What do OpenAI's new business profiles change?
On 10 November 2026, OpenAI opened a Business Hub where companies can create a profile inside ChatGPT, TechCrunch reports. Businesses can verify and update information about their products and services there. The feature is in beta, and TechCrunch compares it to the business profiles Google offers.
Eligible companies can also launch a business agent: an assistant that answers ChatGPT users' questions about the company and what it sells. The hub shows a few figures, such as profile views, business mentions and website clicks. OpenAI hasn't explained how verification works, and the article doesn't say which countries are covered.
A profile gives ChatGPT an official source about you. It doesn't replace everything else the assistant reads on the web, and those other sources carry a lot of weight, as a test published the same day shows.
Where does ChatGPT find the businesses it recommends?
Mostly in directories, platforms and LinkedIn, and less often on company websites. On 29 October 2026, Hugo Sivignon asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude six questions with web search turned on, then wrote up the results for Journal du Net. Five were buying questions, along the lines of “freelance SEO consultant Lyon”.
Across the 20 commercial answers, his own site came up twice. The most cited sources were category pages on freelance platforms, directories (in France: Codeur, Sortlist, the France Num directory), agency comparison pages and LinkedIn profiles. He calls the test “a snapshot, not a measurement”: one try per question, in one line of work.
One telling detail: ChatGPT introduced him with a job title he no longer held, taken from an old version of his LinkedIn profile, while the other assistants quoted his site. Outdated information on a platform can beat your own website.
Is your website letting ChatGPT's crawler in?
OpenAI's documentation is explicit: sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, apart from plain navigational links. That opt-out lives in robots.txt, a small text file at the root of your site that tells crawlers what they may read.
OpenAI runs several crawlers, and they do different jobs:
- OAI-SearchBot handles search: it is what puts your site in ChatGPT's answers.
- GPTBot collects content that may be used to train OpenAI's models.
- ChatGPT-User opens a page when a user asks for it. It doesn't decide what appears in search.
Each setting is independent. You can allow OAI-SearchBot and block GPTBot if you don't want your content used for training. After you change robots.txt, OpenAI says search takes about 24 hours to catch up.
To check, type your domain followed by /robots.txt into a browser. If Disallow: / sits right under User-agent: OAI-SearchBot, your site is out of ChatGPT search answers. The Journal du Net piece also recommends adding your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, Bing's console for site owners: Bing's index feeds Copilot, and OpenAI partly relies on third-party providers.
What should your pages say so ChatGPT picks them up?
Hard facts: what you do, where, for whom, from what price and how long it takes. In the test, whenever an answer cited a website, it reused a starting price, a lead time or a service area. A line like “tailored solutions for all your projects” leaves an assistant nothing to quote.
Take a plumber's website. “Fast response, free quote” gives an assistant nothing to repeat. A page that names the areas covered, the call-out fee and the weekday response time gives it three facts, each one answering a question a customer actually asks.
Those facts need to match everywhere you appear: website, Google Business Profile, social accounts, directories. If your starting price or service area differs from one source to the next, the assistant may pick the wrong one.
The llms.txt file, a summary of your site written for AI assistants, comes up in a lot of advice. The test's author ranks it as a low priority: no major player has said it uses the file to choose its sources.
When we deliver a custom website, page titles, the sitemap and redirects from the old site are set up on launch day. You then edit your own content from a simple editor, so a price or a lead time can be updated the day it changes, without waiting on an agency.
How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT: where to start
The first steps need no developer and no budget, only time. In order:
- Ask ChatGPT, and other assistants if you can, the questions your customers type. Write down the sources they cite.
- List your business on the directories and platforms that keep coming up, and fix your existing listings.
- Update your LinkedIn profile, Google Business Profile and social accounts so they say the same thing as your website.
- Open your robots.txt and make sure OAI-SearchBot isn't blocked.
- Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Rewrite your service pages with what you do, the area you cover, who it's for, your starting price and your lead time.
- Add “ChatGPT or another AI tool” to the answers for “How did you hear about us?”.
- If OpenAI's Business Hub is open to your business, create and verify your profile.
Then run the same questions again. The Journal du Net author plans to repeat his test six weeks after the first one, which is a sensible interval to see whether the cited sources shift.