How Do You Get ChatGPT to Recommend Your Company?

For years, companies have spent a lot of time and money trying to answer one question: How do we get to the top of Google?

Now there's another question to worry about: How do we get ChatGPT to recommend us?

The difference between those questions is bigger than it might seem.

When someone searches Google for the best companies in a category, Google traditionally gives them a page of links to explore. When someone asks ChatGPT the same question, it can simply give them a list of companies.

Your company is either on it or it isn't.

And buyers are already using AI this way. In an Idea Grove survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers, 42% said they had used ChatGPT to research a product, service or brand during the previous six months.

That doesn't mean Google is disappearing, or that consumers blindly accept whatever ChatGPT tells them. Our research actually found the opposite: Only 15% of respondents said they fully trust AI brand recommendations, and 98% said they do some kind of verification before buying from an unfamiliar brand recommended by AI.

But ChatGPT increasingly has a seat at the table when people decide which companies to investigate in the first place.

So how do you make sure your company gets a seat too?

We've been studying this at Idea Grove through AI visibility audits, client programs and our own original research. There's no single trick that makes ChatGPT recommend a company. But we've seen a pattern: The brands with the strongest footprint of credible third-party evidence are generally in a much better position to be understood, recommended and ultimately trusted.

That's where I would start.

First, Figure Out What You Want ChatGPT to Recommend You For

"We want to show up in ChatGPT" isn't really a goal.

For what?

A prospective customer doesn't usually open ChatGPT and type, "Tell me something nice about Acme Software."

They ask questions:

• What are the best payroll platforms for a 500-person company?
• Which data center cooling companies specialize in liquid cooling?
• Who are the top B2B PR agencies for technology companies?
• What are the best alternatives to Competitor X?
• Which companies provide a particular capability?
• Is Company X reputable?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of Company X?

Those are very different prompts, and your visibility may be completely different for each one.

That's why the first step in AI optimization isn't creating more content. It's identifying the questions that matter.

Think about the prompts your prospects might use at different points in the buying process. Some will be category questions. Some will be comparison questions. Some will be reputation questions. Some will be very specific questions about a problem your company solves.

Build a list.

Then start asking them.

Find Out What ChatGPT Already Thinks About Your Company

This sounds almost too obvious, but you'd be surprised how many companies haven't done it systematically.

Run the prompts.

Does ChatGPT know your company exists?

Does it understand what you do?

Does it place you in the right category?

Which competitors does it recommend instead?

What does it say they're good at?

What does it say you're good at?

What sources does it cite when it searches the web?

Then change the wording and run the questions again.

"Best enterprise payroll software" may produce a different set of companies from "payroll platforms for companies with 500 to 2,000 employees." "Top B2B technology PR firms" may produce a different answer from "PR agencies for enterprise software companies."

You should also test multiple AI platforms. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity don't necessarily give the same answers because they use different models, retrieval systems and sources.

At Idea Grove, we call this an AI visibility audit.

The point isn't to run a few vanity searches for your company name. It's to understand whether your brand is entering the consideration set for the questions that could actually produce business.

That's becoming important because AI isn't simply another source of website traffic. In many cases, it's becoming a gatekeeper to which companies buyers consider at all.

We've written separately about what we're seeing as AI becomes a gatekeeper to B2B consideration sets. One of the patterns we've observed is that companies with years of strong earned media visibility often begin this new era with an advantage.

They've already spent years giving the internet evidence about who they are.

ChatGPT Needs Evidence, Not Just Claims

Every company says it's good.

Visit the websites of 10 competitors in almost any B2B industry and you'll see many of the same words:

Leading.

Innovative.

Trusted.

Award-winning.

Best-in-class.

Customer-focused.

Those words aren't meaningless. But they're claims made by the company about itself.

Now compare them with these:

Hundreds of customers have independently reviewed the company.

A respected trade publication regularly quotes its CEO.

An industry analyst includes the company in its market coverage.

Major publications have written about the company's work.

Independent websites cite the company's research.

Those are different.

They're trust signals.

I wrote a book called Trust Signals in 2022, before ChatGPT became part of everyday life. My focus at the time was on how people decide whether to trust companies online.

The basic idea was that companies can say almost anything about themselves. What makes those claims believable is the evidence surrounding them.

Generative AI has made that idea more important, because machines are now making their own judgments about which companies belong in an answer.

If your website says you're one of the best companies in your category but almost nobody else on the web seems to agree, why should ChatGPT recommend you?

What Our Research Says About AI Recommendations and Trust

There's another part of this that's easy to miss.

Getting recommended by ChatGPT isn't the end goal.

Getting chosen is.

Our survey of 1,000 consumers found that only 2% would purchase from an unfamiliar AI-recommended brand without checking it first. The other 98% would verify the recommendation in some way.

What were they looking for?

Among the strongest signals was customer feedback: 78% said verified customer reviews would increase their trust in an AI-recommended brand.

Earned media mattered too. When respondents were asked to choose between two otherwise similar AI-recommended brands, 69% preferred the company with trusted press coverage over one with no media presence.

That's a pretty important finding.

Imagine you've succeeded in getting ChatGPT to recommend your company. The prospect has never heard of you, so she Googles your name.

What does she find?

If the answer is your website, your LinkedIn page and a collection of press releases you wrote about yourself, ChatGPT may have gotten you into the consideration set, but you haven't necessarily won her trust.

If she finds independent reviews, credible media coverage, executive interviews, industry recognition and other third-party evidence, that's a very different experience.

This is why I think the conversation about AI optimization sometimes starts in the wrong place.

Companies ask, "How do we get mentioned by AI?"

The better question is, "What will AI—and the person using it—find when they investigate us?"

You need both.

Make It Obvious What Your Company Does

Before you worry about becoming the preferred recommendation, make sure AI systems can confidently understand what your company is.

This sounds basic. It often isn't.

Companies describe themselves differently across their website, LinkedIn profile, directory listings, press releases and media coverage. They change positioning. They invent new category names. They acquire companies. They retire products without cleaning up old pages.

Over time, the web accumulates different versions of the business.

That's confusing for people, and it can be confusing for machines.

Your company name, category, primary products or services, customers, markets and areas of expertise should be described clearly and consistently.

That doesn't mean repeating identical boilerplate everywhere.

It means creating a coherent public record.

If you sell workforce management software for healthcare organizations, there should be plenty of credible information connecting your company to workforce management, healthcare and the problems your software solves.

Don't make ChatGPT solve a riddle to figure out what business you're in.

Build Authority Around the Topics You Want to Own

Being understood is one thing.

Being recommended is harder.

If you want ChatGPT to associate your company with a subject, you need evidence of expertise around that subject.

Your own content is part of that evidence.

Publish useful articles that answer the questions your customers actually ask. Explain things clearly. Provide specifics. Compare approaches. Answer the follow-up questions people are likely to have.

But I wouldn't respond to the rise of AI by dramatically increasing the volume of generic content you publish.

AI has made generic content almost free.

Anyone can produce a competent 1,500-word article on the "10 Benefits of Artificial Intelligence for Business" in a few minutes. There are already countless articles just like it.

The question is: What can you publish that somebody else can't?

That's where original knowledge becomes important.

You may have proprietary data. Customer research. Internal benchmarks. Detailed case studies. Subject-matter experts who have spent decades in an industry.

Use them.

The more your content contains information that originated with you, the more reason the rest of the web has to reference it.

Create Original Research People Want to Cite

If I had to choose one content strategy that sits particularly well at the intersection of PR, SEO and AI visibility, it would be original research.

We're doing it ourselves.

The consumer research cited in this article didn't exist until we commissioned it. Now those findings—42% using ChatGPT for brand research, 98% verifying unfamiliar recommendations, 69% preferring brands with trusted media coverage—are facts that other writers can discuss and cite.

That's the point.

Original research adds something new to the public record.

Suppose a cybersecurity company surveys 1,000 IT leaders and discovers that 68% have prohibited employees from putting customer information into public AI tools.

A journalist can report that.

A blogger can cite it.

An association can link to it.

Someone can discuss it on Reddit.

Other publications may repeat the finding while crediting the source.

And AI systems searching for information about corporate AI policies now have another piece of evidence to work with.

Compare that with publishing another generic cybersecurity article containing information already available on thousands of websites.

Original research gives people a reason to reference you.

Those references build authority.

Earn Coverage From Sources Other Than Yourself

This is where PR becomes especially important to AI visibility.

If your company says you're an expert, that's one data point.

If credible independent publications repeatedly treat you as an expert, that's much stronger evidence.

A journalist might quote your CEO about an industry trend. A trade publication might write about your research. A podcast might interview one of your executives. A national business publication might include your company in a larger story about the market.

Each appearance creates another connection between your brand and the subjects you want to be known for.

We've seen this pattern in our own AI visibility work.

Companies that have invested consistently in earned media often have a significant public footprint before they ever begin thinking about ChatGPT optimization. There may already be hundreds of articles, executive quotes, backlinks and third-party references connecting their brands to particular industries and areas of expertise.

That history is difficult for a competitor to manufacture overnight.

It's also why I don't think PR and AI optimization should be treated as unrelated disciplines.

PR gives other people reasons to talk about you.

AI visibility depends, at least in part, on what the rest of the web says.

Can You Actually Improve ChatGPT Visibility?

Yes. We've seen it happen.

But I wouldn't promise anyone that publishing three articles or earning five media placements will increase their ChatGPT visibility by a specific amount. We're too early in this field, and there are too many variables involved.

What we can do is measure.

In one recent Idea Grove client program, we tracked the company's visibility across relevant AI prompts while working to strengthen the third-party information surrounding the brand.

Over a two-month period, the client's overall AI visibility increased from 47.5% to 52.9%. Its ChatGPT visibility increased more sharply, from 44.6% to 57.9%.

We've discussed the results in more detail in our analysis of how long it takes to build AI visibility.

I'm careful about what conclusions I draw from one client. Correlation isn't proof that a particular article or placement caused ChatGPT to change an answer.

But that's why measurement matters.

If you establish a baseline, make deliberate changes to your brand's information environment and continue testing the same kinds of prompts, you can start seeing whether your visibility is moving in the right direction.

That's much more useful than pretending there's a secret ChatGPT ranking algorithm we've cracked.

Backlinks Still Matter, but Think Beyond SEO

For years, marketers have talked about backlinks almost entirely in terms of Google rankings.

I think that's becoming too narrow.

A backlink is also a connection between two pieces of information.

If an authoritative cybersecurity publication links to your company's ransomware research, that isn't simply a vote for the page's SEO authority. It's another public connection between your company and ransomware expertise.

If dozens of credible sites create similar connections, a pattern begins to emerge.

This is why Digital PR has become so interesting.

Traditional PR wants the mention.

SEO wants the link.

AI visibility benefits from the broader network of information being created around the brand.

The same campaign can contribute to all three.

Don't Ignore Reviews, Reddit and Other Third-Party Conversations

Companies naturally prefer sources they control.

Your prospective customers don't.

Our own research makes that clear. When people encounter an unfamiliar company through an AI recommendation, almost all of them look for outside verification.

Reviews are an obvious example.

So are Reddit conversations, industry forums, analyst commentary, trade associations, professional communities and other places where people discuss companies independently.

You shouldn't manufacture those conversations.

Fake reviews, planted Reddit posts and undisclosed promotional comments aren't a sustainable trust strategy. Beyond the ethical problem, they can create exactly the kind of reputational mess you're trying to avoid.

But you should pay attention to what people are genuinely saying.

If customers repeatedly praise the same feature, that's useful information.

If they consistently complain about the same weakness, that's useful too.

If your three largest competitors are regularly discussed in communities where your company is virtually invisible, you've learned something important about your brand.

AI visibility isn't simply about producing more information.

It's also about understanding the information that already exists.

Make Your Own Website Easy to Understand

For all this emphasis on third-party evidence, your own website still matters.

Make important information easy to find.

Explain what your company does in plain English. Have clear pages for your products and services. Identify your leadership. Publish useful information about your areas of expertise. Answer the questions customers ask.

Keep old information from accumulating after your positioning or products change.

Use descriptive page titles and headings.

Connect related content logically.

Use appropriate structured data where it helps machines understand your organization, people, products and content.

None of this is particularly exciting.

It's also not something I'd skip.

Before an AI system can decide whether your company deserves to be recommended, it helps if it can confidently determine who you are.

What About Wikipedia?

Wikipedia comes up constantly in discussions about AI visibility, for understandable reasons. It has long been an important source of structured information about companies, people and topics.

That doesn't mean you should create a Wikipedia article because you want ChatGPT visibility.

Wikipedia has notability requirements. Companies generally need meaningful coverage in reliable, independent sources before an article is appropriate.

And Wikipedia is not your company biography.

If your business legitimately qualifies for an article, accurate Wikipedia information can contribute to a clearer public record about the company.

But the sequence matters.

Build the independent authority first.

If Wikipedia eventually reflects that authority, great.

Trying to reverse-engineer the process because you want ChatGPT to notice you is likely to cause more problems than it solves.

Don't Confuse AI Visibility With an SEO Trick

There's already an alphabet soup of terms for optimizing for generative AI: GEO, AEO, AIO and others.

The terminology matters less to me than the underlying change.

For 25 years, companies optimized for a world where people typed queries into search engines and chose among links.

Now people increasingly ask questions and receive synthesized answers.

That changes what visibility means.

You still want your website to rank in Google.

But you also want your company to become part of the answer.

That's one reason we've developed what we call the Total Visibility System at Idea Grove. It brings together PR, SEO and AI optimization because the lines between those disciplines increasingly don't match the way buyers actually find information.

A media placement can create awareness, a backlink, a Google result, a third-party trust signal and potentially a source that surfaces in an AI answer.

Why would we treat those as five unrelated outcomes?

The objective is increasingly the same: Make sure your company is visible and credible wherever your buyers go looking for answers.

The Trust Signals That Can Help ChatGPT Recommend Your Company

Nobody can give you a checklist that guarantees ChatGPT will recommend your company.

But if I were auditing a company's AI visibility, I'd want to know whether it had:

• Clear and consistent information about what the company does
• Strong content demonstrating expertise in the subjects it wants to own
• Original research and proprietary data
• Relevant earned media coverage
• Executives quoted in credible publications
• Authoritative backlinks
• Independent customer reviews
• Industry awards and certifications
• Analyst and expert references
• Relevant directory and association listings
• Genuine discussion in industry communities
• Accurate information on authoritative reference sites
• Consistent connections between the brand and the topics it wants to own

The interesting thing about that list is that most of these signals aren't new.

Companies have been building them for years.

What's new is who's reading them.

The Goal Isn't to Trick ChatGPT

If your strategy is "How do we manipulate ChatGPT into mentioning us?" you're probably asking the wrong question.

Ask instead:

How do we become the company ChatGPT has good reasons to mention?

That's a much harder problem.

You have to decide what you want to be known for. You have to create useful information. You have to produce original evidence. You have to earn coverage and links. You have to establish your people as experts. You have to build a reputation with customers. And you have to make sure the information surrounding your company is accurate and consistent.

Then you measure whether AI systems are beginning to notice.

Our early client results tell us that visibility can move. Our consumer research tells us something equally important: Getting into the AI answer is only the first step.

People still check.

They still look for reviews. They still look for credible press coverage. They still want evidence that the company an AI recommended deserves their trust.

That makes AI visibility less of a departure from the way trust has always worked online than it might initially appear.

ChatGPT may be a new gatekeeper.

But it still needs something to go on.

Give it evidence.