How does my company get recommended by ChatGPT?

How does ChatGPT decide which company to recommend?

ChatGPT answers from two sources: what the model learned in training, and a web search during the answer. When a question needs current information, ChatGPT searches the web on its own, according to OpenAI. OpenAI describes how in its help: ChatGPT rewrites your question into one or more targeted search queries, sends some of them to search partners, and after reviewing the first results may send further, more specific queries. It ranks the results using multiple factors; “placement is not guaranteed”.

Google works in a similar way for AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google calls it “query fan-out”: several related searches across subtopics and data sources. For a page to appear there as a link, Google says it must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. No special files or optimisations are needed.

So the answer is built from a few pages these searches find. Whoever those pages name as the answer to the question gets named. Pages of others count more than your own: a study by Chen and others (arXiv, 2025) found that AI search weighs independent third-party sources systematically and much more heavily than a brand’s own content and social media, unlike Google Search, which mixes them more evenly.

Why does ChatGPT not recommend my company?

We see five reasons again and again in our measurements:

1. AI may not read your pages. According to OpenAI, sites that opt out of the OAI-SearchBot crawler are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. Your hosting or content delivery network must also let traffic from the crawler’s published IP addresses through. Bot protection can turn it away without you noticing.
2. No page answers the question. When someone asks for an accountant for small businesses in Zurich, the search finds pages that answer exactly that. A general “Services” page is rarely among them.
3. The page is read, but your name is not said. We see this often. An insurance adviser’s comparison page was read as a source in 65 % of 78 answers, but the company behind it was named in only 3 %. Our own page on LLMO was read in 17 % of 78 answers and named in none. Our audit page, on the other hand, names anewera and the price in its first sentence and was named in 9 % of 79 answers (our own measurements, October 2026).
4. No one else names you. AI builds lists such as “the best estate agents in Zurich” from portals, rankings and directories. In our measurement on estate agents of 13 October 2026, 36 of 87 answers cited at least one comparison or listing portal. The most cited website had 42 of its own pages in the answers, among them one page per city.
5. Information is missing or contradicts itself. A different address in a directory, an old offer on a sub page, no author: a study by Propus Codestudio of 98 German-speaking Swiss SMEs, reported by Netzwoche in September 2026, found the websites’ technology mostly fine (81 of 100 points on average). What was missing were signals of trust: questions and answers, clear authorship, sources.

Where can I list my company so that ChatGPT finds it?

You cannot sign up with ChatGPT itself, and a place in the answers cannot be bought. What counts are the listings the web search finds.

On exactly this question (“Where can I list my company so that ChatGPT finds it?”, asked in German), 63 of 81 answers in our measurement from 6 to 14 October 2026 named the Google Business Profile, 60 mentioned Bing, and only 6 local.ch. For Swiss SMEs, the picture is different: in the Propus Codestudio study, local.ch was among the AI’s sources for 63 % of the firms, search.ch for 24 % and comparis.ch for 23 % (Netzwoche, 2026). So keep both up to date:

Listing	Why it counts
Google Business Profile	The basis of local answers on Google. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, reviews included.
Bing (Bing Places, Bing Webmaster Tools)	According to OpenAI, ChatGPT’s web search also uses partners; its help refers to Microsoft’s privacy statement for this.
local.ch and search.ch	In Switzerland, one of AI’s most frequent sources for local firms.
Associations and industry directories	Independent confirmation of who you are and what you offer.
Comparison, review and listing portals	In many industries the source of lists of the “best” providers.

Everywhere: the same name, the same address, the same offer as on your website.

What you can do yourself

1. Check the crawlers. Your robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, Googlebot and Bingbot, and your hosting lets them through. OpenAI says its systems take about 24 hours to adjust to a change.
2. One page per important question. The answer in the first sentence, with place, offer and, where possible, price.
3. Your name in the first sentence. Not only in the logo or the footer: AI takes over sentences, not logos.
4. Complete and align your listings. Google, Bing, local.ch, search.ch, associations.
5. Build mentions by others. Profiles on portals, memberships, articles in trade media, reviews.
6. Measure before and after. Otherwise you will not know what worked.

How you see whether it works

A single answer only shows what is possible. Whether a change works shows in a comparison over many answers: measure first, then change and record the date, then measure again with the same questions. An effect counts only when the range after no longer overlaps the range before.

This is how we work for our clients too. On relofinder.ch we changed the first sentence of every region page on 14 October 2026. Before, 47 % of 575 answers to questions about agencies in a city named ReloFinder, with a range of ±4 points. It will be measured again from 8 to 14 November 2026. How we calculate is on the method page; the whole process is on the home page.

When help pays off

Checking yourself is worth it for a first impression, for example with our free AI check. According to the KMU Digital Pulse 2026 survey by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, 58 % of the 504 SMEs surveyed have never checked how they appear in AI answers, and 2 % have taken targeted action.

Help pays off when many questions, places or languages count, or when no one has the time to measure and act every month. At anewera, Analytics measures daily and delivers the most important improvements every month as a brief, from CHF 290 a month. In Managed we also do the work: technology, content, listings and outreach, from CHF 980 a month. The prices are on the pricing page; where your company stands today is what the AI visibility audit clarifies.