TL;DR: You cannot rank in ChatGPT, because there is no ranked list to sit in. ChatGPT retrieves a handful of sources for each answer and cites them, so the goal is being one of the sources retrieved. That means letting OpenAI’s search crawler in, writing self-contained answers it can lift, and building the third-party evidence it checks before recommending a business.
Search for how to rank in ChatGPT and you will get cheat sheets promising a position that does not exist. The mechanic is different from Google’s, and understanding the difference is what separates work that helps from work that wastes a quarter. Here is what a local business can actually change.
Can you actually rank in ChatGPT?
No. ChatGPT does not maintain a ranked index that businesses hold positions in. When a question needs current information, it runs a search, retrieves a small number of pages, and composes an answer citing some of them. There is no position two. There is only cited or not cited, and it varies answer to answer.
This matters because it changes what you optimize for. On Google you are competing for a slot on a page that stays roughly stable for weeks. In ChatGPT you are competing to be retrieved and quoted for a question that may be phrased a hundred different ways, with results that shift between sessions. Chasing a fixed position is the wrong mental model.
It also means measurement works differently. You cannot check a rank tracker. You test by asking the questions your customers ask, repeatedly, with the same wording each time, and recording whether you appear. Our guide to building an AI visibility score sets out how to run that as a repeatable monthly check rather than a one-off curiosity.
Which crawler do you actually need to allow?
OAI-SearchBot is the one that matters for visibility. OpenAI states plainly that OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features. GPTBot is for training foundation models and ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a user asks ChatGPT to visit it. Blocking OAI-SearchBot removes you from ChatGPT search.
This is the single most common own goal we see. Site owners, or a security plugin acting on their behalf, block AI crawlers wholesale to protect content from training use, and take themselves out of ChatGPT’s search results at the same time. The three bots do different jobs and can be allowed or blocked independently in robots.txt.
If your position is that you do not want your content training a model but you do want the referral traffic, the answer is to disallow GPTBot and allow OAI-SearchBot. That is a deliberate, defensible configuration. What is not defensible is blocking everything by accident and wondering why you never get mentioned.
Check this before doing anything else on this list. It takes ten minutes, it is binary, and no amount of content work compensates for being locked out. Cloudflare’s managed rules and several WordPress security plugins now block these crawlers by default, so the block is often something nobody chose.
What is LLM SEO and how is it different from normal SEO?
LLM SEO is the practice of structuring content so language models can retrieve, understand and quote it. It shares most of its foundation with normal SEO, since ChatGPT’s search leans on conventional web results, but it adds a specific requirement: passages must make complete sense when lifted out of the page with no surrounding context.
That extraction requirement is the real difference. Google sends a user to your page, so a paragraph that begins “as we mentioned above” still works once they arrive. A language model quotes the paragraph itself. If it cannot stand alone, it does not get used, and a competitor’s clearer paragraph gets used instead.
In practice this means answering the question directly under the heading that asks it, in complete sentences, without pronouns pointing backwards. Thirty to sixty words is the useful length: long enough to be a real answer, short enough to quote whole. Everything else on the page can be as discursive as you like. We go deeper into the mechanics in our guide to answer engine optimization, and the same discipline is what wins featured snippets in Google.
The good news for chatgpt seo is that none of it is exotic. Clean technical foundations, fast pages, sensible headings and clear writing serve both audiences. If your site already does technical and on-page SEO properly, you are most of the way there.
How do you get cited by ChatGPT as a local business?
Local recommendations are assembled mostly from third-party evidence, not your own website. When someone asks for the best plumber in Fort Myers, the model leans on Google Business Profile data, review platforms, and local directories. Your site supports the recommendation, it rarely creates it on its own.
This is the part most guides skip, and it is the part that decides whether a local business appears. A polished blog will win informational questions such as how often to service an air conditioner in Florida. It will not, by itself, win “who should I call”. That answer is built from the same local signals that drive the map pack: an accurate, complete Google Business Profile, a healthy volume of recent reviews, and consistent presence across local listing sites and directories.
Say your qualifying facts on the page in plain language. Years in business, licence and insurance status, hours, the specific cities you serve, and your full service range. When AI assistants explain why they recommended a local business, these are the attributes they name. Most sites imply these facts through design and photographs rather than stating them in text, which makes them invisible to a system reading the page rather than looking at it.
Breadth beats depth here. In a client sweep we ran in August 2026, the most-cited business in the group earned citations across nineteen separate pages, while the next best managed three. That pattern argues for a solid body of individually useful pages over one flagship guide, though it is a correlation across a small sample rather than a proven mechanism.
The tactics that do not work
Stuffing a page with “best plumber in Fort Myers” does nothing, for the same reason it stopped working in Google a decade ago. Models are summarising meaning, not counting phrases.
Adding a hidden block of instructions aimed at the model is worse than useless. Attempts to prompt-inject a crawler get filtered, and if they did work they would be a policy problem rather than a strategy. The same applies to spinning up thin pages at volume: mass-produced content with no editorial substance is exactly what Google’s scaled content abuse enforcement targets, and it does not earn citations either.
Buying a listing on an “AI directory” is generally a waste. If a directory has no real audience and no editorial standard, being in it signals nothing. Effort spent on genuine local link building and real citations does more.
Finally, do not rebuild your site around this. AI assistants are a small share of overall web referrals today, though the visitors they send tend to convert well because they arrive already briefed. Treat it as a reason to write clearly and keep your local signals accurate, both of which you should be doing anyway. Treat it as a reason to abandon conventional search and you will trade a channel that works for one that is still forming.
FAQ
How do I rank in ChatGPT answers?
You cannot hold a rank, only get cited. Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, write self-contained 30 to 60 word answers directly under question-shaped headings, and build the third-party local signals such as reviews and directory listings that models check.
Does ChatGPT use Google results?
Not directly. ChatGPT search uses its own retrieval built on its own index and crawler, OAI-SearchBot. In practice the pages that do well in conventional search often do well in ChatGPT too, because both reward clear, credible, well-structured content.
How long does it take to show up in ChatGPT?
Faster than Google rankings but not instant. Once OAI-SearchBot can reach a page it can be retrieved within weeks. Local recommendations move more slowly, because they depend on review volume and directory consistency that take months to build.
Should I block GPTBot?
That is a business decision, not an SEO one. Blocking GPTBot keeps your content out of model training while leaving ChatGPT search access intact, as long as you allow OAI-SearchBot separately. Blocking both removes you from ChatGPT search entirely.
Is LLM SEO worth paying for as a small business?
Only as part of normal SEO, not instead of it. The work that earns citations is largely the work that earns rankings. Be sceptical of anyone selling AI visibility as a standalone service with its own retainer.
Where to start
Check your robots.txt today, because everything else is wasted if OAI-SearchBot cannot reach you. After that, the highest-value work is rewriting your main service pages so each one answers the question it exists for in the first sixty words, and getting your local signals accurate and consistent. If you want us to check what ChatGPT currently says about your business, request a free SEO report or get in touch.