Why doesn't ChatGPT mention my business?
Usually one of three things: the assistant cannot fetch your pages, it can fetch them but finds no answer to the question being asked, or it can read you fine but the sources it trusts in your sector do not list you.
The three causes need different fixes, so the first job is finding out which one you have. That is a measurement, not a guess.
Cause one: it cannot fetch your pages
Hosting rules, firewalls and security services can block automated fetching. Sometimes this is deliberate and sometimes it was switched on by default. It is worth separating two different crawlers: the one that fetches a page to answer a question now, and the one that collects text to train a future model. Blocking the training crawler does not hide you from answers.
Cause two: your pages do not answer the question
A page can be readable and still be useless to an assistant. If your opening hours, your service area, the languages you speak or the way you take bookings are not written as plain sentences, there is nothing to quote. Pictures of text and menus built only in JavaScript are the two most common ways to hide an answer by accident.
Cause three: the sources do not list you
In our own measurement of a local service business in Germany, seven of ten answers drew on the same booking platform. If a sector has a source like that and your profile there is missing or half filled, you will be left out no matter how good your own site is.
How to measure it in an hour
You do not need a tool to start. You need the same questions, asked the same way, written down.
- Write ten to fifteen questions a real customer would ask, in the language and country you sell in. Keep them general: name your sector and city, not your business.
- Ask them, with web search switched on, and save the answers. Note the date, the assistant and whether search was on.
- Count two things: how many answers mention you, and which sources the answers cite.
- Ask one extra question directly about your business, by name or domain. If the answer is accurate, the assistant can read you and the problem is elsewhere.
- Repeat the same list next month. The number that matters is the change, not the first score.
What good looks like
A realistic first result for a small business is zero mentions. That is not a failure, it is a baseline. What matters is that the reasons are known, the fixes are made in order, and the same questions are asked again.
Related
Frequently asked questions
How many questions should I ask?
Ten to fifteen is enough to see a pattern, and few enough to repeat every month.
Should I ask about my own business by name?
Ask one question like that, separately. It tells you whether the assistant can read you at all, which is a different problem from not being recommended.
Do different assistants give different answers?
Yes, and the same assistant changes from day to day. That is why the result is reported as a ratio over several runs rather than a single answer.
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