How to get your startup named by ChatGPT and Google AI answers

Ask ChatGPT to recommend a tool in your category. Then ask Google the same question and read the AI Overview at the top. If your startup is not named in either answer, a growing share of your buyers will never hear of you, however good your product is.

This is a new front door for B2B buying, and most early-stage founders have not checked whether it is open. This guide covers how AI answers choose which companies to name, what Google and OpenAI say about it in their own documentation, and a practical playbook you can run with a small team.

How do ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews decide which companies to name?

ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews name the companies they can find, read and confirm from several sources. If a crawler cannot reach your site, or the web describes you in five different ways, an assistant has nothing solid to cite.

Google's documentation for site owners is direct about this. It says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimisations are necessary. A page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. Google also explains that both features use a technique it calls query fan-out, issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources, which lets them show a wider set of links than a classic results page.

That second point matters for a startup. A buyer's question about your category is broken into many smaller questions. Each page that answers one of those smaller questions clearly is another chance to be cited.

ChatGPT works through its own search crawler. OpenAI's documentation says OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features. If your robots.txt file blocks it, your pages will not appear in ChatGPT search answers.

Why does AI search optimisation matter for a B2B startup?

AI search optimisation matters because your buyers already use AI assistants to research vendors, and they form a shortlist before they ever visit your site. If you are missing from that answer, you are missing from the shortlist.

In a Gartner survey of 645 B2B buyers conducted in August and September 2025, 45% had used generative AI, mainly for vendor and product research. The same survey found buyers use an average of 7 information sources during a purchase decision. In February 2024 Gartner predicted that by 2026 traditional search engine volume would drop 25%, with search marketing losing share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.

Clicks are changing too. Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. Users who saw an AI summary on Google clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% for users who did not see one. They clicked a link inside the summary itself in just 1% of visits.

Pew also found that users ended their browsing session on 26% of pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages with only traditional results. Around one in five searches in the study, 18%, produced an AI summary. For many questions, the answer is now the destination.

Fewer clicks does not mean less value. Ahrefs reported that AI search sent 0.5% of its website traffic over a 30-day period but 12.1% of its signups, a conversion rate 23x higher than traditional organic search. The visitor who arrives from an AI answer has often already decided you are worth a look.

What is generative engine optimisation, and how is it different from SEO?

Generative engine optimisation is the work of making sure AI assistants find, understand and name your company when buyers ask questions in your category. It builds on SEO rather than replacing it, because Google's AI features draw on the same index as classic search.

The difference is the goal. Classic SEO aims for a ranked link and a click. AI answer optimisation aims for a mention, a citation and an accurate description of what you do, often with no click at all.

How do you show up in ChatGPT?

To show up in ChatGPT, first make sure OpenAI's search crawler can reach your site, then give it pages worth citing. Crawler access is the step most often missed, because many sites block AI bots by default without anyone deciding to.

OpenAI runs separate crawlers for separate jobs. OAI-SearchBot surfaces websites in ChatGPT's search features. GPTBot crawls content for training OpenAI's foundation models, and disallowing it signals that your content should not be used for training. ChatGPT-User handles visits a user triggers inside ChatGPT.

This means you can choose. You can allow OAI-SearchBot so you appear in answers, and decide separately whether to allow GPTBot. OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and permitting requests from its published IP ranges, and notes that robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to take effect.

How do you rank in Google AI Overviews?

You rank in Google AI Overviews by meeting Google's normal Search requirements and publishing pages that answer specific buyer questions clearly enough to be quoted. There is no separate markup or submission for AI features.

Write answer-first pages. Each page takes one question a buyer types, answers it in the first two or three sentences, then expands with detail, examples and evidence. This matches query fan-out well, since each clear answer is a candidate for one of the many sub-questions Google runs.

• Build a page for each important buyer question: what your category is, how it compares with alternatives, what it costs, how long it takes to implement and who it is for.
• Phrase headings as the questions people type, and answer each one in the first sentence beneath it.
• Add structured data, and follow Google's guidance that your structured data must match the visible text on the page.
• Keep pages indexable and snippet-eligible, and do not hide your best answers behind nosnippet controls.
• Track results in Search Console, where Google includes traffic from AI features in overall search traffic under the Web search type.

This is also why the Codax Newsroom opens every article with a short direct answer. It is the format both readers and assistants use.

How do you get recommended by ChatGPT when you are new?

You get recommended by ChatGPT when you are new by making the web describe you the same way in many places. An assistant gains confidence in a company when your site, your profiles, your partners and independent sources all agree on what you do and who you serve.

Third-party sources carry real weight. Pew found that Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the most commonly linked sources in Google's AI summaries, together making up 15% of the sources listed. Assistants lean on places where other people talk about you, not only on what you say about yourself.

What should your one description say?

Your one description should state the category you sit in, the buyer you serve and the result you deliver, in words a buyer would use. Assistants repeat the language they find most often, so the sentence you choose is the sentence you will be quoted with.

For example, a startup that writes "AI agents that run the front office for health systems, from scheduling to prior authorisation" on its homepage, its founder profiles and every directory listing gives an assistant one clear claim to repeat. A startup that calls itself a platform on one page, a copilot on another and an automation layer in its deck gives the assistant three weaker claims and no reason to pick any of them.

Check the places founders forget: old accelerator and investor portfolio pages, conference speaker bios, partner directories, job listings and the description on your company social profiles. Each one is a source an assistant can read.

Founder content earns a place in this list because buyers and assistants both look for a credible person behind a company. Gartner's 2024 prediction told marketers to focus on content that shows expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. A founder speaking from real work is the most direct way an early startup shows all four. For how to build that voice without consuming the founder's week, read Founder-led sales does not scale. The founder can.

How do you measure AI visibility?

You measure AI visibility by asking the assistants the questions your buyers ask and recording whether you are named, how you are described and who is named instead. It is simple, and it is the most honest measure available.

1. 1Write 20 to 30 questions a buyer in your category asks, from "what is the best tool for" to "how does X compare with Y".
2. 2Run them in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and any other assistant your buyers use.
3. 3Record for each question whether you are named, whether the description is accurate and which competitors appear.
4. 4Repeat on the same day each month and score the share of questions where you are named accurately.
5. 5Pair it with Search Console data and with referral traffic from AI assistants in your analytics.

Do not chase every assistant at once. Start with the one your buyers use most, get named accurately there, then widen the set. The questions stay fixed so the trend is real, and new questions are added only when buyers start asking them.

Treat a wrong description as a bug. If an assistant says you serve the wrong market, the fix is almost always on the web: an old profile, an outdated directory listing or a homepage that never says it plainly.

What does getting named in AI answers look like in practice?

In practice, getting named in AI answers comes from repairing the foundation first and then building proof on top of it. The results show up in site quality, AI visibility and traffic together.

The cybersecurity services firm had a strong delivery record but no marketing function, and every deal came from referrals and the founder's network. Three months of repair came before the first outbound sequence. Over twelve months its AI visibility score rose from 20 to 77 and it is now named in Google AI answers. Its site score rose from 51 to 80, critical site issues fell from 8 to 0 and monthly visitors grew from 2,800 to 5,000, up 79%.

The firm was also a Google Cloud security partner, and that partnership was its biggest unused asset. A partner listing on a platform buyers already trust is exactly the kind of third-party confirmation this playbook asks for.

That work sat inside a wider programme. Yearly qualified pipeline grew from $548K to $2.2M in the same twelve months. AI visibility was one signal among many, and it was measured and reviewed like the rest.

This is the kind of work a growth department runs. A growth department is one senior team that owns qualified pipeline end to end, from strategy to execution, under a single accountable lead. Under Signal-Based ABM, intent from search to AI answers is one of the market signals read alongside account engagement and competitor moves. The Fix phase repairs the site and brand before anything is sent, and you can see all five phases on how we work.

If AI answers are one of several gaps in your go-to-market, read Why cold outbound stopped working for startups and Selling to enterprises as an unknown startup, or start at the accelerator founders series.