Why doesn't ChatGPT mention my business?

Is ChatGPT blocked from my site?

More often than you'd think. Some security plugins and hosting firewalls block AI crawlers by default. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.

Sources: OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers

Is my business information inconsistent?

Different names, addresses, categories or descriptions across the web make AI unsure whether they all refer to the same business. Unsure means left out.

Do my pages answer the question?

AI lifts short, direct answers. If your service page talks about your history before it says what you do, for whom and where, there's nothing clean to quote. Google describes AI search as running many related searches at once (it calls this "query fan-out"), so pages that answer the follow-up questions too have more chances to be picked.

Sources: Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features

Does anyone else vouch for me?

If only your own website talks about you, there's little to confirm your claims. In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, brand mentions across the web correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, three times more strongly than backlinks at 0.218.

Sources: Ahrefs: An analysis of AI Overview brand visibility factors (75K brands)

Is a competitor simply better documented?

Often the business that gets named isn't the best one. It's the one with the clearest, most consistent and most widely confirmed information. Ahrefs also found ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews largely mention the same brands, so a gap on one usually means a gap on all three.

Sources: Ahrefs: Top brand visibility factors in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews

Could it just be bad luck on the day?

Partly. AI answers change a lot. Semrush tracked 2,500 prompts and found 40 to 60% of cited sources change from month to month. That's why one manual test isn't enough; you need to check several questions, several times.

Sources: Search Engine Land: Generative engine optimization (GEO): How to win AI mentions