Does a .my domain help ChatGPT recommend my business?
EasyFound · · 8 min read
A .my or .com.my domain doesn't by itself make ChatGPT recommend your business. In EasyFound's tests of Malaysian buying questions through OpenAI's API (not the ChatGPT app), ChatGPT cited .my business websites no more often than .com ones once its search had found them. The only .my edge we saw: ChatGPT sometimes limited its searches to .my sites. Readable facts matter more, in our reading.
A .my domain doesn't make ChatGPT recommend your business by itself. In our Malaysian tests, once ChatGPT's search had found a business website, a .my address was cited no more often than a .com.
Outside hotels, ChatGPT cited 45% of the .my business sites its searches found at least once. For .com sites, the figure was 44%. The one edge we saw for .my is narrower, and it's about being found.
Does ChatGPT cite .my websites more than .com websites?
ChatGPT cited .my business websites no more often than .com ones in our tests. We went through 300 ChatGPT answers to Malaysian buying questions, from renovation in KL to a dentist in PJ. For every business website its searches found, we checked whether the answer cited it (CSV).
| Domain ending | Share of business sites found | Share of business sites cited |
|---|---|---|
| Any .my ending, such as .com.my | 50% | 49% |
| .com | 33% | 33% |
| Free site-builder page (Google Sites, one Wix) | 13% | 13% |
| Other endings, such as .net or .co | 4% | 6% |
The cited mix almost mirrors what the searches found. Hotels were the exception: all but one of the hotel websites ChatGPT cited were .com, mostly international hotel groups.
Half the cited business sites ended in .my, and so did half of what the searches found. Free site-builder pages kept up too: ChatGPT cited 43% of the ones it found, nearly all of them Google Sites. As we showed earlier, a free page can be enough.
The question probably shapes the mix more than the ending does. Machine Relations Research looked at six AI tools answering English questions "with no country in it". There, national country-code domains "take 2.73% of citation volume"1. Our reading: ask about Malaysia, and Malaysian sites come back.
When does a .my domain help ChatGPT find my business?
A .my domain can help ChatGPT find your business when ChatGPT limits a search to .my websites. In 33 of our 300 answers, ChatGPT added a filter such as "site:.my" to at least one of the searches it wrote for itself. A .com website can't turn up in that kind of search. This is a narrower count than the 22% in our query fan-out article, which also counted filters to one named .my website, such as TNB's, in one of the three tests.
It happened mostly for renovation and solar questions. Two of the searches ChatGPT wrote:
- "site:.my renovation contractor Kuala Lumpur terrace house budget"
- "Malaysia solar company warranty site:.com.my"
Our reading is that this is an edge in being found, not in being chosen. Once found, .my sites weren't cited more often, as the table shows.
Does Google treat a .my domain as a local signal, and does ChatGPT?
Google treats a .my domain as a strong sign that a website is meant for Malaysia. Google Search Central says country-code domains (ccTLDs) "provide a strong signal to both users and search engines that your site is explicitly intended for a certain country"2. Google also treats some country codes, such as .co, .io and .me, as generic, so they don't point to any country.
OpenAI publishes no such rule for ChatGPT. Its help page for publishers says "Any public website can appear in ChatGPT search"3. We found nothing about domain endings in OpenAI's help pages on search and publishers, or in its crawler documentation.
One caveat: ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers"4 (which ones), so our test can't rule out a small effect inside those searches.
Should my Malaysian business choose .com.my or .com?
Your Malaysian business should choose the domain your customers trust, because in our tests a .com.my ending gave no advantage over .com with ChatGPT. Our reading: a .com.my can tell a customer in Ipoh or Johor Bahru at a glance that you're local.
MYNIC, which runs Malaysia's domains, lists .com.my as "For commercial organisations/activities"5. It asks for registration papers, such as SSM's Borang 9 for a Sdn Bhd or Borang D for a registered business. A plain .my is "For all individuals, companies and organisations from any country"5.
If you already have a .com, our data gives no reason to switch for ChatGPT's sake. If you're starting fresh and serve Malaysians, a .com.my is a sensible pick. Our suggestion: register the .com of your name as well, so nobody else can take it.
What can't our test tell me about .my domains and ChatGPT?
Our test compared domains businesses had already chosen, so it shows a pattern, not a cause:
- Cause and effect. We didn't move any site from .com to .my, and bigger firms and chains, which we count as businesses too, may be cited for other reasons.
- The app. We tested through OpenAI's API, not the ChatGPT app, on three days between late September and early October.
- Every trade. Hotels behaved differently from the other trades, so a café or clinic might too.
What should I fix first so ChatGPT cites my website, .my or not?
Our reading: whether ChatGPT can find and read your page matters more than how your address ends. That's good news, because those are things you can fix this week.
- Request EasyFound's free check. See what ChatGPT tells customers about your business today, then go through it with us on a free call.
- Let ChatGPT's search crawler in. Make sure your site and firewall don't block OAI-SearchBot (how to check).
- Write your key facts in plain text: what you do, the areas you serve and your price range in RM (how to write them).
- Keep your name, address and phone the same on your site and your listings (why it matters).
- Keep the domain you have. Spend the effort on the page instead.
EasyFound is an AI SEO service for Malaysian businesses. We look at what six AI tools tell your customers in English, Malay and Chinese, then work on the pages they read, whatever your address ends in. Start with the free check below.
Is ChatGPT citing your website, whatever it ends in?
The ending of your address matters less than what ChatGPT can find and read. See what ChatGPT says about your business, then go through it with us on a free call.
Frequently asked questions
Is .com.my better than .com for getting recommended by ChatGPT?
Not in EasyFound's tests. In 300 answers to Malaysian buying questions through OpenAI's API, in late September and early October 2026, ChatGPT cited .my business websites no more often than .com ones once its search had found them. Outside hotels, it cited 45% of the .my sites at least once, against 44% of the .com sites. Choose the ending your customers trust.
Does ChatGPT prefer Malaysian websites when someone asks about Malaysia?
It often finds them. In EasyFound's tests through OpenAI's API, half the business websites ChatGPT's searches found for Malaysian questions ended in .my (including .com.my), and in 33 of 300 answers it limited at least one search to .my sites. But once a site was found, a .my ending didn't make it more likely to be cited than a .com.
Is .my or .com.my better for getting my business into ChatGPT's answers?
EasyFound's tests found no clear winner. Outside hotels, ChatGPT cited 47% of the .com.my business websites its searches found, through OpenAI's API, and 43% of the plain .my ones. With about 60 plain .my sites, that gap is too small to act on. Pick the one your customers will remember and trust.
Who can register a .com.my domain in Malaysia?
MYNIC, which runs Malaysia's .my domains, says .com.my is 'For commercial organisations/activities', with registration papers as proof, such as SSM's Borang 9 for a Sdn Bhd or Borang D for a registered business. A plain .my is open 'For all individuals, companies and organisations from any country'.
Does Google rank .my websites higher in Malaysia?
Google uses a country-code domain such as .my as a strong signal of which country a site is meant for. Google Search Central says targeting a country 'can improve your page rankings in the target country, but at the expense of results in other locales or languages.' That is Google Search. OpenAI's publisher help pages don't mention domain endings, and say any public website can appear in ChatGPT search.
Sources
Our data: EasyFound, Domain endings of the business websites ChatGPT found and cited: 300 answers through OpenAI's API (Responses API, web search tool, location Malaysia, model gpt-5.4-mini, default settings, no chat history). Not the ChatGPT app. The answers come from three tests: 45 questions in English, Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese on hotels, renovation, solar, company secretary and accounting, asked three times on 24 September 2026 and again on 1 October 2026; and 10 English who-to-hire and price questions, such as a dentist in Petaling Jaya or aircon servicing near Puchong, asked three times on 26 September 2026. The tests used short questions of the kind people type into search.
"Found" means the website was in the list of pages the search returned; "cited" means the answer linked it. We grouped sites by their domain ending (top-level domain, or TLD) and sorted every site by hand: a business's own website, including large firms, hotel chains and Google Sites or Wix pages, counts; directories, government, news, social and Google pages don't. Each website address is counted once in the table, so one firm with two addresses counts twice. Counted once per answer instead, .my sites were cited less often than .com ones (38% against 49%), so neither way of counting shows a .my advantage. The business-site label decides about half of each rate, so we re-checked 25 randomly drawn sites that were found but never cited: all were companies' own websites, but about one in five wasn't a business of the kind asked about, such as a power station's tender papers in a solar search. Dropping those still gives .my no edge over .com. The CSV's last column pools each round of searching, which can mix .my-limited and ordinary queries; the rounds made only of .my-limited queries returned only .my pages. Searches "limited to .my" include "site:.my", "site:my", "site:*.my", "site:.com.my" and "site:com.my"; a filter to one named .my website, such as a regulator's, isn't counted, so this differs from the 22% in our query fan-out article, which counted any filter to a .my site or domain, among the answers that searched, in the 24 September test only. Download the data (CSV). We don't name the businesses or their websites, because one test isn't a ranking.
Other sources:
- Machine Relations Research, Country-Code Domains Take 2.7% of AI Citations, published 19 September 2026; 15,883 answer runs from six AI tools, 10 May to 19 September 2026, English commercial questions only (link)
- Google Search Central, Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites, updated 10 December 2025, read 1 October 2026 (link)
- OpenAI, Publishers and Developers - FAQ, Help Center, read 1 October 2026 through a text reader, because the page blocks automated requests (link)
- OpenAI, Searching the web with ChatGPT, Help Center, read 1 October 2026 through a text reader (link)
- MYNIC, Buying a Domain and Domains FAQ, read 1 October 2026 (link, FAQ)
The results are shared under CC BY 4.0: you're free to reuse them, with credit to EasyFound.
Research by Janice Pang, EasyFound.