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How to get your business cited by ChatGPT

ChatGPT cites sources it can crawl, understand and trust. The key is that OpenAI runs three separate web agents — and the one that powers citations is not the one most people block. Follow these steps to become a citable source.

Steps

1. 1

   Allow OAI-SearchBot — not just GPTBot

   OpenAI runs three distinct agents: GPTBot (model training), OAI-SearchBot (powers ChatGPT search results and citations) and ChatGPT-User (user-initiated fetches). To be cited in ChatGPT search you must allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt — a site can block GPTBot for training and still be citable. Blocking GPTBot does not block ChatGPT search, and vice versa, because they are controlled independently.

2. 2

   Unblock the crawler IPs at your CDN/WAF

   A robots.txt allow is not enough if a firewall blocks the bot at the edge. OpenAI publishes its crawler IP ranges (e.g. openai.com/searchbot.json, gptbot.json, chatgpt-user.json) — whitelist these at your CDN/WAF. OpenAI also notes it can take up to ~24 hours for a robots.txt change to take effect, so changes are not instant.

3. 3

   Add structured data and clean semantics

   Describe your business with Schema.org data (Organization, LocalBusiness, Product) so the engine understands who you are without guessing. OpenAI states ChatGPT uses ARIA tags — the same labels that support screen readers — to interpret page structure, so semantic HTML and proper ARIA improve machine comprehension.

4. 4

   Write content that engines measurably prefer

   The peer-reviewed GEO study (KDD 2024) measured what raises visibility in generative answers: adding direct quotations (+27.8%), statistics (+25.9%) and cited sources (+24.9%) — while keyword stuffing was the worst performer. Write self-contained answers backed by concrete facts, numbers and citations rather than marketing prose.

5. 5

   Measure ChatGPT referrals

   OpenAI appends utm_source=chatgpt.com to referral links, so you can confirm in your analytics that you are actually being cited and clicked. Track it to know which pages earn citations and double down on them.

6. 6

   Use an open AI directory as a shortcut

   Listing in an open, machine-readable AI directory like Wispra delivers clean, structured, citable data to engines for free, and exposes it via an open API and llms.txt. It is the fastest way to apply the steps above without engineering work.