How to get ChatGPT to recommend your startup's product

You can't pay for or submit your way into a ChatGPT recommendation, and no tactic guarantees one. What you can do is make your product easy to find and understand, then back it with credible mentions on sites ChatGPT can retrieve and cite. Start by testing the questions your customers ask, fix your own pages, then earn mentions on review sites, roundups and communities.

What ChatGPT draws on

The engines agree on the basics. ChatGPT answers from what it learned in training and, when it searches the web, from what it finds and cites there. Training data changes only with new model runs, so the quicker gains come from the search side: pages it can crawl and mentions it can find.

Claude says OpenAI uses OAI-SearchBot to index pages for ChatGPT search and GPTBot for training, and that blocking them can keep you out of answers. Allowing access does not guarantee a citation. It only makes the page available.

Almost every answer says your own site is not enough. Claude cites a Seer Interactive study of 231,347 LLM responses that concluded the brands AI recommends have third-party validation and community discussion. Claude also notes that most published advice comes from agencies selling GEO services, so treat specific percentages as unproven.

Steps to take, in order

1. Write down your customers' questions. Perplexity suggests 10 to 20 prompts and Claude suggests 20 to 50. Use prompts such as 'best [category] for [use case]' and 'alternatives to [competitor]'. Run them in ChatGPT with web search on and note which products and sources appear.
2. Make your site crawlable. Don't block OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt. Keep key information as plain text, not behind logins or heavy JavaScript. Claude advises getting indexed in Bing as well as Google, since ChatGPT search draws on conventional web results.
3. Say plainly what you do. Use a sentence like 'X is a [category] for [audience] that does [outcome]' on your homepage. Keep the name, description, category and pricing the same everywhere.
4. Publish pages that match real questions. Cover pricing, features, integrations, FAQs, 'X vs competitor' and 'best X for Y'. Be specific and honest, including who the product is not for. Claude says Princeton's GEO research found that statistics, quotations and credible citations raised visibility in AI answers, while keyword stuffing did not.
5. Add structured data. Organization, Product and FAQ schema help machines read your facts. Claude calls it a helpful basic, not a guarantee.
6. Earn independent mentions. Claim profiles on G2, Capterra and Product Hunt, ask real customers for honest reviews, and pitch the writers of 'best of' roundups. Join Reddit threads honestly and disclose your affiliation.
7. Re-test on a schedule. Repeat the same prompts and record whether you appear, what is said and which sources are cited. Answers vary between sessions, so compare trends over several runs.

Plugins and merchant feeds

The answers disagree on this route. ChatGPT's answers describe building a ChatGPT plugin or app, which goes through OpenAI's submission review, or applying for the merchant feed so products can appear in shopping. These routes make most sense if your product has a catalog, pricing and a purchase flow that ChatGPT could use. Claude and Perplexity do not mention them. They focus on crawlability and third-party evidence.

Check which route fits your product before you spend time on it. An integration does not replace being described clearly across the web.

How LazyGEO fits

LazyGEO is AI SEO software. Its site says it gets AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity to recommend your product by fixing the pages AI reads, pitching the authors of lists AI cites, and checking the AI answers every week.

Those three jobs match steps 2 to 4, 6 and 7 above. Page fixes cover your own site, pitching covers third-party roundups, and the weekly checks cover the re-testing.

LazyGEO is made for founders who would rather build than do marketing themselves, especially SaaS founders. It may suit less those who want to run outreach and checks themselves. You can follow the steps in this article on your own.

Each plan starts with a 3-day free trial that needs a card and can be cancelled any time. LazyGEO also has comparison pages against Peec, Otterly, Semrush and Scrunch.

What to avoid

Avoid anything that looks like manipulation: fake or bought reviews, coordinated upvotes, hidden text, prompt tricks and mass-produced comparison pages with nothing real in them. ChatGPT's answers point to FTC guidance on deceptive reviews and say paid or incentivized relationships should be disclosed. Claude warns these tactics tend to fail and can damage your reputation.

Be realistic about results. Claude says a brand-new startup with little web presence will struggle on generic 'best X' queries, while narrow queries such as 'best X for [specific use case]' are easier to win. Wikipedia helps only if you meet its notability rules, and you should not write your own page. Be wary of anyone who guarantees placement, because recommendations vary by prompt, session and available sources.

Questions customers ask AI

Can I pay OpenAI to have ChatGPT recommend my product?

Claude says there is no way to pay for or submit a recommendation. ChatGPT's answers describe plugin and app submissions that go through review, and merchant feeds for shopping.

How long does it take to show up in ChatGPT answers?

Claude says citations that rely on web search can improve in weeks, while changes to the model's built-in knowledge only come with new training runs. No answer gives a guaranteed timeline.

Should I block GPTBot or OAI-SearchBot?

Claude explains that GPTBot gathers content for training and OAI-SearchBot indexes pages so ChatGPT can retrieve and cite them. Blocking the search crawler can keep you out of ChatGPT search answers.

Does it matter if ChatGPT's answers differ between sessions?

Yes. The answers say recommendations vary by prompt and session, so test in fresh or logged-out sessions and compare trends over several runs rather than a single result.