How to appear in ChatGPT answers: a practical checklist for businesses in the Gulf, the Levant and Egypt

1. Build a question list per language and per city

Write 15 to 30 questions your customers would type into ChatGPT. Split them by city if you serve more than one, and write each in the language and dialect your customers use. A mixed list for a few sectors might look like this:

• “Which developer in Dubai offers a post-handover payment plan?”
• «وش أفضل مستشفى ولادة في الرياض؟» (Saudi: “which is the best maternity hospital in Riyadh?”)
• “Family hotel near Souq Waqif in Doha with a pool”
• «مين أحسن عيادة أسنان بعمّان؟» (Levantine: “who is the best dental clinic in Amman?”)
• «فين ألاقي محل أجهزة كهربائية موثوق في مدينة نصر؟» (Egyptian: “where can I find a reliable electronics shop in Nasr City?”)

Ask each one in a temporary chat, so your own history does not colour the answer, and write down every business named. ChatGPT may use your approximate location, so a question about Jeddah asked from Dubai can differ from the same question asked in Jeddah. Note where you asked from.

2. Make sure OpenAI’s crawlers can read both language versions

• robots.txt: OpenAI lists OAI-SearchBot (search), ChatGPT-User (pages a user asks it to open) and GPTBot (training). Blocking GPTBot is a training choice; blocking OAI-SearchBot can keep you out of search answers. Check OpenAI’s current list before editing.
• The Arabic site too: many regional sites serve Arabic from a separate path or subdomain with its own settings. Check robots.txt, the sitemap and the firewall rules for that version as well.
• Text in the HTML: open the page source of an Arabic page and an English page and search for a visible sentence. If it is missing, the text is drawn in by JavaScript and a crawler may see nothing. Prerendering or server-side rendering fixes it.
• Firewalls and bot rules: CDN and security settings popular with regional hosts can challenge unknown crawlers by default. Confirm the search crawlers are let through.
• Bing as well as Google: ChatGPT search draws partly on outside search providers. Submitting both sitemaps to Bing Webmaster Tools, not only Google Search Console, costs little.

3. Publish the facts customers here ask about

An assistant repeats specifics it can find. In this region the specifics customers weigh are often ones that businesses leave off their sites:

• Branches with full addresses and the districts they serve, one page per branch.
• Prices or starting prices in the local currency (AED, SAR, QAR, KWD, JOD, EGP), where you can publish them.
• Licences and registrations that customers check: a clinic’s health authority licence, a developer’s project registration, a hotel’s classification.
• Your working week and hours, including Ramadan and Eid hours, since the week runs Sunday to Thursday in most of the region and Monday to Friday in the UAE and Lebanon.
• Languages your staff speak, and whether you serve families, businesses or tourists.
• For developers: delivered projects with handover years, current launches and payment plans.

Organization or LocalBusiness structured data (Schema) in both languages helps machines read these facts, as long as it matches the visible text.

4. Use one identity in Arabic and in Latin script

Arabic names are transliterated in several ways, and a business can end up as three different spellings across maps, portals and delivery apps. Choose one Latin spelling and one Arabic spelling, use them on your site, your map listings, Bayut or Property Finder, Talabat or Zomato, and every directory you control, and keep the phone number, address and description identical. When two listings disagree, an assistant has less reason to believe either.

5. Get into the regional sources ChatGPT reads

Open the sources under each answer on your list and sort them. For property questions you will often see Bayut, Property Finder, dubizzle and broker blogs. For restaurants and retail, Zomato, Talabat and Time Out Dubai. For news-shaped questions, Khaleej Times, Gulf News and The National. Your own sector will have its own set.

• Complete every portal, delivery and map profile that appears in the answers, in both languages where the platform allows it.
• Ask customers for reviews on the platforms that are cited, and reply to them.
• Offer editors and roundup writers something new to report: a launch, a delivered project, a new specialty or a published price.

6. Write the pages ChatGPT is missing

For each question on your list where you are absent, check whether any page on the web would give ChatGPT a reason to name you. If none does, write it.

• Explainers customers search before buying: how off-plan payment plans work in Dubai, what to check before choosing a maternity hospital, which areas of Doha suit families. Useful explainers get cited even when the answer names no business.
• Arabic written as Arabic, not translated: clear Modern Standard Arabic, drafted by someone who writes it well, using the everyday words customers use for your services. A machine translation of the English page reads as one and often misses the words people search with.
• Checkable claims: years in operation, units delivered, doctors on staff, awards with the year. An assistant repeats specifics more readily than slogans.

7. Check again, per language and per city

Repeat the question list every few weeks, in both languages, for each city. One ask proves little because answers vary; count how often you are named across many asks and watch whether that rate moves after a change. Crawling, listing updates and reviews all take time, and seasonal questions around Ramadan, Eid and the summer can shift the answers for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

Mistakes that are common here

• Checking only in English when many customers ask in Arabic, or only in one dialect.
• Treating the UAE, or Saudi Arabia, as one market when customers ask about a specific city.
• Leaving the Arabic version of the site blocked, unrendered or months out of date.
• Spelling the business name differently on every portal and delivery app.
• Buying reviews or paying for listicles that are not labelled as sponsored; platforms remove fake reviews, and undisclosed paid placements carry legal and reputational risk.

How Pharos helps

Pharos runs this checklist as a measurement. Add your business, the cities you serve and your questions in English, Arabic or both; Pharos asks them on ChatGPT and four other platforms on every scheduled run, recognises Arabic spellings of your name, and shows who is named instead and which regional sources are cited. Start with a free audit, in English or Arabic, for businesses in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.