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How to get your service business named in ChatGPT

A buyer types “who does managed IT support for law firms in Bristol?” and gets back a handful of names. Nobody bought those places. Here is how AI answers pick the firms they mention, and what an accountant, recruiter, IT provider or freight firm can do to be one of them.

John Geater, founder of IndexFirst7 min read
The short answer

There is no ChatGPT league table you can pay to join. When a buyer asks for a recommendation, ChatGPT looks things up on the web and names firms from the pages it reads. So let OpenAI’s search crawler in, make your service pages say exactly what you do and where, get listed on the directories and registers buyers already trust, and count how often you’re named across many answers.

How does ChatGPT choose which firms to name?

It reads before it recommends. OpenAI runs a dedicated crawler, OAI-SearchBot, whose job is to find websites for ChatGPT’s search answers. When ChatGPT searches the web to answer a question, such as who offers a particular service in a particular town, the firms it can name are the ones whose pages it can find.

That matters because a buyer’s question rarely contains your name. They ask for a type of service in a place: a payroll bureau in Leeds, contract recruitment for engineers in Derby, office cleaning contracts in Manchester. If the engine has never heard of you, the only way in is a page that matches that need in plain words.

On 13 November 2026 we put five typical questions about UK freight firms to ChatGPT, with web search on, and to Perplexity, which also searches the web before it answers. Each question was asked once. Ten answers on one day is a small sample, but two things stood out. The two engines gave different shortlists: only a handful of firms appeared in both answers to the same question, and for the customs broker question none did. And both explained their picks by pointing at what they had read: firms’ own service pages, directories, registers and ranking articles.

How do you make sure ChatGPT can read your site?

  1. Let OAI-SearchBot in through robots.txtOpenAI says sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to take effect. Our robots.txt checker tells you whether yours lets it through.
  2. Check your firewall isn’t turning it awaySecurity settings at your host or content delivery network can block a crawler that robots.txt allows. OpenAI publishes the IP addresses OAI-SearchBot uses, so your web developer can allow them.
  3. Know the three OpenAI bots apartGPTBot gathers material for training models, and blocking it is a separate choice from search. ChatGPT-User fetches a page only when a person in ChatGPT asks it to. OAI-SearchBot is the one that decides whether you can appear in search answers.
  4. Get your site into Bing as well as GoogleBing is the other large web index. Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, and use IndexNow, which notifies search engines as soon as a page is added, changed or removed.

Everything after that is ordinary indexing work. Our guide to SEO for service businesses covers the first week.

Which pages do AI answers lean on?

In our ten answers, all on freight, both engines tied almost every name to something they had read. Here is what each pair of answers relied on.

  • Chilled and frozen freight, Spain to the UKPerplexity named seven firms whose own pages state a Spain–UK temperature-controlled service. ChatGPT named large global forwarders and a refrigerated rail service. Only one firm was on both lists.
  • A UK customs broker for imports from ChinaPerplexity took most of its picks from Clutch rankings. ChatGPT named big forwarders and sent the buyer to the GOV.UK register of customs agents and the BIFA directory. No firm was on both lists.
  • ADR hazardous goods haulage in the MidlandsHauliers whose pages or listings say plainly that they carry ADR loads from a Midlands base. ChatGPT named 9 and Perplexity 10, with only 2 in common. ChatGPT also pointed to directories of ADR operators.
  • A Manchester freight forwarder for the USAForwarders’ own Manchester pages describing air and sea services, plus local rankings. ChatGPT named six firms and Perplexity five, and two were on both lists.
ChatGPT’s and Perplexity’s answers to four of the five UK freight questions IndexFirst asked on 13 November 2026, a single run of each. The fifth, on 3PL fulfilment for a small online shop, leaned on published 2026 roundups and Clutch rankings, and one firm was on both lists. A small sample: read it as a pattern, not a rule.
  1. Service pages that say what you do“Managed IT support for law firms in Bristol, Cyber Essentials Plus certified” gives an engine something to repeat. “Moving your business forward” gives it nothing.
  2. Your accreditations, written outICAEW registration, SRA regulation, REC membership, Cyber Essentials, ISO 9001, CHAS. If buyers screen on it, put it on the page in words, not only as a logo.
  3. Pages that compare honestly“Contract or permanent recruitment for engineers?” and “Fixed-fee or hourly accountancy?” use the same words buyers type, and an answer engine can quote them.

How do you get onto the directories and lists AI reads?

A lot of what the engines read belongs to someone else: registers, trade directories, review sites and “best of” lists. Ask your buyers’ questions yourself and open the sources the answers give. Sector registers count too: if you offer customs services, for example, HMRC will add you to the GOV.UK list of customs agents free of charge if you ask; firms holding UK AEO status are listed first. For trade bodies and accreditation schemes you already belong to, such as ICAEW, the REC or BIFA, check your member listing is complete. Don’t pay for a place on a ranking or buy reviews.

You can publish a fair comparison of your own market too. We did the same for ours: B2B marketing agencies compared.

Can you claim your business in ChatGPT?

Perhaps. OpenAI launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta on 10 November 2026, with a Business Hub where firms claim and update their details. Early coverage says it starts with US ecommerce and online service businesses, so check whether a UK service business can claim yet.

If Business Hub lets you claim your firm, do it, so the facts ChatGPT holds about you are right. Just don’t treat a profile as a shortcut. We have seen nothing from OpenAI saying a claimed profile buys a better position in its answers, and nobody should sell it to you as one.

For now, the work that moves the needle is the same whether or not you can claim a profile: pages that say what you do, and listings that agree with them.

How do you keep your firm’s facts consistent?

When an engine finds three versions of your company, it hedges or picks someone else. Before any profile or directory work, get these straight.

  1. One nameDecide how your trading name and your registered company name appear, and use the same pairing on your site, directories and invoices.
  2. Every office, with its addressList each office you work from, on its own page if it serves its own area. A client in Leeds wants to know you have people nearby.
  3. The same list of servicesIf your site says you run payroll, your directory listings should say so too, in the same words.
  4. Accreditations you can showName the scheme and, where there is one, the number: ICAEW, SRA, REC, Cyber Essentials, ISO 9001. Remove any that have lapsed.
  5. Contact details that workOne main phone number and one enquiries email, matching everywhere they appear.
  6. A page that says who you are not forIf you don’t do out-of-hours call-outs or take on legal aid work, say so, and say where you work from. Engines go by what pages state: in our freight test Perplexity noted that one haulier’s listed address was in Lancashire, so its Midlands link was weaker. Being plain also saves you calls you can’t serve.

Once those are settled, keep them settled. Change one, and change it everywhere on the same day.

What can you leave out?

An llms.txt file, at least for now. SE Ranking studied nearly 300,000 domains and found no effect on how often a domain is cited by AI. Google’s John Mueller said in April 2025 that, as far as he knew, none of the AI services had said they use it.

Special markup sold as a way into AI answers. Google says there is no special schema.org structured data you need to appear in its AI features. Clear pages that answer a buyer’s question do the job.

How do you know it’s working?

Count, don’t glance. The same question can name you this morning and leave you out this afternoon: SparkToro found less than a 1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT gives the same list of brands twice. So choose the questions your buyers ask, ask each one several times, and track the share of answers that name you.

That is the work IndexFirst does for UK service businesses that sell to other businesses. We track your buyers’ questions, write the pages their searches find and make real changes to your site every working day, each one checked before it goes live. It costs £1,750 a month. See pricing.