Is my website ready for ChatGPT to recommend my business?

Your website is ready for ChatGPT to recommend your business when three things are true: ChatGPT's search crawler can get in, your key facts are written as text on the page, and each main service has a page that answers what customers ask, including your area. The checklist below takes about 15 minutes.

Passing them gets your pages considered, not chosen. In our Malaysian test, the basics were on nearly every business page ChatGPT cited, and on most of the ones it passed over too.

What should I check to see if my website is ready for ChatGPT?

To check if your website is ready for ChatGPT, run these 12 checks: can ChatGPT's crawler get in, can it tell what you do, and does the rest of the web agree. Each has a one-line test, and the linked guide explains the fix. Download it as a CSV to tick off.

Can ChatGPT get in?

1. ChatGPT's search crawler is allowed. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for Disallow: / under OAI-SearchBot or *. OpenAI says sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers"¹. Which bots to allow.
2. Your firewall lets AI search bots through. On Cloudflare, open AI Crawl Control and confirm OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User are allowed. The firewall check.
3. Pages you want found aren't marked noindex. View the page source (Ctrl + U on Windows, Cmd + Option + U on a Mac) and search for noindex, which tells search engines to drop the page².
4. Your key facts are in the page source. In the same view, search for your town and your price. If they show on screen but not in the source, they load with JavaScript, and many AI crawlers don't run it.
5. Facts aren't locked in a PDF, an image or a login. Try copying your price and service area as text from an ordinary page.

Can ChatGPT tell what you do?

6. The page title names your service and area. Read the browser tab: "Condo kitchen renovation in Cheras" beats "Home".
7. Your town or area is written on the page. Search the page (Ctrl + F) for it.
8. Each main service has its own page. List your services and find each one's page address. Most business pages ChatGPT cited in our test weren't homepages.
9. Customer questions are headings, answered first. Read them aloud: would a customer type "How much does a kitchen renovation cost in KL?" How to write a page ChatGPT will quote.
10. A price or range in RM is on the page as text. Search the page for "RM".

Does the rest of the web agree?

11. Your registered details match your website. Compare your name and address on SSM, CIDB or SEDA with your site, because ChatGPT reads both.
12. Your schema (structured data) describes your business (optional). Paste a page address into the Schema Markup Validator. Schema templates.

Just published or fixed a page? Allow about a week before you judge it.

What did the business pages ChatGPT cited have in common?

The business websites ChatGPT cited in our Malaysian test had the basics in common: a page title, their town or state named, and real text that loads without JavaScript. But the business pages its search found and then left out had them just as often. We compared the 93 cited pages we could read with the pages its search passed over (method in Sources).

Every page, with web addresses removed: download the CSV.

Three things stood out:

• Most cited pages weren't homepages. Across all the business pages ChatGPT cited, including ones we couldn't read, about 7 in 10 were inner pages, meaning anything but the homepage.
• PDFs were found but rarely cited. ChatGPT's search turned up 97 business PDFs. It cited only 6.
• Question headings leaned towards cited pages, not decisively. The gap shrank when we counted each website once, so treat it as a good habit, not a rule.

Does ChatGPT's own website checklist match the pages it cites?

ChatGPT's own website checklist only partly matches what its cited pages had. When we asked it our headline question, it listed a "Physical address or service area", "Phone, email, hours, and contact form" and "Reviews/testimonials" among the signs of a ready site.

In our data, review or testimonial wording was on 44% of cited pages, the same share as pages it passed over. Phone numbers and street addresses were no more common on cited pages either. Keep them, because customers need them. Just don't expect them to win the citation.

OpenAI's official guidance is narrower. It says "Any public website can appear in ChatGPT search" and asks site owners to make sure they "aren't blocking OAI-SearchBot"³. That's check 1.

What can't this checklist tell me about ChatGPT recommending my business?

This checklist can't tell you whether ChatGPT will actually name your business, only whether your website gives it a fair chance.

• It shows a pattern, not cause and effect. Pages were cited for many reasons we can't see, including how well they matched each question.
• Five trades, one engine. Renovation, solar, accounting, company secretaries and hotels, through OpenAI's API, not the ChatGPT app.
• Pages change. We re-read them ten days after the answers, and couldn't read every page.

How do I find out if ChatGPT recommends my business once my website is ready?

A ready website is the entry ticket. Whether ChatGPT names you is the part you can only see by asking it, the way customers do.

1. Request EasyFound's free check. See what ChatGPT says when customers ask about your trade and your business, then go through it with us on a free call.
2. Fix any failed checks in order. Checks 1 to 5 first, because nothing else counts if ChatGPT can't get in.
3. Ask again in a week or two. Use real customer questions, asked more than once, because answers change.

EasyFound checks how six AI tools answer your customers in English, Malay and Chinese, then works on the pages they read. The free check below is the place to start.