How to rank on ChatGPT: getting your business recommended by AI

Can you actually rank on ChatGPT?

Not in the way you rank on Google. There is no fixed list of positions, answers change from one conversation to the next, and no one can guarantee a mention. What you can do is improve the odds that an AI assistant finds your business, understands what you do, and feels confident naming you.

This work is often called GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). It builds on normal SEO rather than replacing it, which the SEO vs AEO vs GEO guide explains in more detail. Be wary of anyone selling guaranteed ChatGPT placement.

How do AI assistants choose which businesses to recommend?

AI assistants recommend businesses using two sources: what the model learned during training, and what it finds by searching the web live when you ask. Recent questions like "best physiotherapist in Kondapur" usually trigger a live search, so the pages the assistant can fetch at that moment matter most.

When they search, assistants tend to favour businesses that:

• Have pages that clearly answer the question asked, with the service and location stated in plain words.
• Are mentioned consistently across several independent sources, such as directories, review sites, news and lists.
• Have reviews and ratings that describe real experiences.
• Can be read by the assistant's crawler in the first place.

None of these are secret. They are close to what makes a business trustworthy to a human researcher.

Which AI crawlers should you allow?

Allow the crawlers that power AI search answers, or those assistants can't read your pages when someone asks about you. Check your robots.txt with the AI crawler checker.

• OAI-SearchBot fetches pages for ChatGPT search results. GPTBot collects content OpenAI may use for training.
• ClaudeBot is Anthropic's crawler for Claude.
• PerplexityBot indexes pages for Perplexity answers.
• Google-Extended is a control token, not a separate crawler. It decides whether Google may use your content for Gemini models. It does not affect normal Google Search.

You can allow search crawlers and block training crawlers if you prefer. The AI robots.txt rules tool writes the lines for either choice.

What should your website say so AI can quote it?

Your website should state the facts an assistant needs in short, specific sentences it can repeat. Vague lines like "we deliver excellence" give an AI nothing to say about you.

1. Say what you do, where and for whom in the first paragraph of your homepage and About page. For example: a dental clinic in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, offering implants, aligners and root canal treatment since 2012.
2. Give each service its own page with the service and city in the heading.
3. Answer common questions on the page in 40 to 60 words each, using the question finder to find them, and mark them up with the FAQ schema generator.
4. Add business schema with your name, address, phone, hours and service area using the schema generator.
5. Publish an llms.txt file that summarises your business and links your key pages. See what llms.txt is.

Why do mentions and reviews matter for AI?

Mentions and reviews matter because AI assistants look for agreement across sources before naming a business. A business described the same way on its website, Google Business Profile, Justdial and a local news story is easier to trust than one that only describes itself.

• Use the exact same business name, address and phone number everywhere.
• Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current. The local SEO India guide covers this step by step.
• Ask happy customers for reviews that mention the service and area in their own words. Never buy or write fake reviews.
• Look for genuine mentions: industry associations, supplier pages, local press, event listings and best-of lists written by real publications.

How do you test whether AI recommends you?

Test by asking the assistants the questions your customers would ask, and noting who gets named. Do it the same way each month so you can see change over time.

1. Write 10 to 20 prompts customers might use, such as "Which is a good CA firm for startups in Pune?" or "Where can I buy a home theatre system in Chennai?"
2. Run them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, ideally in a logged-out or fresh session.
3. Record whether you are named, whether you are linked, and which competitors and sources appear.
4. Look at the sources the assistant cites. Those are the sites worth being listed or mentioned on.

Answers vary between runs, so look for trends across several weeks rather than reacting to one result.

How SEO Studio helps with AI visibility

SEO Studio checks your site for AI readiness alongside normal SEO. It writes an llms.txt file, robots.txt rules for AI crawlers, clear FAQ answers with schema, business schema and a set of prompts tailored to your business that you can use to test your AI visibility.

It can't make an assistant recommend you, and nothing can promise that. It removes the technical blocks and gives the assistants clean, consistent facts to work with, which is the part fully in your control.