How do you appear in ChatGPT's answers?
ChatGPT answers questions in two ways. Sometimes it draws on what the language model learned during training. Increasingly, it searches the web live and shows the sources it used. For an SME that second part is the most interesting, because that is where you can have an influence today. OpenAI writes literally in its FAQ for publishers that any public website can appear in ChatGPT's search results. Below we set out what that takes.
Let the right crawler in
OpenAI uses several crawlers, each with its own task. OpenAI's documentation on its crawlers distinguishes three:
- OAI-SearchBot reads your site so it can show it in ChatGPT's search answers. According to OpenAI, sites that keep this crawler out do not appear in those answers.
- GPTBot collects content that may be used to train future models.
- ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a user asks for it in a conversation.
The crawlers are independent of each other. You can choose to refuse training via GPTBot and still remain visible in the search answers via OAI-SearchBot. Check which rules are in your robots.txt. It happens that a site once adopted a general block on "AI bots" without realising it was removing itself from ChatGPT's search answers.
Put the facts about your business clearly on your site
A language model can only pass on what it can find clearly. Many SME sites say a lot about passion and quality, while the basic facts are scattered or missing. Make sure your homepage and contact page state in plain sentences:
- what your business does, in one sentence without jargon
- what type of customer you work for
- in which region or municipalities you operate
- how long you have existed and how many people work there
- how someone can reach you, with address and phone number
Write a separate page for each service that opens with a direct description. A question like "which company in East Flanders installs industrial doors?" is answered with passages that say exactly that. The research on Generative Engine Optimization by Aggarwal and colleagues shows that changes to the text itself can increase visibility in generative answers by up to 40%. For an SME, that starts with clear, verifiable sentences about what you do.
Get mentioned on other sites
When searching, ChatGPT consults several sources and compares what they say. A business that comes back with the same details in several reliable places is easier for an AI service to confirm. Think of:
- your profile on Google and on recognised review sites
- member lists of a sector federation, Unizo or a local business association
- articles in regional media or trade journals
- partner pages of suppliers or manufacturers you work with
Pay attention to consistency. If your old address is still on three sites, there is a real chance that an AI service will pass on that address. A mention on a site that is itself widely consulted usually carries more weight than ten mentions in obscure directories.
Add structured data
Structured data is code in your page that describes your business details in a fixed format, following the schema.org vocabulary. In its documentation on Organization data, Google explains that this code on your homepage helps it understand the administrative details of your organisation and distinguish it from other organisations. With the sameAs property you point to your profiles on other sites, making it clear they belong to the same business.
OpenAI does not say publicly how much weight ChatGPT gives to structured data. It is a small job that helps Google recognise your business. It also removes ambiguity for any other service that reads your page.
What we test
An AI answer changes from day to day and from user to user. Asking something once therefore says little. We work with a fixed set of questions that real customers ask and repeat it at fixed intervals. For each question we note:
- whether your business is mentioned and in which position in the answer
- whether the details are correct: name, region, services, contact information
- which sources ChatGPT cites, because they tell you where you need mentions
- which competitors are mentioned
We also look in your analytics tool at visitors who arrive via ChatGPT. According to its FAQ, OpenAI automatically adds the parameter utm_source=chatgpt.com to links from its search answers, which makes that traffic recognisable.
From Ghent we run this test for SMEs across Flanders, always with questions in Dutch and with the region included, because those are the questions your customers type.
What you can do now
- Go to yourdomain.be/robots.txt and look for OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot or a general rule "User-agent: *" with "Disallow: /". If in doubt, have it checked.
- Ask ChatGPT with the search feature: "who would you recommend for [your service] in [your region]?". See which sources it shows.
- Write one paragraph on your homepage that says in plain language what you do, for whom and where.
Would you like us to fix the technical side, the content and the mentions in one go? Take a look at our one-off optimisation. If you want to organise your customer data and your follow-up better, our sister agency hetaibureau.be can help.