Typical Google rank of linked pages found in Google’s results | #21 | #6 |
Three things stand out:
- Other websites matter most. More than half the links next to a brand mention went to someone else’s site.
- Your own site still counts. ChatGPT linked to the brand’s own site far more often than AI Overviews did.
- Google rank is a weak guide. Only about 1 in 10 pages ChatGPT linked to were in Google’s top 10.
ChatGPT also leans on different kinds of sites. Its most-linked sites included big publications, medical groups and product review sites. Reddit showed up in 49.87% of AI Overviews but only 0.31% of ChatGPT answers. On average, the two shared just 3.33% of the pages they linked to. So ChatGPT needs its own plan, separate from how to show up in Google’s AI Overviews.
Does ranking in Google help you rank in ChatGPT?
A little, but less than most people think. Only 10.87% of the pages ChatGPT linked to were in Google’s top 10 for the same keyword. Just 30.19% were in the top 100. When a linked page did rank in Google, its typical spot was #21, which is on page three.
Share of linked pages that were also in Google’s top 10 for the same keyword. Source: Web Asset Builders study of 10,000 US keywords, August–September 2026.
ChatGPT runs its own searches and picks the pages it judges relevant and reliable. A page on page three of Google can still be one it links to. So don’t only chase Google rankings. Look at the pages ChatGPT actually uses for your buyers’ questions.
How to rank in ChatGPT, step by step
1. Let ChatGPT’s search bot read your site
A bot, or crawler, is a program that visits web pages and reads them. ChatGPT finds pages for its search answers with a bot called OAI-SearchBot. Your robots.txt file is a small file on your site that tells bots what they may visit. If it blocks OAI-SearchBot, your pages won’t be shown in ChatGPT’s search answers. Your host or firewall also has to let the bot through.
There is a second bot, GPTBot, that collects pages for training. You can block GPTBot and still allow OAI-SearchBot. If you blocked AI bots to stop training, check that you didn’t block OAI-SearchBot too.
2. List the questions your buyers ask
Write down what buyers ask at each step of buying: when they first learn about the problem, when they compare options, and when they choose. For example: “best [product] for [need]”, “[brand] vs [brand]”, “is [brand] worth it?” and “who does [service] near me?”.
The questions depend on your business. A homeowner looking for a roofer asks different things than a shopper buying running shoes or a team choosing software. See how this works in AI SEO for contractors, AI SEO for ecommerce and AI SEO for SaaS.
3. See which pages ChatGPT uses
Ask ChatGPT each question. When the answer has a Sources button, open it. Write down which sites it links to and which brands it names. Ask each question a few times in new chats, because the answers change.
Expect a short list: in our study, ChatGPT linked to 2.35 pages per answer on average, while Google’s AI Overviews linked to 4.94.
Average number of pages linked per answer. Source: Web Asset Builders study of 10,000 US keywords, August–September 2026.
These pages are your target list. They show what ChatGPT relies on for your topic. If you’d rather not do this by hand, start with our free AI visibility audit. It shows whether AI recommends you or your competitors, and what your buyers ask AI.
4. Get your brand named on those pages
Next, work to get your brand onto the pages from step 3, and onto pages like them. That can mean review sites, “best of” lists, industry news, comparison articles and trusted directories. Aim for accurate mentions on pages that fit your topic.
Don’t try to buy your way in with cheap guest posts. In our study, only 2.36% of the websites ChatGPT linked to were in our catalog of sites that sell guest posts. For AI Overviews it was 2%.
5. Make your own site easy to understand
In our study, 42.42% of the links next to ChatGPT’s brand mentions went to the brand’s own site. So your site matters. Make it easy for ChatGPT to read and repeat:
- Say clearly what you sell, who it’s for, and where you work.
- Answer common buyer questions in plain text, with the answer in the first line.
- Add pages that honestly compare you with other options.
- Keep prices, features and facts up to date, and the same everywhere.
- Put key facts in text, not only in images or PDFs.
6. Check the answers again and again
ChatGPT’s answers change from one chat to the next and from month to month. Run your questions on a schedule and write down what you see. When ChatGPT links to your site, it adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the link, so those visits show up in your analytics. But many mentions come with no link at all, so traffic shows only part of the picture. Here is how to track your brand in AI.
What doesn’t work
- Ranking in Google alone. Only 10.87% of the pages ChatGPT linked to were in Google’s top 10.
- Buying guest posts. Very few of the sites ChatGPT links to sell them.
- One quick fix. No single tactic or file gets you recommended. It takes mentions on the pages ChatGPT uses, a clear website, and regular checks.
- Checking once. One answer tells you very little. No one can promise you a spot in ChatGPT’s answers, so measure over time.
Get your free AI visibility audit
Want to know if ChatGPT recommends your brand today? Our free AI visibility audit shows where you stand in AI, what your buyers ask AI, and how to close the gap. You’ll see if AI recommends you or your competitors when your buyers ask.
