Guide: How do we get recommended by ChatGPT?
What decides whether ChatGPT names you, and the order to work in.
The short answer
In two paragraphs.
ChatGPT recommends a business when two things are true. It can read what the business says about itself, and the sources it searches say the same thing. Neither is a trick, and neither is a ranking. The answer is written fresh for each question, from what the assistant finds at that moment.
So the work starts with the questions. Find the ones your customers ask before they buy, see which of them name you and which name a competitor, and fix the reasons in order: the website it cannot read, the things it says about you that are wrong or thin, and the sources it cites where you are absent. Then ask the same questions again, the same way, and see what moved.
What decides it
The answer changes with the question, and with the assistant.
In our perfume study in the United Arab Emirates, 100 shopper questions went to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity five times each: 1,500 answers in all. Across the 76 questions that named no brand, the brand named most was Amouage, on 18.2% of them. The leader changed as soon as the question carried a budget. On the 12 low-budget questions Lattafa led with 67.2%; on the 54 questions with no price limit the same brand ranked eleventh, with 6.3%.
| Assistant | Brand | Share of questions |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Amouage | 31.4% |
| Gemini | Lattafa | 21.2% |
| Perplexity | Ajmal | 21.6% |
Two things follow. There is no single score for being recommended by AI: a business is named for some questions and absent from others, and the questions it wins are the ones to know. And ChatGPT is one assistant of several. The questions your customers ask, and which of them you win, are the ground everything else stands on.
The order to work in
Five steps, each one visible in the answers.
- Find the questions. Your customers ask AI in their own words, about a budget, a place, a problem, a comparison. Our question map makes a first list for any business in a minute, from its website and from what people type into search.
- See who gets named. Ask each question of ChatGPT, and of Gemini and Perplexity, several times in fresh conversations, because the answers vary from one run to the next. Record who is named, how you are described, and which sources are cited.
- Fix what cannot be read. A website that keeps robots out, turns them away, loads its words with a script, or answers in ten seconds is a website the assistant never reads. Our guide on whether your website is readable by AI lists the causes and the fixes.
- Say what you sell, and where, in plain words. The home page should say what the business sells, for whom, in which places, with the products, prices and claims the same everywhere they appear. An assistant repeats what it reads; it cannot repeat what is missing.
- Be present where it looks. The sources an assistant cites for your market are visible in its answers: reviews, lists, forums, trade pages, your competitors' pages. Where you are absent from them, the assistant has no reason to name you.
Then measure again, the same questions the same way, a few weeks later. AI answers change as the models and the web change, so a finding belongs to its date, and the change you made is only proved by a second reading.
SEO and AI search
The SEO work still counts. It is the floor, and it is no longer the ceiling.
ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity search the web before they answer, and Google's AI Overviews draw on the same index as its results. A page that ranks is a page the assistants can find. What changed is what happens next: the assistant reads the pages it finds and writes one answer, naming a few businesses. Being findable is the floor. Being named is the work.
Is there a way to pay ChatGPT to recommend us?
The recommendations in ChatGPT's answers are written from what it reads, and OpenAI sells ads beside them, marked as ads. Being named in the answer itself comes from being readable, clear and present in the sources the assistant uses for your market.
How long does it take to be recommended by ChatGPT?
A website the assistant could not read can be read within days of the fix. Being named for a question where a competitor is cited by ten sources takes longer, because those sources have to change. The audit tells you which of your questions are which.
Do we need to be on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, or only ChatGPT?
In our perfume study each of the three named a different brand most on the same questions. Your customers use more than one, so measure all three and work on what they share: what your website says, and which sources describe you.
Where do we start?
With the questions. The question map on this site makes a first list for your business in a minute, from your website and from what people type. Senpai.ai's AI search audit then reads one market in full: what customers ask, how AI answers, who is named and which sources are cited.
The question map
What are your customers asking AI?
They ask ChatGPT what to buy and who to trust before they ever reach you. Type your website and see the questions they ask, and who AI names instead of you.
People ask AI things like
- Where can I try on running shoes in Dubai today?
- Which running shoes stay cool in very hot weather?
- How do I know my running shoe size?
Find what's worth changing next.
Bring the market, the product or the question. We'll start there.
Or start with the question map: see what your customers ask AI.