Get your firm cited — and described accurately — in ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is the most-used AI assistant in the world by a wide margin. For most UK firms, it’s the single biggest AI surface to be visible on — both for new buyers researching the category, and for existing prospects checking your firm before they reach out.
How ChatGPT actually finds and cites content
There isn’t one mechanism — there are three, and they all need to be working in your favour.
Training data
ChatGPT learnt about the world from a vast training corpus. Brand mentions in that corpus — trade press, Wikipedia, authoritative third-party content — shape how it describes your firm by default.
Web search and browsing
When ChatGPT looks something up live, it uses a web search tool (currently Bing-powered) and a browsing tool. What’s findable, structured and authoritative on the live web gets cited in real time.
User memory and context
ChatGPT increasingly carries context across conversations. How your firm gets described once tends to persist — for better or worse — if the initial impression isn’t corrected.
What actually gets cited in ChatGPT
Working with ChatGPT day-to-day — including watching where it pulls citations from across hundreds of real client prompts — some clear patterns emerge.
- 01Clear, definitive answers near the top of the pageChatGPT’s browsing tool scans for direct answers. Pages that bury the answer below 800 words of intro consistently get passed over.
- 02Authoritative third-party sourcesTrade press, sector publications, established review sites, news. ChatGPT trusts known sources disproportionately — being cited or quoted in them flows directly into how it describes your firm.
- 03Clean structured dataWell-implemented Organisation, Person, FAQ and Service schema makes your content easier to parse and quote correctly. Plugin-default schema often gets ignored or misread.
- 04Strong entity signalsWikipedia, Wikidata, Companies House, professional registries, LinkedIn — consistent, cross-referenced signals make ChatGPT treat your firm as a real, defined entity rather than a long-tail string.
- 05Named entities in your contentPages that name the people, places, services and concepts they discuss explicitly get retrieved more often than pages that talk in vague generalities.
- 06Recency and freshnessChatGPT’s web search heavily favours recent content for time-sensitive queries. Old pages that still get traffic still get cited; old pages with stale information slip out of the citation set fast.
How I work on ChatGPT visibility
A systematic engagement, not a one-off tweak.
- 01Prompt baselineThirty to fifty real prompts — the kind your buyers actually ask — tested across ChatGPT to see how your firm currently appears (or doesn’t), and how it gets described when it does.
- 02Content restructureClear answers high on the page, definitive statements, named entities, structured comparisons. The retrieval patterns ChatGPT consistently rewards.
- 03Entity and schema layerOrganisation and Person schema, sameAs links to authoritative profiles, Wikidata work where eligible. The foundation ChatGPT uses to verify your firm exists and is what you say it is.
- 04Authoritative third-party signalsTrade press coverage, expert commentary, data-led PR campaigns. The earned signals ChatGPT trusts most.
- 05llms.txt and AI-readable formatsA properly built llms.txt file, clean markdown alternatives, JSON-LD exports. Making your site as efficient to parse as possible.
- 06Monthly prompt trackingThe same baseline prompts, tested monthly. We track citation rate, accuracy of description, and share of voice against competitors. Real numbers, not screenshots of one good day.
Who ChatGPT visibility work is for.
ChatGPT visibility is for firms whose buyers already use it for research — and who can answer well when they do.
You’re the kind of client this works for
- UK firms whose buyers and clients use ChatGPT for research
- Authoritative content worth being cited from
- Willingness to keep the site updated and entity-clean
- Three-month-plus commitment to track citation growth
This probably isn’t the right service for you
- Tiny brochure sites with little authoritative content
- You expect ChatGPT to start mentioning you within a week
- You won't update the website or strengthen author signals
- Your buyers don't use AI tools at all
Common questions about ChatGPT visibility
Can I just buy mentions or pay to be cited in ChatGPT?
No. There’s no paid placement in ChatGPT — and any service offering that is selling you something that doesn’t exist. Visibility is earned through entity strength, content quality and authoritative third-party signals.
How do I know if my firm is being mentioned correctly?
By running a structured prompt set, monthly. I track exact prompt outputs, whether your firm is cited, how it’s described, what it’s confused with, what competitors are mentioned alongside. That’s the baseline and the ongoing measure.
ChatGPT described my firm incorrectly. Can we fix it?
Yes — but slowly. Misdescriptions correct as the training data shifts, which means earning new authoritative third-party mentions that say the right thing, alongside fixing your own site signals. Months, not days.
What’s the relationship between ChatGPT visibility and Google SEO?
Reinforcing, mostly. Strong classic SEO usually correlates with stronger ChatGPT visibility — both reward clean structure, real authority and named entities. The specific work to improve AI visibility almost always helps classic SEO too.
Should I worry about ChatGPT or AI Overviews more?
For most UK B2B and professional services firms, ChatGPT is bigger commercially right now. For high-volume consumer or transactional queries, AI Overviews is the bigger play. Most of the underlying work helps both.
Related AI search platforms
Perplexity Visibility
The search-native AI assistant, heavily used in B2B research. Different mechanics, similar fundamentals.
ExploreGoogle AI Overviews
The Google SERP integration — often the closest in mechanics to classic SEO.
ExploreGemini & Copilot
The other two platforms in the mix — integrated into Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
ExploreWhat clients actually say.
Real reviews from firms I have worked with. 4.8 out of 5 across Google, Facebook and Yell.
“Extremely helpful would highly recommend for SEO services, my business ranking went up, and more customers started calling.”
“We have been working with Gregg for a few months now — he is really actively trying to increase our profile on Google. We always find him easily contactable and approachable.”
Want to talk this through?
Thirty minutes. No pitch deck. I’ll tell you honestly whether AI search optimisation is the right priority for your firm right now.