How to Get Recommended by ChatGPT and Other AI Assistants

By Chris Anthony, Wealth Ideas · Last updated: October 2026

Quick answer: You cannot pay, submit or prompt your way into ChatGPT’s recommendations. To get recommended by ChatGPT and other AI assistants, make sure their search crawlers can reach your site, describe your brand the same clear way everywhere, earn mentions and reviews on the third-party sites assistants read, and publish pages that answer buyer questions directly. Then track a fixed set of buyer prompts every month to see whether you appear.

More buyers now start research by asking an assistant a question like “what is the best accounting software for a small agency?” or “which IT support companies in Manchester are good for law firms?” The assistant replies with a short list of names, often with a sentence on why each one fits. If your brand is not in that short list, the buyer may never visit your site.

This guide explains how assistants choose what to show, what you can control, and how to measure progress without guessing.

How ChatGPT and other AI assistants pick sources

An assistant can “know” about your brand in two ways. The first is its training data: what the model learned before it was released. The second is live retrieval: the assistant searches the web while it answers, reads a handful of pages, and summarises them with links. You have far more influence over the second, and it is where changes show up fastest.

ChatGPT search

According to OpenAI’s ChatGPT search help article, when ChatGPT searches it typically rewrites your question into one or more targeted queries, and it “sometimes partners with other search providers” to run them. The same article links to Microsoft’s privacy statement in that context, which is one reason being well indexed in Bing is a sensible baseline. OpenAI also says ChatGPT ranks results “using multiple factors intended to help users find relevant, reliable information” and that placement is not guaranteed.

OpenAI runs its own crawlers too. Its crawler documentation describes three that matter here:

• OAI-SearchBot is used “to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features.” If you block it, your pages are excluded from ChatGPT search answers (they may still appear as plain navigational links).
• GPTBot crawls content that may be used to train OpenAI’s foundation models. Blocking it is a training opt-out, not a search opt-out.
• ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a user asks ChatGPT to look at it. It does not crawl automatically.

These settings are independent. You can allow OAI-SearchBot so you can be found in ChatGPT search while disallowing GPTBot if you do not want your content used for training.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google is direct about this in its guidance on AI features: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” A page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Google adds that you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema markup. In other words, solid SEO is the entry ticket.

Microsoft Copilot and Bing

Microsoft now reports AI citations inside Bing Webmaster Tools. Its announcement of the AI Performance report says the report tracks how often your content is cited across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. Microsoft’s advice for improving visibility includes structuring content with headings, tables and FAQ sections, backing up claims with data and sources, keeping content current, and using IndexNow to notify search engines when pages change.

Perplexity

Perplexity documents a crawler called PerplexityBot, which it says is designed to surface and link websites in Perplexity search results. Site owners who want to appear should allow it in robots.txt.

Step 1: Make sure AI crawlers can reach your site

Start with access, because nothing else matters if the bots are blocked. Open your robots.txt file and check for rules that block OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot or Googlebot. A setup that allows AI search while opting out of model training could look like this:

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Then check the layers above robots.txt. Many CDNs, security plugins and hosting firewalls now block “AI bots” by default. Google’s guidance specifically mentions allowing crawling in your CDN or hosting setup, not just robots.txt. OpenAI and Perplexity both publish IP ranges for their crawlers, so your developer can allowlist them.

Finally, keep important content in plain HTML text. Prices, service descriptions and FAQs hidden inside images, PDFs or heavy scripts are harder for any crawler to read. OpenAI and Perplexity both note that robots.txt changes can take around 24 hours to take effect.

Step 2: Make your brand a clear entity

Assistants work with entities: a company, its products, its people, its locations and its category. If your site calls you “a growth partner”, LinkedIn calls you “a creative studio” and a directory calls you “a web design company”, the assistant has to guess what you are and who you are best for.

• Write one plain sentence that says who you are, what you do, and who you do it for. Use it on your homepage, About page, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, Bing Places and directory listings.
• Keep your name, address, phone and service list identical across profiles.
• Create a dedicated page for each core service or product, with a clear name and a short definition at the top.
• Add Organization structured data with your logo, contact details and sameAs links to your official profiles. Google says no special schema is needed for AI features and that structured data should match visible text, so treat schema as a clarity aid, not a shortcut.

Step 3: Earn third-party mentions

When someone asks for “the best” option, assistants rarely rely on your own website alone. They read comparison articles, industry roundups, review sites, community threads and partner pages, then summarise the names that keep appearing with a consistent description.

That makes off-site work central. Practical ways to earn mentions:

• Get listed accurately on the review and directory platforms your buyers actually use in your industry.
• Pitch useful data, commentary or guides to industry publications and newsletters.
• Appear on podcasts, webinars and partner case pages where you can say clearly what you do.
• Answer real questions in communities where your buyers ask for recommendations, with disclosure that you work for the company.
• Ask existing partners and integrations to list you on their sites.

The goal is not a pile of backlinks. It is a set of credible pages that describe you the same way and place you in the right category.

Step 4: Build up genuine reviews

Reviews give assistants both a signal and wording. When many customers independently say you are “great for small law firms” or “fast for emergency repairs”, that phrasing often shapes how you are described in answers. Ask happy customers for reviews on the platforms that matter in your market, make it easy with a direct link, and reply to reviews professionally. Never buy, script or gate reviews. Fake reviews break platform rules and consumer protection laws, and they are the kind of trust signal that can backfire badly.

Step 5: Publish content formats AI assistants quote

Assistants need short, self-contained passages they can lift into an answer. Pages built that way tend to be easier to cite. Formats that work well:

• Answer-first paragraphs: open each key page with two to four sentences that answer the main question directly.
• Comparison tables: you versus alternatives, plan versus plan, option A versus option B, with honest criteria.
• “Best for” statements: who your product or service suits, and who it does not.
• Definitions and how-it-works sections for the terms buyers search for.
• FAQ sections that use the exact wording customers use in sales calls.
• Original data: survey results, benchmarks or anonymised figures from your own work, with the method explained.
• Clear pricing information, even if it is a starting price or what affects the price.

Good research still matters here. Our guides on SEO keyword research and building an SEO strategy that lasts cover how to find the questions buyers ask, which are usually the same prompts they type into assistants.

Step 6: Measure whether AI recommends you

AI answers change between runs, between users and over time, so one screenshot proves nothing. Use a simple, repeatable process:

1. List 20 to 50 prompts a real buyer would ask, such as “best [service] for [industry] in [city]” or “[your brand] vs [competitor]”.
2. Run each prompt in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini and Google’s AI features at a set time each month. Run important prompts more than once.
3. Record whether you are mentioned, whether your site is cited, which competitors appear, and which third-party pages are cited as sources.
4. Check the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools for citations and the grounding queries Microsoft shares.
5. In your analytics, track referral traffic from AI assistants (for example chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com) and the leads it produces.
6. Add “How did you hear about us?” to forms and sales calls, with an option for AI assistants.

The cited sources you record in step 3 are your outreach list. If assistants keep citing the same three roundups, those are the pages to get onto.

How to get recommended by ChatGPT: a 30-day checklist

• Confirm OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Googlebot are allowed in robots.txt and your firewall or CDN.
• Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console, submit sitemaps and turn on IndexNow if your platform supports it.
• Write one consistent brand description and roll it out to your site and main profiles.
• Add or fix Organization structured data so it matches your visible content.
• Rewrite your top five service or product pages to open with a direct answer, a “best for” line and a short FAQ.
• Publish one honest comparison page for the alternatives buyers ask about most.
• Identify the ten third-party pages assistants cite most for your prompts and plan how to earn a place on them.
• Start a monthly review request routine with recent customers.
• Set up your prompt tracking sheet and record a baseline.

Mistakes to avoid

• Blocking the wrong bot. Blocking GPTBot opts you out of training. Blocking OAI-SearchBot removes you from ChatGPT search answers. Many sites mix these up.
• Chasing shortcuts. Google says no special AI text files or schema are needed for its AI features. Fundamentals beat hacks.
• Stuffing pages with keywords. Assistants quote clear, specific passages, not repetitive copy.
• Writing self-serving “best of” lists with no disclosure. Readers and platforms see through them, and they rarely become trusted sources.
• Inconsistent descriptions. If every profile describes you differently, assistants may describe you vaguely or wrongly.
• Judging results on one prompt run. Track a stable prompt set over months.
• Ignoring Bing. Microsoft’s own reporting ties Copilot citations to Bing Webmaster Tools, and ChatGPT uses partner search providers, so Bing visibility is worth checking.

For a wider look at the tools that help with tracking and content work, see our roundup of AI marketing tools.

How Wealth Ideas helps

Wealth Ideas offers AI search visibility (AI SEO) services as a monthly retainer or as an add-on to an existing SEO engagement. We start with an AI visibility audit: we test your buyers’ prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini and Google AI Overviews to see whether you are mentioned or cited, which competitors appear and which sources the assistants rely on.

From there we build a ranked roadmap and implement it: answer-first rewrites of key service and comparison pages, entity and structured data consistency, technical access checks for AI crawlers (robots.txt, rendering, indexing, Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow), and digital PR to earn genuine third-party mentions rather than buying links. Each month you get a report on AI answer share for your priority prompts, citations gained, AI referral traffic and the leads it produced. We do not promise placement in any assistant, because nobody can, but we do make the work and the results visible.

Frequently asked questions