How to get your business on ChatGPT: what ChatGPT search reads, and 9 steps for UK businesses

TL;DR: You cannot pay or submit your way into ChatGPT’s answers. ChatGPT search rewrites a question into web searches, reads what comes back and cites the pages it trusts. To be one of them, let OpenAI’s crawler read your site, get indexed by Bing, keep your Google and Bing listings complete, and publish plain answers about what you sell, where and for how much.

Key takeaways

• To get your business on ChatGPT, your website has to be readable by OpenAI’s search crawler, present in the indexes ChatGPT search draws on, and clear enough about what you do that ChatGPT can match it to a customer’s question.
• OpenAI says sites that opt out of its OAI-SearchBot crawler will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to reach its systems.
• Bing matters. Microsoft announced in 2023 that Bing was coming to ChatGPT as the default search experience, and OpenAI’s help page still points to Microsoft’s privacy statement for the search providers it uses.
• Nobody can sell you a guaranteed spot in ChatGPT search. OpenAI says placement is not guaranteed and that shopping results are not ads.
• ChatGPT had 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million a year earlier, according to Ofcom.
• On our own site, visits from ChatGPT arrive tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com, so you can count them in your analytics.

A customer asks ChatGPT for a florist in Fareham that can deliver tomorrow. ChatGPT searches the web, reads a handful of pages and names three businesses, with links. If your shop is not one of the three, that customer never hears of it.

This guide explains how to get your business on ChatGPT if you run a UK small business. It covers how ChatGPT search finds and chooses businesses, using OpenAI’s own help pages, and nine steps you can take this week, from a one-line robots.txt check to the reviews other websites hold about you. We run these checks on our own site, and one of our own enquiries arrived straight from a ChatGPT answer.

How do you get your business on ChatGPT?

There is no form to submit and no fee that buys a place in the answers. You get your business on ChatGPT by letting OpenAI’s crawler read your website, making sure Bing has indexed it, keeping your Google and Bing listings complete, and publishing clear answers about what you sell, where you sell it and what it costs.

OpenAI is direct about the limits. Its help page on searching the web with ChatGPT says ChatGPT ranks results using multiple factors intended to help people find relevant, reliable information, and that placement is not guaranteed. The same page says that to be eligible at all, a site must allow OAI-SearchBot to crawl it and must let traffic through from OpenAI’s published crawler addresses.

So the work splits into two parts. The first is technical and takes an afternoon: access, indexing and listings. The second takes longer: pages that answer real questions, and a reputation on other websites that ChatGPT can read.

Why does ChatGPT matter for a UK business?

More of the questions customers used to type into Google now go to an AI assistant first, and the UK numbers are large. Ofcom reported in December 2025 that ChatGPT had 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million in the same months of 2024, about five times as many.

The same Ofcom report on how the UK goes online found that about 30% of searches now show AI overviews, and that 53% of adults say they see these summaries often. AI search is now part of how people look for things, whether they open ChatGPT or stay on Google.

Most of those questions have nothing to do with buying. The ones that do tend to be close to a decision: who can fix a boiler in Havant this Saturday, which wedding venue near Winchester takes 120 guests, where to get a birthday cake made in Southsea. Those are the answers worth being in.

How does ChatGPT search find and choose businesses?

ChatGPT turns your question into one or more web searches, sends them to the search providers it works with, reads the pages that come back and writes an answer with citations. For local questions it can use your approximate location, worked out from your IP address, and on the iPhone and Android apps an answer can include a map.

OpenAI’s help page gives the details. ChatGPT search typically rewrites a question into targeted queries, and may send more specific follow-up queries after reading the first results. For a question such as good restaurants near me, it can turn your approximate location into a city name and search for that, without sharing your IP address or account details with the search provider.

Two more lines on that page matter for a business. ChatGPT may share a general location with trusted third-party providers that supply local information, such as nearby business listings. And for how search providers handle those queries, OpenAI points readers to two privacy policies: Microsoft’s and Shopify’s.

Web search works on every ChatGPT plan, and people who are not signed in can use it too. The model reads more than one source, so a business named in several places, consistently, has a better chance of making the shortlist than one with a single page.

Step 1: let OAI-SearchBot read your website

OpenAI finds pages for ChatGPT search with a crawler called OAI-SearchBot. Its crawler documentation says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, although they can still appear as navigational links. If your site blocks it, nothing else you do to get your business on ChatGPT will help.

OpenAI runs three different agents, and they do different jobs. Blocking one does not block the others.

Agent	What OpenAI uses it for	What to do
OAI-SearchBot	Finding pages to show in ChatGPT search	Allow it
GPTBot	Collecting content that may be used to train OpenAI’s models	Your choice, it does not change search
ChatGPT-User	Visiting a page because a user asked ChatGPT to	Nothing, robots.txt may not apply

To check, open your own address with /robots.txt on the end in a browser. If you see a group that names OAI-SearchBot followed by Disallow: /, ChatGPT search cannot show your pages. A group for User-agent: * with Disallow: / blocks every crawler, which sometimes happens when a site is copied from a test version and the setting is never switched back. OpenAI says it can take about 24 hours for its systems to notice a robots.txt change.

Robots.txt is only half of it. OpenAI also asks site owners to confirm that their host or content delivery network allows traffic from its published crawler addresses, and some hosts now have their own switches for AI crawlers. Our own host, Hostinger, shows AI crawler visits in its CDN settings with a block switch for each bot, separate from robots.txt. Check both places.

Step 2: make sure Bing can find your site

Bing is one of the indexes behind ChatGPT search. Microsoft announced in May 2023 that Bing was coming to ChatGPT as the default search experience, and OpenAI’s help page still lists Microsoft’s privacy statement for its search providers. A site that Bing has not indexed gives ChatGPT less to find.

Many small businesses only ever set up Google Search Console. Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools as well, submit your sitemap there and check that your important pages are indexed. Bing also supports IndexNow, which its own team describes as notifying participating search engines whenever content is added, updated or removed, so new pages get looked at sooner.

Bing Webmaster Tools now has a report built for this question. Microsoft launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools on 10 February 2026. It shows how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot, in AI-generated summaries in Bing and in select partner integrations, with total citations, cited pages and the grounding queries behind them. It does not cover ChatGPT, but it is the closest thing a small business has to an AI citation report.

Step 3: complete your Google and Bing business listings

AI search answers about local businesses lean on business listings. OpenAI says ChatGPT may share a general location with trusted providers that supply nearby business listings, so the details in those listings need to be complete and identical everywhere: name, address, phone, opening hours, categories, website and photos.

Start with the two big listings. Our guide to setting up a Google Business Profile covers Google, and our guide to Bing Places for Business explains how to copy that profile across to Bing in a few minutes, and the catches we hit when we did it for ourselves.

Consistency is the part people skip. Bing’s own help pages say it checks the details business owners submit against information found across search engines, websites and social media, and recommends keeping your name, address, phone number and website the same on every channel. If your Facebook page shows an old number and your website a new one, an AI answer can repeat either.

Step 4: answer the questions customers ask, on your own pages

ChatGPT search cites pages that answer the exact question asked. Give each service its own page that says what it is, who it is for, which areas you cover, what it costs and how to book, with the answer in the first two or three sentences. A page that opens with a slogan gives the model nothing to quote.

Bing’s AI Performance announcement says the same thing in its advice to site owners: clear headings, tables and FAQ sections help surface key information, regular updates help AI systems use the current version of a page, and claims should be backed with examples, data and references.

In practice, that means:

• one page per service, with a heading that matches how people ask, such as How much does a boiler service cost in Havant?
• a short, direct answer under each heading, then the detail
• a table where people compare options, such as prices by size or package
• an FAQ section with the questions you hear on the phone
• a visible date, so readers and machines can see the page is current

Structured data helps search engines read your facts reliably. A LocalBusiness block states your name, address, opening hours and services in a format machines understand, and our free local business schema generator writes one for you to paste into your site.

Step 5: put prices, areas and opening hours in plain text

If a fact only exists inside a photo, a PDF menu or a price list image, ChatGPT may never read it. Write your prices, or at least a from price, the towns you cover and your opening hours as ordinary text on your pages, and keep them the same as your listings.

A question such as how much does a wedding cake cost in Portsmouth can only be answered with your name if a page states your price. Businesses often hide prices because every job is different, and then lose the question to a competitor who published a range. A sentence such as cakes start from £180 for 50 guests gives an AI answer something concrete to cite.

We follow this on our own site. Every service page states a from price in plain text, such as websites from £300 a year including hosting, the domain and five pages, so the price can be quoted correctly wherever it is read.

Step 6: earn reviews and mentions on other websites

AI answers lean on what other websites say about you. Bing’s guide to how it ranks business listings says listings with more positive reviews and ratings on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor count as more popular, and that the more a business is mentioned across the web, the more likely it is to appear in results.

OpenAI’s shopping help page shows the same habit for products: ChatGPT can display review summaries that it builds from reviews on public websites, and OpenAI says it does not verify those reviews or ratings. Whatever customers write about you in public is raw material for the answer.

Ask every happy customer for a Google review, reply to the reviews you get, and keep your profile current on the directories and trade bodies in your sector. Local press, a supplier’s case study or a mention by a business association all count as mentions. Our guide on how to respond to Google reviews has replies you can adapt for good and bad reviews.

Step 7: if you sell products, make your catalogue readable

For shopping questions, ChatGPT shows product results that OpenAI says are selected independently and are not ads. It builds them from structured product data such as price and description, from first-party and third-party providers, and ranks merchants on factors such as availability, price, quality and whether they make the item.

OpenAI’s shopping help page says merchants on Shopify are already included through Shopify Catalog, with no extra work needed. Other merchants can apply to send OpenAI a direct product feed. Either way, the basics decide whether your product is shown correctly: a clear product name, a full description, the right price, stock levels and delivery terms.

The same page warns that price changes can take time to show. If you run a sale, update the price on your site first and expect a delay before ChatGPT reflects it. Our comparison of Shopify and WooCommerce covers the two most common ways to run a UK online shop.

Step 8: restaurants, connect a booking system ChatGPT can show

ChatGPT can find restaurants and show available reservation times. OpenAI’s help page says availability comes from OpenTable, Resy or Yelp: OpenTable works globally, Resy only in the United States, and Yelp reservations in the United States and Canada. For a UK restaurant, OpenTable is the one of the three ChatGPT can book today.

That does not mean every restaurant should join OpenTable. Its fees and cover charges add up, and our comparison of UK restaurant booking software sets them against commission-free systems. Weigh the extra bookings from ChatGPT against what you pay per cover, and keep your own booking page and your Reserve with Google button working either way.

Whichever route you choose, make the menu a web page and not only a PDF, and state your opening hours, dietary options and private dining capacity in plain text. Those are the details people ask ChatGPT about before they book.

Step 9: measure what ChatGPT sends you

You can count ChatGPT visits. On our own site, the ChatGPT visits we can see arrived with ?utm_source=chatgpt.com on the end of the address, and most came with no referrer at all, so a basic report would have counted them as direct visits. In Google Analytics, look for chatgpt.com in the source report.

One of those visits turned into an enquiry. The visitor landed on our social media management page from a ChatGPT answer and sent the enquiry form two minutes later. A single example proves little about volume, but it shows the traffic is real and that it arrives ready to talk.

Check by hand as well. Once a month, ask ChatGPT the five questions your customers ask, with search switched on and your town in the question, and write down which businesses it names and which pages it cites. When a competitor keeps appearing, open the cited page and compare it with yours.

What mistakes stop a business being recommended by ChatGPT?

The most common one is a block nobody meant to set: a security plugin, a CDN setting or a robots.txt left over from a test site. Check robots.txt and your host’s bot settings before anything else.

The second is inconsistency. A business that shows three different phone numbers across its website, Google, Bing and Facebook gives every system a reason to doubt the details, and Bing says it compares those details across the web.

The third is hiding the facts. Prices inside images, menus only as PDFs and service areas that are never written down all leave ChatGPT with nothing to quote.

The last is paying for promises. Anyone who guarantees that ChatGPT will recommend your business is promising something OpenAI itself says it does not guarantee. Spend the money on the listings, pages and reviews above instead.

What to do this week

Most of the work to show up on ChatGPT fits into one week, in this order:

1. Open your robots.txt and confirm OAI-SearchBot is not blocked, then check your host or CDN for AI crawler switches.
2. Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap.
3. Import your Google Business Profile into Bing Places, and fix any detail that differs between them.
4. Write a from price, your service areas and your opening hours as plain text on your main pages.
5. Rewrite the first two sentences of each service page so they answer the question the page is for.
6. Ask five recent customers for a Google review.
7. Ask ChatGPT the five questions your customers ask, note who it names, and repeat next month.
8. If you are not sure where your site stands, run our free website check.

Frequently asked questions

Can you pay to get your business on ChatGPT?

Not in the answers. OpenAI says placement in search results is not guaranteed and that product results are selected independently and are not ads. OpenAI does show ads in ChatGPT, but they are separate from the answers.

Does ChatGPT use Bing?

Microsoft announced in May 2023 that Bing was coming to ChatGPT as the default search experience, and OpenAI’s help page lists Microsoft’s privacy statement for its search providers. OpenAI also runs its own search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, so both Bing and your own site matter.

How long does it take to show up on ChatGPT?

OpenAI says a robots.txt change reaches its search systems in about 24 hours. Listings take longer: Bing Places says publishing usually takes 7 to 12 days after verification, and up to two weeks outside North America. Reviews and mentions build over months.

Should I block GPTBot?

That is a separate choice. GPTBot collects content that may be used to train OpenAI’s models, and blocking it does not stop ChatGPT search from showing your site, as long as OAI-SearchBot is allowed.

How do I know if ChatGPT sends me customers?

Look for chatgpt.com as a source in Google Analytics. On our own site, ChatGPT visits arrive with utm_source=chatgpt.com in the address, often with no referrer. Ask new customers how they found you as well.

Want your business found in AI search?

We help UK small businesses get found on Google, Bing and AI assistants: listings, website structure, and pages that answer what customers ask. See our local SEO service, or start with a free website check and we will tell you what is stopping your site from being found.