How do I get my company recommended by ChatGPT?

To be recommended by ChatGPT, let OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, read your site, then publish pages that answer the exact questions your customers ask ChatGPT, with checkable facts, sources and the same prices on every page. ChatGPT search can only cite pages it can reach, and it quotes the ones that answer clearly. Nobody can guarantee a citation.

Facts

OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. (OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers)
OpenAI's crawler settings are independent: blocking GPTBot, the training crawler, does not remove a site from ChatGPT search, which depends on OAI-SearchBot. (OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers)
OpenAI says its systems take about 24 hours to follow a change in robots.txt. (OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers)
In the KDD 2024 GEO study, adding citations, quotations and statistics was among the methods that raised a source's visibility in generative answers by up to 40%. (Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2024))
Google enforces a robots.txt file size limit of 500 kibibytes and generally caches the file for up to 24 hours, checked on 2026-10-13. (Google Search Central: How Google interprets the robots.txt specification)

When a question needs current information, ChatGPT searches the web and builds its answer from the pages it finds, linking to them. A company gets named when its pages are in that index and answer the question better than the alternatives: specific, sourced and consistent.

Which OpenAI crawlers should my robots.txt allow?

Allow OAI-SearchBot, which is the one that makes a site eligible for ChatGPT search, and ChatGPT-User, which fetches pages a user asks about. GPTBot is the training crawler and can be allowed or blocked independently.

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Pages that each answer one question a buyer would type into ChatGPT:

What the company does, for whom, and where it operates
Price and plans, stated exactly the same on every page
How it compares with the alternatives, by category
Answers to the objections customers raise before buying

How do I know if ChatGPT is sending visitors?

Check your analytics for visits referred by chatgpt.com and your server logs for OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User reads. easyIndex records both per page, so you see which pages ChatGPT reads and which ones bring people.

Step by step

Open your site to OpenAI's crawlers. Allow OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User in robots.txt and make sure the CDN or firewall does not block them.
Publish a sitemap. List every public page in sitemap.xml and reference it in robots.txt.
List the questions buyers ask ChatGPT. Write down the questions a customer asks before choosing a company like yours, in their own words.
Write one page per question. Put the direct answer in the first sentences, then facts with numbers, dates and sources.
Keep the facts consistent. State prices, terms and offers identically on every page and every language.
Measure and repeat. Track OAI-SearchBot reads and visits from chatgpt.com, then write the next pages where the data points.

Common mistakes

Blocking GPTBot and assuming it keeps the site out of training only, while the firewall also blocks OAI-SearchBot.
Asking ChatGPT 'who is the best' once and treating that one answer as a measurement.
Hiding the price behind a contact form, so ChatGPT has no number to quote.
Rendering the page text only with client-side JavaScript that a crawler may not run.

How easyIndex solves it

easyIndex has your coding agent build these pages over MCP, audits each one, checks it on the live site and measures ChatGPT visitors and OpenAI crawler reads per page, for US$ 30 per website a month, with a 7-day free trial.

Frequently asked questions

Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?

OpenAI publishes no paid way to be cited in ChatGPT search answers. Visibility comes from being crawlable and answering well.

Does blocking GPTBot stop ChatGPT from citing me?

No. OpenAI says GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot are independent; search visibility depends on OAI-SearchBot.

How long after a change will ChatGPT see it?

OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about 24 hours; new pages are seen once the crawler reads them.

Will ChatGPT recommend my company for sure?

No one can promise that. You can make the pages easy to reach and quote, and measure whether ChatGPT reads and sends visitors.

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Last verified on October 9, 2026.