The single most common question we get about AI search has a disappointing answer: you cannot submit your business to ChatGPT. No mechanism exists. Anyone selling one is selling nothing.
How ChatGPT actually finds businesses
ChatGPT search rewrites a user's question into one or more targeted queries and sends them to search partners. OpenAI's own documentation names Bing and Shopify among them without stating exclusivity, and states that any website or publisher can choose to appear. That last phrase matters more than it looks: appearing is an access decision you control.
What determines whether you are named
- Retrieval access — whether OAI-SearchBot can reach you at all.
- Entity clarity — whether your organisation resolves as a distinct, identifiable entity rather than an ambiguous name.
- Corroboration — whether sources you do not control describe you consistently and accurately.
- Parseable structure — whether your substance is in text a retrieval system can extract, rather than buried in interactive elements.
- Specificity — whether your content answers the question asked rather than describing your services generally.
Why the conventional playbook underperforms
Agencies applying a keyword playbook to this optimise for phrases rather than for corroboration. But no one is ranked in a generated answer — you are either among the sources synthesised or you are not, and that depends on whether the model can identify you confidently. Keyword density does not affect confidence; consistent independent description does.
The difficulty is not knowing that mentions matter. It is identifying which sources are actually cited for your buyers' questions, getting described accurately in them, and keeping that description consistent as your business changes.
What this means for your business
Check crawler access first — it costs nothing and it is the most common blocker. Then establish a baseline before doing anything else, so any later claim is defensible. Our guide to AI search and GEO covers the wider mechanics.