Can I get recommended by ChatGPT when customers ask in Malay?

Yes, your business can get recommended by ChatGPT when customers ask in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). ChatGPT usually turns a Malay question into English web searches, picks businesses from the pages it finds, then writes its answer in Malay. So the work is to match your English page to those searches, and to give your most specific service a Malay page written in your customers' own words.

Picture a customer typing: "Aircond rumah saya tak sejuk. Boleh cadangkan kedai servis aircond yang bagus berdekatan saya?" In our test, ChatGPT searched for "aircond service" in English, and every one of its searches kept the word "aircond".

What does ChatGPT do when a customer asks for a business in Malay?

When a customer asks for a business in Malay, ChatGPT usually searches the web in English, reads what it finds and replies in Malay. We asked the same 15 Malay buying questions a week apart, and about nine in ten searches were in English both times. Why that matters for your English page is in Do I need Malay or Chinese content?

OpenAI describes this rewriting step itself. Asked for "good restaurants near me" by someone in San Francisco, "ChatGPT may rewrite your prompt into the search query 'top restaurants San Francisco'" (OpenAI). Whether it searches at all depends on the question, but it searched for every local recommendation in our English test.

Which English words does ChatGPT search for when customers ask in Malay?

ChatGPT searched for the plain English name of the service, the full place name, and whatever the customer worried about, such as warranty or price. Those English words belong on your English page.

Three patterns are worth copying onto your page:

• Write your area in full and short. For questions that said "KL", 53 of 72 searches spelled out "Kuala Lumpur".
• Keep the Malaysian word. ChatGPT searched for "aircond", the word customers use, so put it next to "air conditioner".
• Name the proof customers check. Searches added words the customer never typed, such as "official", "reviews", "SSM" or "SEDA" (why it adds them).

When does ChatGPT search in Malay, and which Malay page gets recommended?

ChatGPT searched in Malay mostly for narrow questions with local wording, and almost never for "best" questions. Asked for the terbaik (best) hotel, contractor, solar company, company secretary or accounting firm, just 1 of 84 searches across both dates used a Malay word. Asked for a low-budget terrace-house renovation in KL ("kontraktor renovate rumah teres di KL kos rendah"), 15 of 17 of its searches used Malay words, most of them mainly Malay.

On that question, one business came up repeatedly in the Malay answers (an earlier look at this question is in Do I need Malay or Chinese content?). Contractor A, a KL renovation firm, has a Malay page whose title names terrace-house renovation, KL and Selangor, and a starting price.

• 24 September: ChatGPT cited that Malay page in all three Malay answers and named the business in two of them.
• 1 October: it named the business in one of three Malay answers, that time from its English Kuala Lumpur page.
• English and Chinese: the answers to the same question didn't name or cite it, on either date.

Our reading is that a Malay page built around the job and area customers ask about can get cited for the Malay version of a question. It's one business on one question, and on 1 October ChatGPT named it from its English page, so treat it as an example, not a rule.

How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT in Malay, step by step?

Get recommended in Malay by working from your customers' real questions to the pages ChatGPT reads.

1. Write down five Malay questions your customers really ask, the chatty way: "Ada tak kontraktor boleh renovate rumah teres kat KL, bajet tak banyak?" More example questions.
2. Ask ChatGPT each one while logged out, and open the Sources. Note which pages it used and whether they're in English.
3. Put the matching English words on your English page: the service in plain words, your area in full and short, and the proof customers check. What else that page needs.
4. Give your most specific service a Malay page, titled in your customers' words: the job, the area and how you charge, as Contractor A did. We'd write it like a WhatsApp reply, not a word-for-word translation.
5. Let ChatGPT read both pages. Check that your site doesn't block OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot (which AI bots to allow).
6. Check your Malay answers separately, more than once. In our September test, most businesses ChatGPT named for Malay or Chinese questions never appeared in its English answers to the same question (how we measured that).

What can't our test tell me about getting recommended by ChatGPT in Malay?

• The app. We used OpenAI's API with web search, which can answer differently from the ChatGPT app.
• Cause. Contractor A's result shows which page ChatGPT cited, not proof that the Malay page made it pick them.
• Reach. Five kinds of business and one aircon question, on two dates, one ChatGPT model. Other trades and other AI tools may behave differently.

How do I start getting recommended when customers ask ChatGPT in Malay?

Narrow Malay questions are where a small business can stand out, as the terrace-house question suggested.

1. Request EasyFound's free check. See which businesses ChatGPT recommends when your customers ask in Malay and in English, then go through it with us on a free call.
2. Pick your most specific service and write its Malay page.
3. Ask your five Malay questions again next month and compare the answers.

EasyFound is an AI SEO service for Malaysian businesses: we put your customers' Malay, English and Chinese questions to six AI tools, then improve the pages their answers come from. The free check below is the first step.