What is ChatGPT SEO?
ChatGPT SEO is the practice of getting a brand described accurately and recommended in ChatGPT's answers, both when the model replies from its trained memory and when it searches the live web through Bing's index and cited sources.
ChatGPT produces recommendations in two ways, and each needs different work. When browsing is off, it answers from training data with a cutoff, so descriptions of your brand can be months out of date or plain wrong. In our July 2026 study, an AI assistant answering from memory materially misdescribed 27 of 30 brands, and live web search still left 13 of 30 misdescribed. Memory answers change slowly, only when a new model trains on fresh open-web content. Search answers can improve within weeks once corrected pages are indexed and cited.
When ChatGPT searches the web, its retrieval leans heavily on Bing's index. A page indexed by Google but missing from Bing can be invisible to ChatGPT's browsing mode. Practical consequences: verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit sitemaps there, and fix crawl errors Bing reports even if Google shows none. In robots.txt, allow OAI-SearchBot, the crawler ChatGPT uses to fetch pages for search answers, and decide separately about GPTBot, which collects training data and shapes future memory answers.
The sources ChatGPT actually cites for commercial questions skew toward third-party pages rather than vendor sites: Reddit threads, comparison listicles, G2 and Capterra category pages, Wikipedia, and trade publications. Correcting a stale G2 profile or answering questions in a relevant subreddit often moves ChatGPT recommendations more than another blog post on your own domain. On your site, keep a plainly worded page stating what the product does, who it serves, and what it costs, marked up with schema.org Organization and Product types.
Measure before and after. Run the buying prompts your customers actually type, in both modes, and record whether ChatGPT names you and describes you accurately. Repeat monthly, because model updates and index changes shift results without warning. Discoverable runs this check as a free AI visibility snapshot with no login; Claude checks are live today, with other engines rolling out.