ChatGPT does not open a yellow-pages account for your company. It answers with a mix of what it was trained on, what a browsing or retrieval tool can see in that session, and what the user pasted. OpenAI changes those pieces. We will not list a 2026 feature toggle as if it were permanent.
Last reviewed: September 2026. Confirm live behaviour in OpenAI’s own help. Owner action: visible in AI search. Store version: can ChatGPT recommend your store.
Put the facts on a public website. Repeat the same name. Keep the site fetchable. Then accept that some answers will still skip you or invent a detail you never published.
Where the facts can come from
Your website. Other sites that mention you. Maps and directory listings if the tool can see them. The user’s prompt. Training data that may be old or wrong. That last one is why a closed shop still appears, or a wrong phone number persists until a fetch sees the current Contact page.
| You published it | ChatGPT can use it? |
|---|---|
| About and service HTML | Yes, if it can fetch or already saw it |
| A PDF emailed to clients | Not unless someone put it on the web |
| An Instagram bio | Unreliable as the only source |
| Staff spreadsheet | No |
How to test without fooling yourself
Ask “who does [service] in [city]” and “what does [your exact name] do”. Repeat a week later. If the story flips, you learned the channel is unstable. You did not lose a ranking. More on that: optimize the business website.
Content to have ready: what content AI search needs.
Usually your About page is empty. Send the URL.
