Appearing in ChatGPT answers: what is up to you
Crawlers to allow, focused pages, third-party sources, freshness, measurement: the conditions you control, according to the official documentation.
By Sébastien Monnier · · 7 min read · Lire en français
When a customer asks ChatGPT “which plumber should I call in Lille?”, the answer names a few businesses, sometimes with a link. Nobody can guarantee you a place in it. Several conditions, however, are entirely up to you. This guide goes through them, backed by the official sources.
1. Let the search crawlers read your site
Assistants that search the web rely on their own crawlers. OpenAI puts it plainly in its documentation: “Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”. In other words, a site that blocks this crawler in its robots.txt file cannot be cited in ChatGPT’s search answers.
| Crawler | Publisher | Role according to the official documentation | To be cited |
|---|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | Find and show websites in ChatGPT search answers | Allow |
| GPTBot | OpenAI | Model training | Your choice: no effect on search |
| ChatGPT-User | OpenAI | Visits triggered by a user | Not covered by the search rules |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | Surface and link websites in Perplexity results | Allow |
| Googlebot | Indexing, including for AI Overviews | Allow |
Table compiled on 26 September 2026 from the documentation of OpenAI, Perplexity and Google.
Check your file: open your-site.com/robots.txt. If you see User-agent: OAI-SearchBot followed by Disallow: /, you have excluded yourself. Some security or “AI protection” plugins add these rules without telling you.
2. Answer the exact question asked
An assistant’s answer cites pages that answer directly. An “Our services” page is a poor answer to “who repairs boilers in Roubaix on a Sunday?”. A “Boiler repair in Roubaix” page that gives opening hours, an indicative price and a response time answers it.
In practice:
- one page per service, and per main city if you cover several;
- the answer in the first lines: who, what, where, how much, how quickly;
- verifiable facts rather than adjectives: “on site within 2 hours”, “from €89”, “4.8/5 from 120 reviews”.
Recoia builds these questions from your website and gives you, topic by topic, the page to create.
3. Be present where the assistant looks for information
Assistants do not read only your site. For a local question, they often consult directories, review sites, comparison sites or the local press. If your competitors are there and you are not, they get cited instead of you.
The golden rule: the same information everywhere. A different phone number on your site and on a directory, conflicting opening hours, and the assistant hesitates or gets it wrong. Recoia’s Brand truth feature spots these errors in the answers.
4. Stay up to date
Prices from 2021, summer opening hours shown in winter, reviews left unanswered for months: these signs of neglect do not help. Date your content (“2026 prices”), update your key pages and reply to reviews.
5. Measure several times, not once
Asking ChatGPT once and concluding “we’re not there” proves nothing: the same question asked twice often gives two different lists. You need to ask each question several times and look at a rate, with its margin of error. We explain this in detail in Why a single ChatGPT answer proves nothing.
Key takeaways
| Action | Difficulty | Expected effect |
|---|---|---|
| Allow OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot | Low | A precondition for being cited |
| One page per service and per city | Medium | Answers specific questions |
| Prices, lead times, area, reviews as text | Low | Facts picked up in the answers |
| Consistent presence on directories and reviews | Medium | Sources consulted by AI assistants |
| A repeated measurement every 2 weeks | Automatic with Recoia | Know whether it works |
Updated 26 September 2026.