ChatGPT recommends the business that the pages it reads name as the answer for a specific need. Get onto those pages, keep your facts the same everywhere, and measure how often answers pick you, not just mention you.
Our pick
Want to know how often ChatGPT recommends you today? supereo ours is our pick, because recommendation is the number it leads with: the share of answers to your buyers' questions that recommend you, with its range. Its free audit asks 20 of those questions on six engines and judges every answer mentioned, recommended or cited, in about 2 minutes, no card. Run the free audit.
Getting on ChatGPT can mean three different things, and only one of them wins the customer.
| Outcome | What it looks like | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| Mentioned | Your name appears somewhere in the answer, often in a list | Search the answer text for your name |
| Cited | One of your pages is a source link | Open Sources under the answer |
| Recommended | The answer tells the reader to pick you, for a reason that fits them | Read the verdict, across many runs of the same question |
The gap between them is large. When supereo asked the engines for the best AEO tools on November 7, 2026, the typical answer named six, and most of those names were mentioned, not picked.
“So he checked in ChatGPT. His main competitor showed up. He didn't.”u/Academic_Flamingo302 on r/smallbusinessUS · May 4, 2026 · Read the post · The poster's firm built the client's website
What helpsAsk ChatGPT what you do in your city with search on, and open Sources: the competitor's listings and pages it cites are the ones to match.
ChatGPT doesn't search with the customer's words. OpenAI says it "typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries" for its search partners, and it uses location: it "may use an approximate location based on your IP address to provide relevant local results", and may share location "with trusted third-party providers that help provide more local information, such as nearby business listings". Two of supereo's runs show what that rewriting does:
“The direct source link under the recommended options almost always points to a curated ranking / listicle page from a major aggregator”u/Reasonable-Main-7473 on r/SEO · Oct 5, 2026 · Read the post
What helpsFind the ranking pages ChatGPT links for your trade and city, then get listed on them, with the same description of your business you use everywhere else.
So a business gets recommended when it's already a name ChatGPT knows for the job, on the lists ChatGPT reads, with the same facts everywhere.
OpenAI names some of its local sources outright. For restaurants, ChatGPT "may show availability from OpenTable, Resy, or Yelp". Microsoft, whose Bing is a search partner OpenAI names, tells local businesses to "register with Bing Places for Business to help ensure that key details such as address, hours, and contact information remain current and eligible for inclusion in AI-generated responses". Google's AI guide says the same of Merchant Center and Business Profiles.
For software and services, ChatGPT leans on the vendors' own pages. In supereo's October 2026 panel of 1,345 answers, it sent 62% of its citations to vendor pages and docs, and 59% to the site of the brand it recommended. When the question carries a budget, it cites pricing pages: in our October 19, 2026 lead-generation questions, a vendor's pricing page was ChatGPT's most cited source, in 8 of 33 answers.
Old descriptions, old prices and dropped products travel from page to page and from one engine to the next:
“And then my brother in law tested it on Gemini as a joke and we showed up there too, but with outdated info about a product line we dropped like a year ago.”u/Downtown_Wing_8441 on r/smallbusinessowner · Jun 30, 2026 · Read the post
What helpsFind the page the wrong fact comes from: ask the engine with search on and open its sources. supereo flags wrong prices and features against your own pages and fixes the source.
One check means little. In supereo's October 16, 2026 variance run, 20 buyer questions asked 10 times each, 23% of question-and-brand pairs on ChatGPT flipped between recommended and not from one run to the next. Measure it as a rate:
That's the number supereo reports for every brand, with its range, on all six engines, and on Autopilot it does the work to move it: page fixes, new pages and pitches to the lists AI cites, each tested against control questions.
Let OAI-SearchBot crawl your site, get indexed in Bing and Google, and get listed where ChatGPT looks: Bing Places, Google Business Profile, the review and booking sites for your trade, and the "best X" lists it cites. The five steps are in the main guide.
Be on the pages it reads for your customers' questions. A mention is the easy part: the typical answer to a "best tools" question in our November 7 run named six. Aim for the recommendation instead.
Be the clear answer for a specific need on the pages ChatGPT reads: your own pricing, use-case and comparison pages, and the lists and listings it cites. Keep your facts identical everywhere, then measure how often answers recommend you.
Usually because its pages, listings or list placements answer the question and yours don't, or because ChatGPT already knows its name and writes it into its own searches. Ask the question with search on and read the sources it used.
Find the page it came from in the answer's sources, correct that page or listing, and make sure your own page states the right fact plainly. ChatGPT's copy updates when its crawler revisits the page.
OpenAI's, Microsoft's and Google's statements come from their own pages, read November 8, 2026. The search-rewriting figures come from supereo's Local AI Citation Probe of October 14, 2026 and its November 7, 2026 run; the citation shares from its October 2026 panel and October 19 question sets; the flip rate from its October 16 variance run. Full method.