How Do You Make Your Company and Content Appear Within ChatGPT?

**Updated 12/3/2024

We are getting asked a lot by our clients questions like “can we increase our ranking within ChatGPT?” and “How do we make our company appear when people search for services we offer?”. The question around how to “rank” within ChatGPT and how does one company appear in queries vs others is a fascinating topic, and we wanted to share what we know.

Can your company appear within queries specific to the services you offer?

In our original article, we noted that very select prompts in ChatGPT would return actual companies, often requiring tailored queries seeking out service providers or companies offering specific services.

For example, when asking ChatGPT for the "best Umbraco agency in Chicago," the system historically queried Bing to provide results, closely mirroring Bing’s search listings (which you can see in the image below). At that time, this was limited to paid versions of ChatGPT (GPT-4), and broader prompts would return only general information about industries or services rather than specific company names.

Since then, significant advancements have shifted this landscape, particularly with the release of GPT-4o and ChatGPT Search.

Introducing GPT-4o: More Links and Citations

With the release of GPT-4o, ChatGPT now includes more robust capabilities, such as citing sources and providing external links in its responses. This marks a notable shift from the original GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 versions, which either scraped Bing data (GPT-4) or relied on a static, outdated database (GPT-3.5). Businesses now have increased opportunities to appear in these conversational AI outputs as ChatGPT includes links to authoritative resources in its responses.

For example, when asking GPT-4o for a service provider or solution in your industry, you’re more likely to see citations linking directly to relevant websites. This shift is critical for businesses, as it highlights the importance of maintaining strong SEO practices and ensuring your content is authoritative, up-to-date, and easily discoverable by search engines.

We’ve provided a screenshot to illustrate how GPT-4o now integrates citations and links into its outputs, giving businesses a direct path to attract users from ChatGPT.

ChatGPT Search: A New Way of Driving Website Traffic

One of the most transformative developments in ChatGPT's capabilities is the integration of ChatGPT Search. This feature combines ChatGPT’s conversational abilities with real-time web data retrieval, enabling users to receive accurate, timely answers enriched with clickable links to external websites. By operating as a natural language interface, ChatGPT Search enhances traditional search by blending conversational interactions with the depth of web data.

Driving Traffic and Leads:
At Marcel Digital, we’ve observed a noticeable increase in referral traffic from ChatGPT since the launch of the ChatGPT Search feature. This is not only driving higher website visits but is also beginning to generate qualified leads for both our clients and our agency. Businesses that focus on creating authoritative, well-optimized content are more likely to benefit from the increased visibility ChatGPT Search can provide.

ChatGPT Search Chrome Extension:
The ChatGPT Search Chrome Extension transforms how users interact with search by allowing ChatGPT to serve as their default search engine within the browser. Available to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and SearchGPT waitlist users—soon to roll out to Enterprise, Education, and Free users—this extension integrates conversational AI directly into the browsing experience.

Users can search directly from the browser URL bar, receiving fast, conversational responses enriched with links to relevant web sources, including blogs, news articles, and other websites. This seamless integration not only enhances the search experience but also creates new opportunities for businesses to drive traffic from ChatGPT referrals. Additionally, users can redirect queries to Google search by typing !g [your query] to maintain flexibility for traditional search habits.

To showcase the difference, here’s an example of what search results look like in ChatGPT compared to the earlier outputs shared above. You’ll notice how ChatGPT Search now includes detailed responses with linked sources, offering businesses a direct path to visibility and user engagement. Moreover, ChatGPT Search is now more likely to return brand mentions than we’ve seen in previous versions of ChatGPT.

How do you “measure” your visibility in ChatGPT?

From the virtual horse's mouth “I don't have the capability to track or analyze queries in real-time or access any data or usage statistics that have occurred after my last update.” So the short answer - you can’t. 

But you are able to measure traffic coming to your website from ChatGPT which we will cover in the section below. This section has been updated to reflect recent changes that have been made to how you measure ChatGPT traffic in GA4.

Measuring ChatGPT Referral Traffic on your Website

While measuring brand visibility in ChatGPT is not entirely possible, you are able to see referral traffic in Google Analytics when users follow links provided by ChatGPT in an output. 

To see this data, access the 'Traffic Acquisition report' in Google Analytics 4. From here you will want to apply the following filters:

• 'Session Default Channel Group' exactly matches "Referral"
• 'Session Source' matches partial regex: "chatgpt|openai"
  • The name of the session source has changed to “chatgpt” so to see all historical traffic, you want to include the old session source name “openai”. This partial regex will capture traffic from both source names.

You will then see traffic data from users accessing your website via links in ChatGPT.

So, How Do You Show Up in ChatGPT?

We’ve discussed how businesses can appear in ChatGPT, explored the evolving capabilities of ChatGPT Search, and shown you how to measure the traffic it drives to your website. But how do you optimize to ensure your business shows up more regularly in ChatGPT?

The answer lies in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

AEO focuses on optimizing your digital presence for conversational AI platforms like ChatGPT, ensuring your business provides the right answers to the right questions. It’s about aligning your content and technical SEO practices to make your brand discoverable and relevant when users turn to AI tools for solutions. AEO goes beyond traditional SEO, helping you create structured, authoritative, and user-focused content that positions your business as a trusted source of information.

At Marcel Digital, we specialize in AEO to help businesses like yours stay ahead in this AI-driven era. Our tailored strategies ensure your content is optimized for ChatGPT and other conversational platforms, so your business appears when it matters most.

Ready to show up where it matters most? Learn more about our AEO services or reach out to us to discuss how we can help your business thrive in the AI era.