How to see if ChatGPT recommends your business

Short answer: ask ChatGPT the questions your customers would ask, without your business name in them, such as "best coffee shop in Denver" or "most trusted CRM for small business". Ask about 8 of them in fresh chats with search on. Note whether you're named, in what spot, and who's named instead. Then click the sources under each answer. Those pages are where ChatGPT got its picks, and they're what you can work on.

Why asking ChatGPT about yourself isn't enough

The first thing most owners try is "What do you know about [my business]?" That tells you whether ChatGPT can find or recognize you. It doesn't tell you whether ChatGPT recommends you when someone who has never heard of you asks for help choosing.

Those are different questions. A customer types "best email marketing platform for small business", not your name. So the test that matters is the unbranded question.

Step 1: Write 8 questions your customers would ask

Use your category, and your city if you're local. Mix in the ways people actually ask:

1. What is the best {category} in {city}?
2. Can you recommend a good {category}?
3. Top {category} options right now
4. Which {category} has the best reviews?
5. Best value {category}
6. Who is the most trusted {category}?
7. What {category} do experts recommend?
8. Highest rated {category} in 2026

These are the 8 question shapes AskRank uses. Add your own if you like, but keep your business name out of every one.

Step 2: Ask them the right way

• Start a new chat for each question. A temporary chat, or a logged-out session if that's available to you, keeps earlier conversations and memory from steering the answer.
• Make sure search is on. When ChatGPT searches, it shows source links you can check. Without search, you're seeing what the model remembers from training, and there are no sources to follow.
• Log each answer. Question, named or not, position, who else was named, and the sources.
• Expect answers to change. The same question can give a different list a few minutes later. Treat one run as a sample, not a verdict. Look for patterns across all 8.

Step 3: Score what you see

A quick way to turn 8 answers into one number (this is how AskRank scores):

• Named first: 100 points
• Named second: 80
• Named third: 65
• Named lower down: 50
• Not named: 0

Average the 8 and you get a score out of 100.

Step 4: Follow the sources

This is the most useful step. Under each answer, ChatGPT shows the pages it used. Click them and note:

• Which sites come up again and again
• How old the pages are
• Whether you're on them, and what they say about you and your competitors

In our scans, a few pages did a lot of the work (details below). If the same page keeps feeding the answer, getting on that page or getting it updated is probably worth more than another tweak to your homepage.

Step 5: Make sure ChatGPT can read your site

These are free and mostly one-time:

• Don't block OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's docs say OAI-SearchBot is the crawler that surfaces sites in ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot is a different crawler used for training, and blocking GPTBot doesn't by itself remove you from ChatGPT search. OpenAI says robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours to apply. Source: OpenAI crawlers.
• Check your firewall or CDN. If it blocks bots, OpenAI publishes the search crawler's IP ranges at openai.com/searchbot.json.
• Serve real text. Your main pages should load as readable HTML, not a blank page that only fills in with JavaScript.
• Say the plain facts on your own site. Use your exact business name, what you do, your city or area, your hours and contact details, and what you're best for. Add a short FAQ that uses the words customers use.
• Submit a sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. OpenAI doesn't publish exactly which search index ChatGPT relies on, so treat this as basic hygiene, not a guarantee.
• If you sell products, OpenAI has a merchant program for product feeds in ChatGPT shopping: chatgpt.com/merchants.

Step 6: Get onto the pages ChatGPT already reads

Use your list from step 4:

• Claim and complete your listings on the directories and review sites that showed up.
• Ask happy customers for reviews that mention specific things ("best oat latte", "set up our CRM in a day").
• Pitch the roundups and "best of" articles that were cited. If one is out of date, tell the author what changed.
• If a competitor keeps getting named next to you, publish an honest "{you} vs {them}" page.

Step 7: Re-check on a schedule

Run the same 8 questions again every month, or every week if you're actively making changes. Keep the questions identical so results are comparable.

What we found when we ran this on 5 categories

On October 19, 2026 we ran the 8 questions above for 5 software categories through OpenAI's API with web search turned on, one run per question. That's 40 answers with 295 cited links in total.

What stood out:

• Being well known didn't guarantee a recommendation. Mailchimp only came up on the "most trusted", "experts recommend" and "highest rated" questions, at #3 or #4. MailerLite, Brevo, ActiveCampaign and Constant Contact were named in all 8.
• A few pages carried a lot of weight. TechRadar was cited in 32 of the 40 answers (69 of the 295 links). For website builders it appeared in all 8 answers.
• Old pages still count. In the email category, 7 of 8 answers cited the same article, titled for 2023. Logo download sites were cited as sources too.
• Directory pages count. In the AI video category, 3 answers cited the same AI-tools directory page about Kapwing.
• Reddit didn't show up at all: 0 of 295 links. Some large industry studies report Reddit as a top source in ChatGPT citations, so this is probably about our questions and our small sample. Test your own category instead of assuming.

Local businesses work the same way. An anonymized Denver coffee shop we scanned was named in 7 of 8 answers (score 88/100), and the most-cited sources were Google and local coffee guide sites.

What's known, and what's guessed, about how ChatGPT picks sources

Known (documented by OpenAI): OAI-SearchBot controls whether your pages can appear in ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot is for training. ChatGPT-User is used when a person's request makes ChatGPT fetch a page. When search is used, answers include source links. The API's web search tool returns those citations too, which is what makes testing like this possible.

Seen in our data, not proven in general: answers lean heavily on review sites, listicles and directories, and the same few pages can repeat across many questions.

Not known: the exact ranking rules, which index or indexes are used for which questions, and how much your own site counts compared with third-party pages. Anyone who claims a guaranteed formula is guessing.

Our limits: API results can differ from the ChatGPT app, which adds memory and personal context. One run per question is a snapshot, and answers change between runs.

FAQ

How can I see if ChatGPT recommends my business?

Ask ChatGPT about 8 questions a customer would type, without your business name, such as "best {category} in {city}". Use a fresh chat with search on for each, note whether you're named and in what spot, and click the sources to see which pages it relied on.

Is asking "What do you know about my business?" enough?

No. That shows whether ChatGPT recognizes you. Customers usually ask unbranded questions like "best {category} near me", so test those to see whether you get recommended.

Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitor instead of me?

When ChatGPT searches, it leans on the pages it finds, often review sites, roundups and directories. If your competitor appears on those pages and you don't, they're more likely to be named. Check the sources under each answer to see which pages they are.

Does blocking GPTBot remove my business from ChatGPT?

Not from ChatGPT search. According to OpenAI, OAI-SearchBot is the crawler for ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot is used for model training. Make sure your robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot. Changes take about 24 hours.

How often should I check?

Monthly is enough for most businesses. Check weekly while you're making changes. Use the same questions every time so results are comparable, and remember answers vary from run to run.

Is there a free tool that checks this for me?

Yes. AskRank's free scan asks the 8 questions for you and shows whether you were named, who was named instead, and which sites were cited. Each result says whether it came from real ChatGPT (OpenAI's API with web search) or AskRank's labelled ChatGPT-style mode.

Check yours free

Want to skip the spreadsheet? Run a free AskRank scan. Type your business name, category and city, and we'll ask the 8 questions and show your score, who got named instead, and the sites to work on first. No card, no signup.

Run a free scan →

AskRank is independent and not affiliated with OpenAI.