Why doesn't ChatGPT mention my company?
Because it finds nothing that links you to what it is being asked. ChatGPT with web search answers with what the model knows and the pages its search brings back; if neither connects you to the question, you are left out. The usual causes, from easiest to hardest to fix:
- It cannot read your website. A robots.txt that blocks OAI-SearchBot, a firewall or CDN that turns bots away, or text that only shows up with JavaScript. OpenAI says on its crawlers page that sites that block OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. The guide to AI crawlers shows how to check.
- Your website is not in the index yet. A new site, or one with few links, takes time to get into the search engines the AI draws on. It happened to us: on 11 October 2026, polarjay.com was not among the sources of any ChatGPT answer; on 23 October 2026, it was in 27 of 80.
- Your website does not say what you sell in those words. If the question is “hotel refurbishment company in Madrid” and your home page says “we create unique spaces”, the AI does not make the connection.
- The pages it cites do not name you. For category questions the AI reads comparisons, guides and directories. If you are not in them, it names whoever is.
- It confuses you with another company. If your name is close to a better-known brand, the AI may answer about that one. It happens to us: in our measurement on 11 October, Claude answered about Polar (polar.sh) or Polar Electro in several questions about PolarJay.
To find out which one is yours, run the free scanner, which runs 12 checks on whether an AI can read your home page and asks ChatGPT, with web search, 3 buyer questions. It is free and needs no sign-up.
How do I get AI assistants to recommend my company?
By making what they read to answer say, clearly and in several places, that you are a good option for that question. Nobody can guarantee an AI will recommend you, but you can remove what gets in the way and give it reasons to. In this order:
- Let the crawlers in. Allow OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot in robots.txt, and check that your CDN or firewall does not block them.
- Put the text in the HTML. Many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript: if your website draws its text in the browser, they may see an almost empty page.
- State your category in the words of the question. In the title, the h1 and the first sentence of your home page: what you sell, to whom and where.
- One page per important question. With the question almost word for word as its heading, the answer in the first sentence and facts that can be quoted: prices, lead times, dated figures.
- Structured data. JSON-LD with your organization (legal name, address, profiles), your products and your prices, so the AI knows who you are and does not mix you up with another company.
- Get named elsewhere. Industry directories, comparisons, press and forums. The AI pulls several sources together before it answers: if only your own website says you are a good option, it carries little weight.
- Measure and repeat. The same questions, every week or every month, to see what has changed.
PolarJay does the measuring and tells you what to change: after each measurement it gives fix instructions to paste into the AI you work with. If you would rather not touch anything, the Polargate team makes the changes from $1,500 (one-off, excluding tax). How to measure is in the guide to measuring AI visibility.
How do I get my brand into Perplexity answers?
Perplexity searches the web every time it answers and links its sources, so to show up you need PerplexityBot to be able to read your website and your brand to be on the pages it finds for that question.
According to its crawler documentation, PerplexityBot is used to surface and link websites in its results and is not used to train models. Perplexity recommends allowing it in robots.txt and accepting its published IP ranges, firewall included. Perplexity-User, the one that visits a page when a user asks it to, generally ignores robots.txt.
The rest is the same as for ChatGPT: pages that answer the question up front, with dated facts, and a presence in the comparisons and guides it cites. Because Perplexity shows its sources, ask your buyer questions and note which pages it cites: that is your list of places where you need to appear.
Our own measurement does not include Perplexity yet: today it asks ChatGPT and Claude with web search.
What OpenAI, Google and Bing say
OpenAI splits its crawlers on its bots page: OAI-SearchBot is for ChatGPT search, GPTBot for training and ChatGPT-User for visits a user asks for. Each one is allowed or blocked separately: you can let OAI-SearchBot in to appear in search and block GPTBot so your content is not used for training. A robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to show in search.
Google says on AI features and your website that there are no extra technical requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: the page has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. SEO fundamentals still apply, such as allowing crawling in robots.txt and in your CDN, linking your pages well internally and keeping what matters in text. Google-Extended, which decides whether your content can be used to train Gemini, does not affect your presence in Search, according to its list of crawlers.
Bing explains in its webmaster guidelines how it finds, crawls and indexes pages. To get found sooner, sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your sitemap and report each change with IndexNow, a protocol other search engines such as Yandex use too.