How to get your business cited by ChatGPT

How do you get your business cited by ChatGPT?

To get cited by ChatGPT, a business needs three things: OpenAI’s search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, must be allowed to read its site; its pages must answer specific questions directly, with numbers a reader can act on; and other websites must mention it. As of September 2026, OpenAI’s publisher guidance asks for nothing more technical than crawler access.

Here is what that looks like when it works. Alliance Chemical is a chemical distributor in Taylor, Texas. PHASEKIND built its storefront and technical library and runs its blog. Disclosure: Andre Taki, a PHASEKIND founder, is also Alliance Chemical’s Chief Commercial Officer.

Which websites does ChatGPT cite for chemical questions?

On chemical questions, ChatGPT cited Alliance Chemical more than any other website. We took 27 real searches that already bring Alliance traffic from Google, from its Search Console for June 30 to September 27, 2026, excluding searches for the brand itself. On September 29, 2026, we asked each one of OpenAI’s search model, which always searches the web before answering.

Alliance was cited in 8 of the 27 answers. Wikipedia was cited in 7, PubChem in 5 and the CDC in 3. No other chemical supplier was cited at all: Sigma-Aldrich, Fisher Scientific, Lab Alley, VWR and Grainger each appeared zero times. In a separate check of buying questions, ChatGPT listed Alliance’s acetone pages first for “where to buy ACS grade acetone,” ahead of the large lab suppliers.

One caveat, stated plainly: the searches come from Alliance’s own Search Console, so they lean toward topics Alliance already covers. Each was asked once, and answers vary from day to day. Figure 1 shows every search.

Which Alliance pages does ChatGPT cite?

ChatGPT cited pages that answer one practical question in their opening lines. It named Alliance the first source for “tsp cleaner,” citing its guide to trisodium phosphate, and for “how to make 70 isopropyl alcohol from 99,” citing its isopropyl alcohol guide. It cited the phosphoric acid rust remover product page second of eight sources, and the guides to rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide shelf life, potassium bicarbonate and vinegar dilution further down.

Every one of those pages lives on the storefront PHASEKIND built or the blog PHASEKIND runs. They share a shape: a direct answer first, then a ratio, a concentration or a product the reader can use. That is the format we write to.

Does ranking on Google get you cited by ChatGPT?

Not reliably, so it has to be measured separately. Alliance averages around position 8 on Google for “tsp cleaner,” yet ChatGPT named it the first source. Meanwhile, of the 7 searches where Alliance ranks in Google’s top three, ChatGPT cited it for one.

Where ChatGPT went elsewhere, it chose a recognized authority for the topic: Healthline and Cleveland Clinic for a castor oil trend, university extension services and agencies such as the EPA and USDA for garden and pest questions, and the trade magazine C&EN for the sulfuric acid shortage. Health and regulatory topics go to authorities; practical product questions are where a supplier can win.

What should you change to get cited?

Start with access, then the page, then the mentions. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers,” and that a robots.txt change “can take ~24 hours” to take effect. GPTBot is a separate crawler for content “that may be used in training,” so a business can allow search and block training.

Then rewrite key pages to answer first. The research paper that introduced the term generative engine optimization, presented at KDD 2024, found that citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics “achieved a relative improvement of 30-40%” on its main visibility measure, while keyword stuffing offered “little to no improvement.”

Finally, get the business named elsewhere. In Ahrefs’ study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions correlated with visibility in Google’s AI Overviews at 0.664, and backlinks at 0.218. Ahrefs warns that correlation is not causation, but profiles, press and community answers that name the business are part of the work.

How do you check whether ChatGPT cites you?

Use the searches you already win. Export them from Google Search Console, ask each one of ChatGPT with web search on, and record which sites it cites and in what position. Count how often your competitors appear, too: a raw citation rate means little without that comparison.

OpenAI says ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it sends, so referrals also show up in analytics tools such as Google Analytics. Figure 1 comes from exactly this check, and it is part of the SEO and GEO work we do for clients.