How to appear in ChatGPT answers: a practical checklist for businesses

Before you start: write down the questions

Before changing anything, list 15 to 30 questions a real customer might ask ChatGPT about your category. Write them the way people actually ask, for example:

• “Best family dentist in Park Slope, Brooklyn”
• “Affordable wedding photographer in Austin”
• “Which cleaning company in North Dallas is reliable?”
• “Barbecue restaurant in Kansas City good for large groups”

Use the wording your customers use, in every language they ask in. Include questions that name your city or neighbourhood, questions about price, and comparison questions (“X or Y for …”). Ask each one in ChatGPT, preferably logged out or in a temporary chat so your own history does not shape the answer, and note who is named. This is your starting point and the list you will come back to.

Step 1: Let ChatGPT read your site

• Check robots.txt. OpenAI documents separate crawlers: OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, ChatGPT-User for pages a user asks ChatGPT to open, and GPTBot for model training. Blocking GPTBot does not remove you from search answers, but blocking OAI-SearchBot can. Check OpenAI’s current documentation, because names and behaviour change.
• Make sure the text is in the HTML. Open a page, view its source, and search for a sentence you can see on the page. If it is not there, the text is added by JavaScript, and crawlers that do not run scripts may see an empty page. Server-side rendering or prerendering fixes this.
• Be discoverable by the search providers ChatGPT uses. ChatGPT search draws partly on third-party search providers. Submitting your sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Search Console is a low-cost way to make sure your pages can be found.
• Remove soft walls. Pop-ups that cover the content, pages that only show prices after a form, and security rules that challenge every unknown visitor can all stop a crawler reading what matters. Check that your firewall or CDN is not blocking AI crawlers by accident.

Step 2: State the facts plainly on your own site

ChatGPT can only recommend you for what it can read about you. Your site should answer, in plain sentences, the questions a customer asks before choosing you:

• What you offer, named the way customers name it (“root canal treatment”, not only “endodontic solutions”).
• Where you operate: city, neighbourhood, branches, and whether you also serve other cities or regions.
• Who you serve, and in which languages.
• Your price level or starting prices, where you can publish them.
• Opening hours, including holiday hours.
• How to book, order or reach you.

Put these facts on pages that load quickly and make sense on their own. A clear About page, one page for each main service or location, and a genuine FAQ page are the usual building blocks. Organization or LocalBusiness structured data (Schema) that matches the visible text helps machines read the same facts, but it does not replace the text.

Step 3: Make every listing say the same thing

Search for your business name, and any other name customers know you by, and list every place that describes you: map listings, business directories, delivery or booking apps, property portals, review platforms and social profiles. Then make them agree.

• One name, used everywhere. If your name has more than one common spelling, choose one for your own channels and expect to see the others elsewhere.
• The same address, phone number and opening hours.
• The same short description of what you do.

Conflicting details make it harder for any system to be sure it is looking at one business, and give it a reason to prefer a competitor whose details agree.

Step 4: Be present where the answers come from

When ChatGPT searches, it often answers from pages other than yours. Open the sources under each answer to your questions and group them by type. These commonly include business directories, review sites, delivery and booking apps, news sites and “best of” roundups.

• Claim and complete your profile on every directory and app that appears in the answers for your category.
• Ask satisfied customers for reviews on the platforms that are cited, and reply to reviews, good and bad.
• If roundups of “the best” in your category are cited, find out who writes them and what they would need to consider you. Give them something worth writing about: a new service, a clear price, a specialist skill.

Step 5: Publish pages that answer the question

Look at the questions on your list where you are not named. For each one, ask: is there a page anywhere, on your site or elsewhere, that would give ChatGPT a reason to name you? If not, that is the page to write.

• “How to choose” pages. Questions like “what to look for in a daycare in Seattle” are answered from explainer pages. A useful, honest guide on your site can be cited even when the answer names no business.
• Service and location pages. One page for each service and area you really serve, with specifics, not a list of place names.
• Pages in your customers’ language. If some of your customers ask in another language, publish real content in it, not a machine translation of the English page.
• Facts others can check. Prices, qualifications, licences, years in operation. Specific, verifiable statements are easier for an assistant to repeat than slogans.

Step 6: Measure, then repeat

Go back to your question list every few weeks and ask again. Because answers vary from one ask to the next, one check tells you little; what matters is how often you are named across many asks, and whether that rate moves after a change. Keep a simple record for each question: named or not, position in the list, and which sources were cited.

Expect changes to take time. Pages have to be crawled again, listings updated, and reviews build up slowly. A business that works through this list is not guaranteed a mention, but it has removed the reasons an assistant had to leave it out.

Common mistakes

• Judging your visibility from one answer, or from your own logged-in account, where past conversations and saved memory can shape the result.
• Checking only in English when some of your customers ask in another language.
• Blocking AI crawlers by accident through a security plugin or CDN rule.
• Publishing dozens of near-identical location pages with no real content on them.
• Buying fake reviews. Review platforms remove them, and a listing caught with them can be penalised.

How Pharos helps

Pharos turns this checklist into a measurement. You add your business, the cities you serve and your questions. Pharos asks them on ChatGPT and the four other platforms it tracks on every scheduled run, and shows where you are named, who is named instead and which sources the answers cite; its recommendations point at the gaps worth closing first. Start with a free audit.