Ask ChatGPT "who should I hire for [your service] near me" and it will name a handful of businesses. If yours isn't among them, you're invisible at the exact moment someone is choosing.
Here's how that list gets built, and what you can actually do about it — starting with a setting that quietly removes some businesses from the running altogether.
First: can ChatGPT even see your website?
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the one that matters most.
OpenAI runs several separate crawlers, and they do different jobs (OpenAI documentation):
| Crawler | What it does | What blocking it means |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | Indexes pages for ChatGPT search | You disappear from ChatGPT results |
| GPTBot | Collects content for training models | Your content isn't used in training |
| ChatGPT-User | Fetches a page when a user asks for it | ChatGPT can't open your link on request |
| OAI-AdsBot | Checks ad landing pages | Not relevant to most sites |
Now the trap. In 2023 and 2024 a lot of site owners — and a lot of agencies — added blanket "block the AI bots" rules to robots.txt, reasonably enough, to keep their content out of model training. Plenty of those rules also blocked OAI-SearchBot.
Blocking GPTBot keeps you out of training data. Blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT's search results. Those are completely different outcomes, and the second one costs you customers.
How to check yours in 30 seconds
Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt in a browser and look for OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, or a broad Disallow: /.
If you want to be found in ChatGPT while keeping your content out of training, the rules look like this:
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
If you simply want to be found and don't mind training, allowing everything is fine — that's what most marketing sites do.
How ChatGPT builds its answer
Once you're crawlable, the rest is about being the easiest source to trust.
OAI-SearchBot doesn't try to index the whole web the way Google does. It looks for pages that answer real queries, and it revisits sites based on relevance, freshness and how well the site performs.
OpenAI hasn't published the exact selection rules — anyone who tells you they know the algorithm is guessing. But the observable pattern is consistent, and it isn't mysterious:
- Complete answers beat partial ones. A page that fully answers the question gets cited; one that circles the topic doesn't.
- Clear structure wins. Headings that ask the question, followed immediately by the answer.
- Specific facts beat adjectives. "Open until 8pm, serving East Lansing since 2016" is usable. "Premier destination for excellence" is not.
- Corroboration matters. If your details match across your site, your Google Business Profile, directories and reviews, you're a safe source to name.
- Freshness counts for anything time-sensitive — prices, hours, services.
What to put on the page
Practical, in the order I'd do it:
- Answer the question in the first two sentences under each heading. Don't build up to it.
- Write the questions your customers actually ask, in their words — including the awkward ones about price and timing.
- State the facts plainly: service area, hours, what you do and don't do, how to start.
- Add a short FAQ to each service page.
- Use structured data —
Article,FAQPage,HowTo,LocalBusiness— so a machine reads your page the way a person does. - Keep your details identical everywhere. Contradictions between your site and your Google profile make you a risky citation.
- Keep pages fast and crawlable. A page that times out doesn't get cited.
None of this is a trick. It's writing clearly and being consistent — which happens to be what search engines have always rewarded.
How to test whether it's working
- Ask ChatGPT the five questions that lead to paying work in your area.
- Note who gets named, and which sources are cited.
- Ask it directly about your business — check the facts it states. Wrong hours or an old phone number are visibility problems.
- Repeat monthly and keep the notes. One check is a snapshot; the trend is what matters.
Do the same in Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Each builds answers differently, and you'll often find you're strong in one and absent from another.
What you can't control
Worth being straight about this.
You can't buy your way into an AI answer. There's no submission form, no "AI ranking" you can purchase, and results vary between users, phrasings and dates — ask the same question twice and you may get two different lists.
What you can control is whether you're crawlable, accurate, consistent and genuinely useful. That's the whole game, and most of your competitors haven't started playing it.
Start here
Check your robots.txt today. It takes a minute, and if OAI-SearchBot is blocked, unblocking it is the single highest-value change you can make this week.
After that, pick your five most valuable questions and make sure one page answers each one properly.
If you'd like us to check it for you, our free AI visibility audit covers exactly this: whether the engines can see you, where you currently appear, and what's inaccurate. No obligation.