Most advice on getting recommended by ChatGPT is a list of guesses: add schema, write an llms.txt, post on Reddit. We wanted evidence instead. So we asked ChatGPT and Gemini 96 real buyer questions across 12 small-business categories on October 10, 2026, and recorded every page they cited. The full results are in our study of what ChatGPT and Gemini recommend. This post turns them into steps.
How ChatGPT decides what to recommend
For 88 of 96 buyer questions, ChatGPT ran a live web search, read about three pages, and built its answer from them. 75% of those pages were the official websites of products in the category, usually the very products it named. Reddit, review sites and big publishers barely appeared.
Gemini, the other assistant your buyers use, works differently: it skipped search for 37 of the questions, and when it did search it read other companies' blogs, publishers, Reddit and YouTube. A plan that only works for one of them leaves half the answers to chance.
What the two assistants read before recommending
Percent of 96 answers per engine that cite at least one page of this type
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
| The recommended product's or business's own site | 64% 59% |
|---|---|
| Another company's blog or guide | 12% 49% |
| Publishers (PCMag, NerdWallet, Forbes...) | 7% 28% |
1% 22% | |
| YouTube | 0% 16% |
| App stores | 14% 1% |
| Review sites (G2, Capterra, GetApp) | 4% 9% |
The seven steps
- Write down the questions buyers askFive to ten, in their words: best X for Y, alternatives to the leader, how do I do Z without W.
- See who gets named and what gets readAsk both assistants. Note the products and, more importantly, the pages they cite.
- Make your site answer the questionChatGPT reads the official sites first. Say what you do, who it is for and what it costs.
- Put your features in a public help centerChatGPT cited a help or support page in 24 of 96 answers.
- Fill in every store and directory listingApp stores for apps, directories for local businesses. ChatGPT reads both.
- Get named in what Gemini readsComparison articles, Reddit threads and YouTube reviews in your category.
- Check again every few weeksAnswers drift. Track the trend, not one screenshot.
Step 1. Write down the questions your buyers ask
Not keywords, questions. Buyers type full sentences into an assistant, often naming the tool they want to leave: 17 of the 96 questions in our study did. Write the five to ten you hear most from customers, such as “what's the cheapest alternative to Boulevard for a three-chair salon?” These are what you will test, so they should be the questions that make you money.
Step 2. See who gets named and which pages get read
Ask each question in ChatGPT and in Gemini. Write down two things: the products named, and the pages cited. The second list is the useful one. It is a map of the exact pages that shape your category's answers. Doing it by hand takes about 20 minutes; our free AI Mention Watch check runs one question for you and lists the sources.
Step 3. Make your own site answer the question
This is the step that matters most for ChatGPT. For 43% of the software products it recommended, it cited that product's own website in the same answer. It reads your pages to confirm what you do, so give it something to confirm:
- Use the buyer's words. If people ask for a “booking app for barbershops with deposits,” that phrase belongs on your page, not “an all-in-one appointment experience.”
- Say who it is for and what it costs. Questions in our study were specific: team size, budget, platform. Pages that state those plainly can be quoted; pages that hide them cannot.
- Answer the comparison yourself. If buyers ask for alternatives to the market leader, a fair page on how you differ from it gives ChatGPT a reason to put you on that list.
Step 4. Put your features in a public help center
A detail we did not expect: ChatGPT cited a help-center or support page (support.1password.com, help.asana.com and the like) in 24 of 96 answers, usually to confirm a specific feature or price: no-show fees, card and bank payments, paid subscriptions, referral programs. Gemini did it once. If your feature list lives inside a logged-in app or a sales deck, ChatGPT cannot check it. A public page per important feature can.
Step 5. Fill in every store and directory listing
ChatGPT cited app store pages in 14% of answers: the Apple App Store for habit trackers, the Shopify App Store for review apps, Google Play. For local businesses the pattern is the same with different sites: 68% of local citations were the businesses' own websites and 16% were directories such as Healthgrades, Zocdoc, BringFido and Thumbtack. A complete listing, with the same name, services and area everywhere, is cheap insurance.
Step 6. Get named in what Gemini reads
Your own site is not enough for Gemini. In our study 49% of its answers cited a blog post or guide from another company, 28% cited a publisher, 22% cited Reddit and 16% cited YouTube. Three moves follow from that:
- Find the “best X” articles it cites and ask to be included. Many are written by small companies or niche blogs that update their lists. A short, specific note on who you are for works better than a pitch.
- Writing your own comparison post helps less than you hope. Gemini cited several small vendors' “best X” posts without naming those vendors in its answer. Shaping the list and being on it are different things.
- Be genuinely useful where buyers already talk. Answer questions in the subreddits and comment threads of your category as a person, not as an ad. Spam gets removed, and a removed post cannot be cited.
Step 7. Check again every few weeks
When we asked the same question twice, ChatGPT kept only 48% of the products it had named and changed its first pick 39% of the time. So do not judge your work on one answer. Ask the same questions on a schedule and watch whether you appear more often. Our guide to AI visibility trackers shows how to do that by hand, and when paying for a tool is worth it.
How to rank in ChatGPT: what matters less than you think
ChatGPT has no fixed positions. Ranking in ChatGPT really means how often you are on its short list across many questions, and whether you come first. Three common beliefs did not hold up in our data:
- “You need to be a big brand.” Established specialists, not giants, collected 56% of mentions in software categories, and 51% of software answers named at least one small product.
- “Review sites decide it.” G2, Capterra and GetApp appeared in 4% of ChatGPT answers.
- “Reddit is everything.” True for Gemini, not for ChatGPT: one ChatGPT answer in 96 cited Reddit.
What our data cannot tell you: whether schema markup or an llms.txt file changes anything. We did not test them, and we would rather say so than guess. If you want the vocabulary behind all this, read LLM visibility, explained for small-business owners.
Questions people ask
How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my business? Make your own website answer the buyer's question plainly, document your features in a public help center, keep app store and directory listings complete, and get named in the comparison articles and threads that rank for your category. In our October 2026 test, ChatGPT built 88 of 96 answers from a live web search, mostly reading the official sites of the products it named.
How long does it take to show up in ChatGPT answers? When ChatGPT searches, it reads today's web, so a clear new page can be picked up as soon as search engines index it. Answers from the model's own memory change only when the model is retrained. Check again every few weeks rather than every day: the same question asked twice returned only 48% of the same products.
Do review sites like G2 and Capterra help you get recommended by ChatGPT? Less than most guides claim. In our test, G2, Capterra and GetApp appeared in 4% of ChatGPT answers and 9% of Gemini answers. App store pages (14% of ChatGPT answers) and the products' own sites (64%) mattered far more.
Is getting recommended by ChatGPT the same as ranking in ChatGPT? Close. ChatGPT has no fixed positions. Each answer is a short list that changes from ask to ask, so ranking in ChatGPT really means how often you are on that list across many buyer questions, and whether you are named first.
Start with step 2, free
Tell us your business and what it does. We ask ChatGPT a real buyer question for your category, then show you who it recommended and the pages it read to decide. Those pages are your to-do list.