How to register your business on ChatGPT (you can't, here's what actually works)

There is no registry, directory or paid listing that puts your business into ChatGPT. Nobody can submit a business to OpenAI, and nobody can pay for a recommendation. ChatGPT mentions businesses it finds in its training data, in Bing’s search index and on pages its crawlers can read. You influence those, not a listing form. The discipline of doing so is AEO (answer engine optimisation).

Why everyone searches for this

“How to register my business on ChatGPT” is a real, frequently typed search. It is a sensible guess: you register with Google Business Profile, Yelp and Trustpilot, so surely there is a ChatGPT equivalent. There is not. ChatGPT behaves like a directory, but it is not one; it is a model reading the open web. That is genuinely better news for small businesses, because the inputs are things you can influence for free.

Can you pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?

No. Whatever advertising OpenAI experiments with, there is no product that sells placement inside the answer to “who should I hire?”. Be equally suspicious of anyone selling “guaranteed ChatGPT mentions”: no honest practitioner guarantees them, because nobody controls the model. What can be bought is the boring groundwork below, done well.

What works, in order

1. Let AI read your site. AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript, so your content must be in the page HTML. Check robots.txt allows GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (and while you are there, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and friends). OpenAI states that OAI-SearchBot access is required for inclusion in ChatGPT search.
2. Register with Bing Webmaster Tools.ChatGPT search leans on Bing’s index, and Bing registration is free and takes minutes. It is the single cheapest high-value step on this list. Google Search Console at the same time: Gemini and Google AI Overviews ride Google’s ordinary index.
3. Describe yourself once, everywhere. One business name, one one-line description, the same category, the same facts on your site, LinkedIn, directories and reviews. Models trust brands whose story does not change between sources.
4. Collect reviews where AI reads them. In one study of SaaS recommendations, 100% of ChatGPT-recommended tools had Capterra reviews and 99% were on G2. For local and consumer businesses, the equivalents are the review platforms of your category. Reviews are third-party evidence, and third parties are what models cite.
5. Be useful where ChatGPT’s sources look. Reddit is among the most-cited domains across AI engines. Astroturfing is detectable and backfires; disclosed, genuinely helpful participation in your niche builds the mentions models learn from.
6. Publish direct answers on your own site. Question-shaped headings with plain answers underneath, tables, and real numbers. AI answers are assembled from extracted passages; give them a passage worth extracting.

How do I check whether it worked?

Ask the engines your buyers’ questions, in fresh sessions, across all six engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode), and record what they say about you and your rivals. Then do it again next week. That is exactly what AEOscore automates, and the free AEO score gives you the starting picture without lifting a finger.

How long does it take?

Weeks to a few months, in the published consensus and in our scans. ChatGPT’s training data moves slowest; its search results and Perplexity move fastest, sometimes within days of new content being indexed. Plan in quarters, measure in weeks.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

Honest answer: no engine reads llms.txt in production today. Google has said it does not use it, and server-log studies show almost no real fetches. It costs ten minutes and does no harm, so some sites ship one anyway (ours included), but treat it as stationery, not strategy. Anyone selling llms.txt as the fix is selling you the cheapest item on the menu.

Figures in this post checked 28 July 2026; re-checked quarterly.