To appear in ChatGPT, your brand has to be in the web sources ChatGPT reads when it answers: your own site, which OpenAI's search crawler must be allowed to reach, plus the reviews, comparison articles, directories and forums that mention you. Let OAI-SearchBot crawl your site, publish pages that answer the exact questions buyers ask, get your products into ChatGPT shopping with clean product data, and earn mentions on the sites ChatGPT already cites in your category.
This guide is for e-commerce and Shopify brands first, with a section for local service businesses such as law firms. You'll learn how ChatGPT chooses what to show, what people actually ask it, a step-by-step plan, how product listings get into ChatGPT shopping, and a simple way to test and track your visibility every month.
How ChatGPT decides which brands to show
ChatGPT answers from two places. The first is what its model learned in training, which is fixed until the next model and can be out of date. The second is live web search: for questions that depend on current information, such as "best running shoes for flat feet" or "is this brand legit", ChatGPT searches the web, reads the pages it finds and writes an answer with links to its sources.
You can influence the second far more than the first, and it is the one that sends traffic. That has three consequences.
- Your site must be reachable. OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they may still appear as navigational links.
- Other sites speak for you. For "best" and "vs" questions, ChatGPT leans on reviews, comparison articles, forums and editorial lists. If those sources don't mention your brand, you're unlikely to be named.
- Consistency builds confidence. When your brand name, product names, prices and claims match across your site and third-party sources, it is easier for ChatGPT to describe you accurately.
OpenAI runs several bots, and each one does a different job. Blocking the wrong one is the most common reason a brand is invisible in ChatGPT.
| User agent | What it does | If you block it |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | Crawls pages so they can appear in ChatGPT search results | Your pages are not shown in ChatGPT search answers |
| ChatGPT-User | Visits a page when a user's request needs it | OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply, and it isn't used to decide search inclusion |
| GPTBot | Collects content that may be used to train OpenAI's models | Your content shouldn't be used for training; search inclusion is controlled separately |
| OAI-AdsBot | Checks landing pages submitted as ChatGPT ads | Only matters if you advertise in ChatGPT |
What people ask ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a mass-market tool. OpenAI says it has more than 900 million weekly active users. The best public data on what they do with it comes from a September 2025 working paper, "How People Use ChatGPT", by researchers at OpenAI and Harvard, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It classified a large sample of consumer conversations by topic.
View the data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Practical guidance | 29% |
| Seeking information | 24% |
| Writing | 24% |
| Multimedia | 7% |
| Technical help | 5% |
Source: Chatterji et al., How People Use ChatGPT, NBER Working Paper 34255, September 2025
Two findings matter for brands. Seeking Information grew from 14% of usage in July 2024 to 24% in July 2025, which is the search-like behavior that surfaces products and brands. And the paper's Seeking Information category explicitly includes "purchasable products", which the authors define as inquiries about products or services available for purchase. In other words, people already use ChatGPT the way they use a search engine before they shop.
Shopping traffic reflects it. Adobe reported that traffic from generative AI tools to US retail sites rose 693.4% year over year during the 2025 holiday season (November 1 to December 31), with a 670% increase on Cyber Monday. Adobe noted that the base of users is still modest, so read these as growth rates, not market share.
Source: Adobe, Holiday Shopping Season Drove a Record $257.8 Billion Online, January 2026
How to appear in ChatGPT, step by step
Work through these in order. The first two remove blockers; the rest build the sources ChatGPT draws on.
- Allow OAI-SearchBot. Run your domain through our Robots.txt and AI Crawler Tester. Check robots.txt and also your CDN, firewall or bot protection, which often block AI crawlers by default. OpenAI says it can take about 24 hours for a robots.txt change to take effect. Our guide on checking whether ChatGPT can crawl your website walks through it.
- Make key content readable as text. Product details, prices, sizing and policies should be in the HTML, not only in images, tabs that load late or scripts.
- Answer the buyer's real questions. List the questions people ask before buying in your category (which one for my use, how it compares, is it worth the price, how does sizing run) and answer each one in the first two sentences of the right page. Our AEO Checker flags pages that bury the answer.
- Write comparison and "best for" content honestly. A buying guide that says who each product is and isn't for is easy to quote. Pages that only praise your own products are less useful as a source.
- Get your products into ChatGPT shopping. Connect your catalog through Shopify's agentic storefronts or OpenAI's product feed, covered in the next section.
- Earn third-party mentions. Reviews, gift guides, comparison articles, Reddit threads and niche publications are what ChatGPT reads for "best" questions. See the section on mentions below.
- Keep facts consistent everywhere. Use the same brand name, product names, prices and claims on your site, marketplaces, social profiles and press pages. Add Organization and Product structured data that matches the visible page.
- Test monthly and fix the gaps. Use the prompt table later in this guide. The sources that appear for competitors are your to-do list.
We'll benchmark you against your top three competitors on Google and in AI answers, show which pages are ready to be cited and price out the fixes.
How to get your products into ChatGPT shopping
When someone asks ChatGPT for product recommendations, it can show product listings with images, prices and links. OpenAI says these product results are organic, not ads, and that it may draw on product data merchants provide as well as publicly available product information. There are two main routes in for a store.
Shopify stores: agentic storefronts
Shopify's Help Center says agentic storefronts lets customers discover and buy your products in AI channels, and that it is active by default for eligible stores. You manage it in the Shopify admin under Sales channels, in the Agentic section. Your products reach ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog.
Other platforms: OpenAI's product feed
OpenAI's commerce documentation describes a product feed, in CSV or JSON, that merchants share with OpenAI. It should be secure and regularly refreshed, and include identifiers, descriptions, pricing, inventory, media and fulfillment options. OpenAI says recommended attributes improve ranking, relevance and user trust. The checkout side runs on the Agentic Commerce Protocol, in which OpenAI is not the merchant of record.
| AI channel | How products get there (Shopify) | Where checkout happens |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Shopify Catalog via agentic storefronts | Your own online store checkout, in ChatGPT's in-app browser or a new tab |
| Google AI Mode and Gemini | Shopify Catalog, the Google and YouTube channel, or Merchant Center | In the AI channel only if you turn on direct checkout |
| Microsoft Copilot | Shopify Catalog via agentic storefronts | In the AI channel only if you turn on direct checkout |
| Meta | Shopify Catalog via agentic storefronts | In the AI channel only if you turn on direct checkout |
Because ChatGPT sends shoppers to your own checkout, your product page and checkout still decide whether the visit turns into a sale. Shopify also notes you can't review ChatGPT order history inside Shopify, so track these sessions in your own analytics. Our guide to ChatGPT and Shopify covers the store setup in more detail.
Earn mentions on the sources ChatGPT cites
For "best" and comparison questions, your own site is only one voice. ChatGPT tends to name the brands that several independent sources agree on. The fastest way to find those sources is to look at what ChatGPT cites today.
- Collect the citations. Ask ChatGPT your top 10 buying questions and open the sources for each answer. List every domain that appears.
- Sort them by type. Typical groups are editorial reviews and gift guides, comparison sites, marketplaces, forums such as Reddit, YouTube reviews and niche communities.
- Close the gaps. Pitch products to the publications that review your category, send samples to credible reviewers, answer real questions in communities as a named brand representative, and make sure marketplace listings carry the same facts as your site.
- Fix wrong or old descriptions. If a cited source has outdated prices or discontinued products, ask for an update. ChatGPT repeats what its sources say.
Our guides to ChatGPT brand mentions and unlinked brand mentions go deeper on outreach. Mentions don't need a link to help ChatGPT associate your brand with a category.
How to appear in ChatGPT for local searches
The same approach works for local service businesses, such as law firms, clinics or contractors. When someone asks "who is a good personal injury lawyer in Denver", ChatGPT usually searches the web because the answer depends on current, local information, and it reads directories, review sites, maps listings and local articles.
- Build one strong page per service and location. State who you help, where, what the process looks like and how fees work. Avoid thin pages that swap city names.
- Keep your details identical everywhere. Use the same name, address, phone number, hours and services on your site, Google Business Profile, Bing Places for Business and Apple Business Connect. OpenAI hasn't said which maps or business data providers it uses, so cover all of them.
- Claim directory profiles. For law firms, that includes directories such as Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell and your state or local bar listing.
- Earn reviews the right way. Ask satisfied clients for honest reviews and reply to every one. Our post on Google reviews and AI rankings explains why they matter.
Lawyers have an extra rule to follow: everything published to win AI visibility is still lawyer advertising. ABA Model Rule 7.1 prohibits false or misleading communications about a lawyer's services, and many states restrict terms like "specialist". Our attorney reputation management guide covers the legal side.
Built from 7,960 live pages and 197 A/B tests, the $100M AI Visibility Roadmap shows how to get cited by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity.
How to test and track ChatGPT visibility
ChatGPT answers vary with wording, location and chat history, so test patterns, not single answers. Use a Temporary Chat so your past conversations don't shape the result, run each prompt a few times, and record who is named and which sources appear.
| Prompt to test | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| What are the best [product type] for [use case]? | Whether you're named, and which reviews and lists are cited |
| Is [your brand] good? What do customers say? | How accurately ChatGPT describes your reviews and reputation |
| [Your brand] vs [competitor] for [use case] | Where competitors have stronger sources than you |
| I need [problem solved] under [price]. What should I buy? | Whether your product pages and listings show up in shopping results |
| Where can I buy [your product] online? | Whether ChatGPT links to your store or to a marketplace |
Then measure the traffic. In GA4, look at sessions where the source is chatgpt.com, since ChatGPT often adds a utm_source=chatgpt.com tag to the links it shows. Track conversion rate and revenue for those sessions, not just visits. For a wider view across Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, see our AI search visibility guide.
What does not work
- Buying ChatGPT ads to get recommended. OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT in 2026 and says ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. Ads and recommendations are separate.
- Expecting llms.txt to do the job. OpenAI's crawler documentation is built around robots.txt and its user agents. Our post on whether you need llms.txt explains where it fits.
- Keyword-stuffed "AI pages". Pages written for a bot rather than a buyer rarely get cited, because they don't answer anything better than existing sources.
- Chasing one answer. A single screenshot of ChatGPT naming you proves little. Track the same prompts monthly and look at the trend.
Your first 30 days
Week one, confirm OAI-SearchBot can reach your site through robots.txt and your CDN, and connect your catalog through agentic storefronts or a product feed. Week two, rewrite the opening of your top product, collection and guide pages so each answers its main question in two sentences. Week three, run the prompt table and list every source cited for competitors. Week four, start outreach to the three sources that appear most often, and set up a GA4 view for chatgpt.com traffic.
If you'd like a team to run this for your brand, see our ChatGPT SEO service or get in touch.
Book a free 30-minute call. You'll get a competitor benchmark on Google and AI answers, your prioritized fixes and the revenue math behind them.
