ChatGPT recommends businesses it can access, read and verify. To become one of them: let OpenAI's crawlers in, serve your key facts as plain HTML, make your identity unambiguous, publish pages that answer buying questions directly, and build independent mentions ChatGPT can cross-check. Here is each step — with a check you can run yourself today.
ChatGPT doesn't look up a ranking — it builds an answer, and every input is something you control. When someone asks for “the best accounting software in Sweden”, it combines what it already knows about the category with a live search, reads the sources it trusts, cross-checks claims, and names a shortlist — usually two or three companies.
Proof: OpenAI states there is no paid placement and no guaranteed position in ChatGPT search — results are weighed from many signals. OpenAI — ChatGPT Search.
Bottom line: you can't buy your way in — but you can engineer your way in. That's what the five steps below do.
If OAI-SearchBot can't reach you, nothing else on this page matters. Two bots feed ChatGPT: GPTBot (its underlying knowledge) and OAI-SearchBot (its live search). Blocks hide in two places — robots.txt, and your CDN's bot protection, which often blocks AI crawlers by default without telling you. Access is the first thing Reflexa tests, and the audit shows the exact rule or header that blocks each bot.
Proof: OpenAI's crawler documentation names both bots and their user-agents — OpenAI — GPTBot & OAI-SearchBot.
Check it now: open yoursite.com/robots.txt — no Disallow under GPTBot or OAI-SearchBot. Then check your CDN/WAF bot settings (Cloudflare, Vercel, Akamai) for AI-bot blocking.
Most AI crawlers don't run JavaScript — content that only appears after rendering doesn't exist for them. If your pricing, services or “about” story are rendered client-side, ChatGPT reads an empty shell. In Reflexa audits this is measured as a diff: raw HTML versus the fully rendered page, down to the missing paragraphs.
Check it now: view your homepage source (Cmd+U / Ctrl+U) and search for your main selling point as plain text. Not there — not readable.
ChatGPT recommends entities, not URLs. One name, one site, connected profiles. If your site never plainly says who you are, what you sell and for whom — or your name differs across your site, LinkedIn and directories — the model can't confidently attach reputation to you. A real about page and consistent naming do more here than any markup.
Check it now: read your first 100 words. Do they answer “what is this company and who is it for”?
ChatGPT quotes passages that answer directly — and if you don't have one, it quotes someone else's. If your buyers ask “best X for startups” or “X vs Y” and your site has no page that actually answers that question, the answer gets built from a competitor's content or a listicle. Dedicated, honest answer pages for your top buying questions are the single most direct content lever.
Check it now: list your three most valuable buying questions. Does a page on your site answer each one in its first paragraph?
ChatGPT corroborates before it recommends. Reviews, industry publications, directories, comparison articles and natural forum threads are the evidence it cites. Reflexa treats this layer honestly: what can be probed by machine is probed, and what needs human judgment goes to an analyst — labeled as such, never silently scored.
Proof: Google's generative-AI guidance highlights independent, first-hand information — and warns against manufactured mentions. Google — optimizing for generative AI.
Rule of thumb: build real mentions. Fake ones are a risk precisely because corroboration is what the engines rely on.
Ask ChatGPT the exact question your customers ask, in their words. If you're not in the answer, the reason is almost always one of the five steps above — the Reflexa audit pinpoints which one in about three minutes, with the raw evidence and the fix next to each finding.
The free check answers in 3 minutes — evidence included.