How do I get my business cited by ChatGPT?

To get your business cited by ChatGPT, do three things. Let OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, reach your site. State what customers ask about in plain text on your own pages: prices, areas, hours and services. And keep the directories and listings ChatGPT reads for your trade accurate.

Most guides add more tips than that. We checked six of the most popular against what OpenAI and Google say, published studies, and our own test of what ChatGPT cites for Malaysian business questions. Here's which ones hold up.

Does allowing GPTBot get my business cited by ChatGPT?

Allowing GPTBot isn't what gets you cited by ChatGPT: citations come from ChatGPT's search, which uses a different crawler, OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI describes OAI-SearchBot as "used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features"¹, while GPTBot crawls content "that may be used in training our generative AI foundation models"¹. Training data can shape what ChatGPT says when it answers from memory, but in our tests those answers carried no sources at all.

OpenAI says "each setting is independent of the others"¹, so you can block training and still be cited. What matters is not blocking OAI-SearchBot: OpenAI's publisher FAQ says to "make sure you aren't blocking OAI-SearchBot"². When we read 59 websites' robots.txt files, none blocked it, but most were sites ChatGPT already cites. Check your firewall or CDN too: it can block crawlers without showing up in robots.txt.

Is Wikipedia really half of what ChatGPT cites?

No, Wikipedia isn't half of what ChatGPT cites: the "nearly half" figure is a misreading. Profound's 2025 study found Wikipedia was 47.9% of the citations among ChatGPT's top 10 most-cited sites³, not of everything it cites. Profound's later study of about 730,000 US ChatGPT conversations from late 2025, published in February 2026, put Wikipedia at 5% of all citations⁴.

For Malaysian business questions it was rarer still. In our 90 answers, ChatGPT cited Wikipedia once in 119 sources, for "who owns Mr DIY".

Does schema markup help ChatGPT cite my business?

Schema markup may help AI tools read your business facts, but it hasn't been shown to raise ChatGPT citations. An Ahrefs test tracked 1,885 pages that already had 100+ Google AI Overview citations before adding schema: their ChatGPT citations rose 2.2%, which Ahrefs found "statistically indistinguishable from zero"⁶.

That test didn't cover pages AI isn't citing yet, which is where most small businesses are. For those, Ahrefs says schema "might still play a role in helping them get crawled, parsed, or indexed in the first place"⁶, though it didn't test that. Microsoft's Fabrice Canel was reported in March 2025 as saying schema helps Microsoft's own AI models understand content; there's no ChatGPT-specific evidence yet.

We use schema on every EasyFound page, and keep the same facts in plain text. Google's rule is "Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page"⁷, so the markup and the words should always match.

Should I post on Reddit to get cited by ChatGPT?

Posting on Reddit isn't a reliable way to get cited by ChatGPT right now. Reddit was ChatGPT's second most-cited site after Wikipedia in Profound's study of US conversations from late 2025, appearing in 13% of the conversations that cited anything⁴. But OtterlyAI saw ChatGPT's Reddit citations fall by at least 73% in August 2026 across 16 US brand reports, with official pages and help centres cited instead⁸.

Our September test fits that picture. In 7 of our 90 answers, ChatGPT's searches returned 45 Reddit threads, 32 of them from Malaysian communities such as r/MalaysianPF and r/malaysiauni, and it cited none of them: Reddit was cited zero times in our 90 answers, and in none of the 482 citations from our earlier test.

If your customers discuss your trade on Reddit, answering as yourself can still help people find you. Google warns that "seeking inauthentic 'mentions' across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem"⁵.

Does answering questions on my own website get me cited?

Yes, answering customers' questions on your own website is the best-supported tip, though our data shows where ChatGPT's citations came from, not a before-and-after test. For "who should I hire" questions, businesses' own sites, including free Google Sites pages, were 30 of the 51 sites ChatGPT cited, and directories 14. The wedding photographer question alone gave 14 of those 30; without it, own sites were still the largest group.

For price questions, 11 of 19 sites were businesses' own pages, but 8 of those came from one question: asked what a business website costs, ChatGPT cited six web design and hosting firms' "how much does it cost in Malaysia" guides across three runs. For renovation, aircon and tuition prices, directories and portals were cited more often.

The page has to say the thing in text ChatGPT can read. A price shown only in an image, or hours posted only on Instagram, gives it nothing to quote. ChatGPT can read PDFs, and cited several in our test, but a plain page is easier for customers and for AI.

Does publishing original data get me cited by ChatGPT?

Publishing original data is promising, but the evidence that it gets a business cited by ChatGPT is thin. In our tests, one of 48 answers about ChatGPT cited two firms' analyses of which sites ChatGPT cites; the other answers that cited anything (33 of 34) used only OpenAI's own pages. A 2024 study on test AI engines found that adding statistics and quotations to a page raised its visibility by up to about 40%⁹.

For a small business, original data can be simple: your own price ranges, how many jobs you've done in an area, how long a typical job takes. They're facts ChatGPT can quote, and competitors can't copy.

Where should I start to get cited by ChatGPT?

Start getting cited by ChatGPT with the three steps the evidence supports, because each one changes what ChatGPT can read about you.

Where are my best chances of getting cited by ChatGPT?

Your best chances are in the sources ChatGPT actually used for Malaysian questions:

• Your own website, including a free Google Sites page. Businesses' own sites were the largest group ChatGPT cited for "who should I hire" questions.
• The directories for your trade, such as recommend.my or WhatClinic, which made up 27% of the sources for local recommendations.
• A cost guide for your trade. For price questions, ChatGPT quoted guides that businesses wrote about what things cost in Malaysia.

What are my first steps to get cited by ChatGPT?

Take these three steps, in order:

1. Request EasyFound's free check to see where you stand before changing anything: what ChatGPT says when your customers ask, followed by a free call to go through it.
2. Check that OAI-SearchBot can reach your site, in robots.txt and in your firewall or CDN.
3. Put your prices, areas, hours and services in plain text on your own pages, and claim the directory listings ChatGPT reads for your trade.

If you'd rather not do the fixes yourself, that's the job of EasyFound, an AI SEO service for Malaysian businesses: we find what the AI tools say about you, in all three of Malaysia's main languages, and change the pages behind it. Request your free check below.