Ranking in ChatGPT search is different from ranking in Google search. Not only is the chatbot’s interface very different from Google’s search results pages, but you also need to prioritize different tactics to rank in ChatGPT.
That said, ranking in ChatGPT isn’t the end goal. Instead, what matters most is how you appear and in what context.
How ChatGPT talks about you matters more than where you appear
The goal in SEO has long been to rank as close to the top as possible. But in ChatGPT, ranking is less about a specific position and more about how ChatGPT talks about you when you do show up.
There are two main reasons for this:
Position doesn’t reliably predict traffic
A high ranking on Google often drives website traffic, even as this relationship has weakened with the introduction of SERP features like AI Overviews.
In ChatGPT, appearing as the first link or brand recommendation doesn’t bring the same likelihood of getting a click. One leaked document suggests most ChatGPT click-through rates are between 0% and 2%. Compare this with click-through rates from Google, which one study put at about 28% for the top result.
So, just being cited or named in an answer doesn’t predictably lead to visits the way ranking well on Google can.
Context matters more than position
In Google search results, most listings below any generative AI features appear as a title and description. These elements give users helpful but fairly limited information about what the page contains, as you can see below:
In ChatGPT responses, results don’t follow a “title + description” format. Instead, ChatGPT often provides context for the user’s prompt, along with recommendations, pros and cons, alternatives, and more. Like this:
This means users often get a lot more information about where the link will take them from ChatGPT’s response. If it’s a product page or service landing page, ChatGPT will typically summarize what makes that particular offering the best choice. Or why you might want to choose another option.
So, just appearing as the top result isn’t enough to generate a visit to your site. If a brand appearing second or third is discussed more favorably than you, users might simply go straight to that brand without even considering yours.
This means that the goal with ranking in ChatGPT isn’t to hold a numbered spot (although higher is still usually better). It’s to be the brand ChatGPT recommends and describes favorably in response to important prompts from your target audience. That’s what this guide will show you how to do.
How ChatGPT forms its answers
ChatGPT forms its answers by retrieving information relevant to a user’s prompt from selected data sources, passing this information to ChatGPT’s large language model (LLM), and parsing the information to generate an appropriate response.
There are two main sources of information: live search and model training data.
Live search
For live search, ChatGPT uses multiple methods to find sources.
For example, a few people have shown that ChatGPT uses multiple web scrapers to fetch pages live from the open web.
ChatGPT also sources some information from its own index (database of webpages). It’s unclear how big this index is or how often it’s used for responses. We do know some workspaces that use the tool’s “offline search” functionality may rely on ChatGPT’s own index. But we don’t know if a typical user prompt relies on it.
ChatGPT creates its index by using a web crawler called OAI-Searchbot to explore the web. It then uses algorithms to determine which pages should be stored.
ChatGPT can additionally source information from the Bing Search index, because its parent company (OpenAI) has a partnership with Microsoft. Bing’s main web crawler is called Bingbot. But we know that ChatGPT uses Google’s index as well.
OpenAI has also partnered with trusted news and data providers. This allows ChatGPT to display up-to-date information from these sources, like this example of the latest MLB game results:
In terms of specific websites, ChatGPT visibly pulls from sources like review sites and industry publications when generating answers, even outside of any formal partnership.
So, your visibility in ChatGPT depends largely on your visibility across multiple sources, not just your own site.
Training data
The data ChatGPT’s models were trained on is information the tool can refer to in its answers without (or alongside) live search. This training data can come from multiple sources, including:
- Publicly accessible content across the internet
- Partnerships with specific publications
- Synthetic data created by OpenAI
Here’s an example of a ChatGPT response that relies solely on its training data (there are no linked sources in the response and no option to see sources when you click the three-dot icon at the bottom):
Model training data only updates when the model itself gets retrained, which happens on the order of months to years. If your brand is well represented in that training data, you’re more likely to get recommended in the answers that rely on this training data alone and possibly in answers that also use live search.
The methods in the next section can improve your brand’s chances of being included in both model training data and live web results that are retrieved.
How to rank in ChatGPT Search
Below are eight things you can start doing today to rank in ChatGPT search:
|
Tactic |
Quick action |
|
Make sure ChatGPT can retrieve your content |
Check your robots.txt and firewall settings to ensure you haven’t blocked AI crawlers |
|
Get your content indexed in search engines |
Use Google Search Console and Bing Web Master tools to confirm you’re indexed in both search engines |
|
Structure content to be extractable |
Use question headings with direct answers, definitive language, and clear and concise writing |
|
Optimize for what your customers are asking ChatGPT |
Use prompt tracking to find and target the questions your audience asks |
|
Publish original content |
Create content that gives ChatGPT a distinct reason to cite or recommend you |
|
Build brand consensus off your site |
Earn mentions through digital PR, reviews, third-party listicles, and a presence on sites like Reddit and YouTube |
|
Maintain a consistent narrative |
Align how you describe your brand and offerings across your site, social media, and directories |
|
Keep your content up to date |
Make regular and meaningful updates to keep your content fresh, relevant, and accurate |
1. Make sure ChatGPT can retrieve your content
Make sure you’re not blocking AI crawlers from accessing your content to be eligible for retrieval and ranking by ChatGPT.
You can quickly check this by visiting “yourdomain.com/robots.txt” and looking for any lines that disallow the following bots:
- OAI-SearchBot: Used to find websites when ChatGPT uses live retrieval
- OAI-AdsBot: Used to verify that websites advertising through ChatGPT are safe and relevant (not important for appearing in ChatGPT search organically)
- GPTBot: Used for model training
- ChatGPT-User: Triggers crawling based on actions initiated by a user (e.g., to visit a specific webpage or take action on it)
Here’s an example of a website specifically blocking GPTBot and ChatGPT-User via the robots.txt file:
You should also ensure that your hosting provider’s firewall isn’t blocking relevant bots. For example, if you use Cloudflare, check whether you’re blocking AI bots by going to your domain within Cloudflare, then click “Security” > “Settings.” Scroll to “Block AI Bots” and click the edit button.
On this screen, select the circle next to “Do not block (allow crawlers)” to ensure ChatGPT bots and other AI crawlers can access your pages.
2. Get your content indexed in search engines
Check whether your webpages are indexed in Google and Bing, since these are two search engines that ChatGPT uses to source content for its answers.
Check whether you’re indexed in Google with Google Search Console. Go to “Indexing” > “Pages” and look for any issues in the “Why pages aren’t indexed” section.
Learn how to fix any issues you see here in our guide to Google Search Console errors.
To check that your content is indexed on Bing, use Bing Webmaster Tools. Go to “Site Explorer,” select an issue type from the drop-down at the top, and review the corresponding URLs to see whether there are important pages not showing up in Bing results.
3. Structure content to be extractable
Structure your content to be extractable to improve the chances of ChatGPT matching your content, business, and products to relevant user prompts.
Writing with extraction in mind isn’t about making your content for robots instead of humans, but is instead about improving clarity for both.
Here are a few ways to do this:
- Use definitive phrasing throughout your content to make concepts and features clear to users and AI tools like ChatGPT. Language like “may,” “might,” and “potentially” can leave ChatGPT with doubt over what you’re saying.
- Write clearly and concisely to make it easy for ChatGPT (and users) to process and understand. Avoid complex sentence structures and too much metaphorical language.
- Use question headings to answer common user questions about the topic you’re covering or the product that you are writing about. Have a clear and concise question as the heading and immediately answer that question in the content below it. We do this on the Semrush blog:
4. Optimize for what your customers are asking ChatGPT
Optimize your content for the prompts your target audience is using in ChatGPT to improve your chances of appearing for them.
Like optimizing for keywords in SEO, optimizing for prompts helps ChatGPT understand what your content and business is relevant to. That allows it to better match your business and content to relevant prompts.
Use Semrush’s Prompt Research tool in the AI Visibility Toolkit to find the prompts your target audience is using. Enter a topic and click “Analyze.”
You’ll see an overview of the topic across multiple AI tools, including estimated prompt volume of all related topics. Click the “All AI platforms” drop-down and select “ChatGPT.”
Click into any of the topics in the “Related topics” section to see prompts your audience enters into ChatGPT.
Look for prompts that are relevant to your brand and content, then click “View full response” to see ChatGPT’s response to each prompt.
Look in the “Sources” section to see which websites are already being cited for this prompt. Visit these sources to get a better idea of what type of content ChatGPT is citing for prompts that are important for your business.
In the example below, the sources are all best lists on third-party websites. Getting your brand included on those lists is likely to drive more visibility for this prompt than trying to get your own content cited for it.
5. Publish original content
Publish original content to give ChatGPT reasons to cite your website instead of others.
If your content just repeats what’s already out there, ChatGPT has no reason to pick you over the sources it already trusts for that information.
Creating content that’s original doesn’t have to mean developing a study or conducting large-scale research (though it can). Original content could also be:
- A framework, process, or methodology that’s uniquely yours
- A clear point of view on a topic where most existing content just restates the consensus
- Detailed, first-hand comparisons or breakdowns that go further than the generic “top 10” content already dominating a topic
- A term you coined for a concept, process, or category
Publishing original content can also help your brand get recommended, not just cited as a source. Content that clearly explains what your product does differently, who it’s specifically built for, and how it performs against named alternatives gives ChatGPT useful material it can use to recommend your product or service ahead of your rivals.
One way to give ChatGPT this material is to publish honest, detailed content comparing your brand to your competitors. For example, Mailchimp has a page comparing its offering to Brevo, and ChatGPT cited that page when I prompted it about choosing one platform over the other:
You can also document specific use cases with enough detail that ChatGPT can match a prompt like “best tool for [specific situation]” to your product directly.
For example, Garmin has a page outlining the “best tactical Garmin watches.” This page caters to a specific need, and the AI Visibility Toolkit shows it appears for specific prompts like “what are the top brands for military and tactical watches?”
6. Build brand consensus off your site
Building brand consensus off your site through mentions across the web makes your brand more likely to be recommended by ChatGPT. You can do this by appearing in third-party listicles, engaging on community forums like Reddit, and creating content on YouTube.
Here’s an example of a response from ChatGPT that relies heavily on third-party sources:
Without appearing in these sources, and only focusing on your own site, you limit the ways ChatGPT can find information it can use to recommend you.
Use these tactics to build brand consensus off your site:
- Create digital PR campaigns that get journalists talking about your brand
- Encourage customers to leave positive reviews on third-party websites
- Use link building tactics to get other websites to link to your website
- List your business on relevant directories
- Maintain active profiles on social media platforms
- Use online reputation management tactics to counter any negativity about your brand
7. Maintain a consistent narrative
Describe your brand and offerings the same way everywhere they appear, so ChatGPT builds one clear picture of who you are instead of several conflicting ones.
Take a local business as an example. A gym might describe itself as a “fitness center” on its website, but use the “gym” category on its Google Business Profile, and get referred to as a “health club” in local directory listings.
These three different definitions may blur ChatGPT’s understanding of the business and which queries to recommend it for. Consolidating descriptions around one main narrative may improve the business’s visibility for prompts related to that narrative.
Check your own brand’s consistency across:
- Your website’s homepage and about page
- Your Google Business Profile category, description, and product or services list
- Social media bios
- Directory and review platform listings
- Any partner or affiliate sites that mention you
8. Keep your content up to date
Keeping your content up to date can make your content more likely to rank in ChatGPT search.
One study found that various ChatGPT models (alongside other LLMs) showed recency bias, meaning that newer content tended to rank higher in responses.
Keeping your content up to date also ensures ChatGPT has an accurate depiction of your content, products, and brand.
If your prices change, update them immediately to minimize the risk of ChatGPT citing incorrect prices to your customers. If your brand pivots in a new direction, update all your related content to prevent ChatGPT from matching your brand to irrelevant prompts.
How to track whether ChatGPT cites you
You can get a very rough idea of whether ChatGPT cites you manually by running prompts related to your business and seeing if you show up.
Aside from taking a long time, manual tracking is unreliable because responses vary between prompts and users. To get a better picture of your brand’s visibility in ChatGPT, you either need to run these prompts manually at scale, which is often unsustainable, or use a tool like Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit or Enterprise AIO solution.
If you run a small to medium-sized business, use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to track your ChatGPT mentions and citations. Do this by scrolling down to “Cited Pages” in Visibility Overview. Click into any of the pages to see which prompts you’re being cited for.
Track any relevant prompts by clicking the “Monitor” icon. You’ll then be asked to set up prompt tracking.
Next, go to the “Overview” tab in the Prompt Tracking tool to monitor your visibility for each prompt over time.
If you run an enterprise business, use the Enterprise AIO solution to track your ChatGPT citations. The AI Rankings report shows you whether you’re being cited in the responses to relevant prompts. And the Rankings Gap report shows where your rivals are being cited but you’re not.
Build the signals ChatGPT needs to cite and recommend your brand
Use the steps above to improve your brand’s chances of consistently appearing in ChatGPT in a favorable way.
You don’t just show up in responses one day and stay there. ChatGPT visibility comes from being visible to the tool’s retrieval systems, creating clear and up-to-date content, and building your brand consensus beyond your website.
If you run a small- or medium-sized business, get started with the AI Visibility Toolkit. Or book a demo for the Enterprise AIO solution if you need visibility tracking at scale.
