GUIDE

How to get ChatGPT to recommend your business

In our October 2026 study of 218 answers, ChatGPT cited 2.2 URLs per answer on average, and the first search's position 1 result was cited 55.5%.

Updated October 30, 20265 min read

2.2Average URLs cited per ChatGPT answer (FoundByChat, Oct 2026)
55.5%Citation rate for the first search's #1 result (FoundByChat, Oct 2026)
3.3xOdds lift for plumbers on cited pages (FoundByChat, Oct 2026)

In short

FoundByChat's October 2026 study (218 answers) found ChatGPT cited 2.2 different URLs per answer on average and 10.3% of retrieved web results. Position 1 was cited 55.5% of the time vs. 0.4% at position 16+.
Across 4,203 labeled results in 211 answers, pages on a company's own site were cited 20.1% of the time when retrieved, versus 3.9% for third-party pages about it.
Listed businesses on cited pages had 3.3x odds of being named for plumbers and 2.1x for dentists.

OpenAI says web search is available on Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu, and to logged-out users; ChatGPT may search automatically when a question would benefit from current information. In FoundByChat's local tests, businesses listed on pages ChatGPT cited were more likely to be named in the answer.

ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers; when it does, it typically rewrites the query into one or more targeted queries. In a FoundByChat study, ChatGPT cited 10.3% of the web results it retrieved. In an August 20, 2025 analysis of 118,931 fan-out queries, Ahrefs found ChatGPT ran 1.78 searches per prompt on average. In a July 2026 study of 1,249 answers, RESONEO found 63.6% of search results in free instant mode came from OpenAI's index ("labrador") and 34.7% from scraping provider "bright", while paid thinking mode drew 74.6% from "bright". Microsoft also states that its Web IQ grounding service, launched June 2, 2026 on the Bing index, powers ChatGPT.

Once ChatGPT retrieves pages, citation rates varied by position in FoundByChat's study. In our October 2026 study of 218 answers, citation rates dropped sharply after the top three results.

Position in ChatGPT's first search	Citation rate in the answer	Source
Position 1	55.5% (95% CI: 49.1% to 61.9%)	FoundByChat (Oct 2026)
Position 2	34.9%	FoundByChat (Oct 2026)
Position 3	27.5%	FoundByChat (Oct 2026)
Positions 4 to 5	14.4%	FoundByChat (Oct 2026)
Positions 6 to 10	8.1%	FoundByChat (Oct 2026)
Positions 11 to 15	2.4%	FoundByChat (Oct 2026)
Position 16 and lower	0.4%	FoundByChat (Oct 2026)

Steps that may help your business appear in ChatGPT recommendations

To be eligible for ChatGPT search, allow OAI-SearchBot and OpenAI's published IP ranges. See ChatGPT citations. Placement is not guaranteed, as OpenAI notes in its help documentation, and the steps below are suggestions to consider.

1. Allow OAI-SearchBot and serve plain HTML

OpenAI's help center states that to be eligible for ChatGPT search, you must allow OAI-SearchBot and OpenAI's published IP ranges. Keep OpenAI's bots distinct: OAI-SearchBot is the search crawler, GPTBot is the training crawler, and ChatGPT-User fetches pages for users. Blocking GPTBot does not remove your site from ChatGPT search.

2. Publish clear pricing, product, and help pages on your own site

ChatGPT cites your own page as evidence about you. In FoundByChat's October 2026 study of 4,203 labeled search results in 211 answers, pages on a company's own site had 13.1 times the citation odds of third-party pages about it when retrieved (20.1% vs. 3.9%). By page type, the share of retrieved pages that ChatGPT cited was:

Vendor pricing pages: 51.2%
Vendor product pages: 28.4%
Docs and help pages: 23.0%
Vendor blog posts: 14.5%
Third-party listicles and reviews: 7.5%
"A vs B" comparison pages: 4.2%
PDFs: 0.4%

Put your core facts and pricing in HTML text near the top of your pages rather than inside PDFs.

3. Get listed on the pages ChatGPT already cites for your category

In FoundByChat's local tests, businesses listed on pages ChatGPT cited were more likely to be named in the answer. In our October 2026 local tests, businesses listed on cited pages had 3.3 times the odds of being named for plumbers and 2.1 times for dentists (for agencies, the 1.6 times lift was not statistically significant). Ask ChatGPT your buyer questions, check the cited URLs, and apply to be listed there.

4. Check your Bing and web search rankings

On February 6, 2025, Seer Interactive found that 87% of ChatGPT search citations matched Bing's top 20 organic results and 56% matched Google's. By contrast, Ahrefs found on August 20, 2025 across 118,931 fan-out queries that only 6.82% of ChatGPT's retrieved results were in Google's top 10 and 83.39% did not appear in Google's results at all. Ensure your pages are indexed in Bing and target the terms ChatGPT uses when rewriting prompts. Read more in our guide to ChatGPT SEO.

5. Clean up the 200-character snippet ChatGPT keeps

ChatGPT's search stores your page title and a snippet of about 200 characters. Menu or cookie text can leak into the snippet. Put a clear opening sentence right after your H1.

How to check if ChatGPT search finds and cites your pages

First, run the free GEO audit on key pages (5 audits a day, no account needed). It fetches your page using the OAI-SearchBot user agent, rebuilds the title and ~200-character snippet ChatGPT keeps, looks the page up in ChatGPT, and scores your page out of 100 across bot access, HTML text without JavaScript, snippet leaks, facts up front, JSON-LD, llms.txt, robots.txt, noindex, and your sitemap.

Second, use FoundByChat to monitor customer questions. FoundByChat asks ChatGPT your questions with web search on every 2 hours as a user in the US (English) or the Netherlands (Dutch). It records whether your pages are "Found" or "Cited", tracks their usual search position, lists your "Pages in ChatGPT's index" with the stored title and snippet, and emails you on "New in the index", "Snippet changed", or "No search results" (three checks in a row). Start free with Google or an email link. See how to monitor your pages in ChatGPT search.

Common mistakes when trying to get recommended

Pouring budget into Reddit threads for citations: OpenAI has 18 publisher content partners including Reddit (Search Engine Land, October 21, 2026 update). Yet in our October 2026 study of 218 answers, Reddit made up 28% of retrieved web results but only 2 of 2,462 citations.
Putting specs and pricing in PDFs: PDFs were cited 0.4% of the time when retrieved, versus 51.2% for vendor pricing pages.
Relying on a single manual check: When ChatGPT search partners with other search providers, it typically rewrites the query into one or more targeted queries sent to them. One test does not prove a page change caused a citation change; track questions over time with FoundByChat.

FOUNDBYCHAT

Know the moment ChatGPT picks up your pages

We ask ChatGPT your questions every 2 hours and mail you what its index picked up or rewrote. Free to start: sign in with Google or an email link.

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Questions

Does blocking GPTBot stop ChatGPT from recommending my business?

Blocking GPTBot does not remove a site from ChatGPT search. GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler, whereas OAI-SearchBot is the search crawler used for ChatGPT search. To be eligible for ChatGPT search, allow OAI-SearchBot and OpenAI's published IP ranges; placement is not guaranteed.

Where does ChatGPT get the business names it recommends?

In FoundByChat's local tests, businesses listed on pages ChatGPT cited were more likely to be named in the answer. RESONEO observed results from OpenAI's own index ("labrador") and from "bright". Peec AI reported on September 4, 2026 that ChatGPT's responses labeled result sources between May 21 and July 21, 2026 with "labrador", "bright", "oxylabs", and "serp", and OpenAI says ChatGPT for Enterprise and Edu may share disassociated search queries with Bing.

Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitors instead of me?

In our October 2026 local study, businesses listed on pages ChatGPT cited had 3.3 times the odds of being named for plumbers and 2.1 times for dentists.

Does ChatGPT share my exact location when searching for local businesses?

According to OpenAI's help center in October 2026, ChatGPT search may share a general location derived from the user's IP address with search providers to return relevant local results. It never shares the IP address itself or account details.