How to Get Your Product Recommended in ChatGPT (A Practical Playbook for CMOs)
The new channel isn't subtle anymore. Here's how to influence what ChatGPT recommends — and why it works faster than SEO ever did.
Will Bradley
Founder, Precision Growth
I didn't go looking for this.
Late 2024, a few of our SEO-led articles started getting traffic from a weird new source.
Not Google.
Not social.
ChatGPT.
And not just mentions.
Actual product recommendations.
At first, it felt like a glitch. Then it kept happening.
And then it started happening more.
By January 2025, the traffic curve wasn't subtle anymore. Month-on-month lifts. Consistent brand phrasing. Clients getting recommended as the top choice for category queries.
So we dug in.
And what we found is both simple and kind of wild:
You can influence what ChatGPT recommends. And it works faster than SEO ever did.
This isn't theory.
It's now a repeatable playbook.
Here's how to do it.
1 First: understand how ChatGPT decides what to recommend
There are only two levers you can influence:
A) Training data (the past)
This is the stuff the model has already absorbed.
If you're already well-known — PR, Wikipedia, big publications — great. You're probably in the soup.
If not, don't panic. It's just one layer.
B) Web search (the present)
This is where the real opportunity is.
Any time someone asks ChatGPT product-related questions, it fires off 10–15 real-time search queries across Bing or Google.
Any time someone asks ChatGPT:
- → "best X tools"
- → "X vs Y"
- → "alternatives to X"
- → "who offers X"
- → or anything product-y
…it fires off 10–15 real-time search queries.
Across Bing or Google.
Then it recommends whatever shows up consistently across top results:
So the rule is simple:
ChatGPT doesn't pick the "best" product. It picks the most consistently recommended product.
That's the game.
Not ranking your own site.
Consensus across the web.
2 Start at home: make your site "model-ready"
There's no excuse for skipping this part.
It costs almost nothing.
And it works insanely well.
Do this first:
Make sure every question about your product is answered on your site
Use sales-grade clarity, not vague marketing fluff
Structure answers in Q&A or FAQ format
Don't hide key info behind JavaScript rendering
Keep internal linking simple (these crawlers are dumb)
People now evaluate products inside chat interfaces, not on your homepage.
So include:
- exact features
- pricing (if possible)
- integrations
- supported regions
- limitations
- onboarding requirements
If ChatGPT can't find it, it fills the gaps with scraps from the internet.
Guess who wrote those scraps?
Not you.
Add these cornerstone pages:
YourBrand vs Competitor
(plural if needed)
Competitor alternatives
Position yourself as the choice
Best X for Y
Specific use cases, not generic
Example formats:
Best accounting tools for UK-based small businesses
Best contract review software for in-house legal teams
Not just "best accounting tools"
Long-tail works better here than SEO ever allowed.
Refresh cadence
Update these monthly or quarterly.
AI engines heavily weight freshness.
Yes, seriously.
3 Build consensus off-site (this is the unlock)
Once your owned content is sorted, go outside.
Figure out which surfaces matter
Don't guess.
Use tools like:
Track prompts and see which sources are most cited.
It's different for every industry.
You get the idea.
Then do one of two things:
Option A — get featured on existing pages
Sometimes easy.
Sometimes pay-to-play.
Sometimes… good luck.
Partnerships work, but expect friction.
Option B — publish new content on similar sites
Often faster, cheaper, and just as effective
- • top-10 tools listicles
- • competitor comparisons
- • "alternatives to" pieces
Aim for:
Don't sleep on these:
Reddit threads
(Google sends billions of visits)
YouTube listicle-style videos
Visual comparison content
Niche communities
(industry-specific gold mines)
This is why some companies now have someone in-house who literally just participates in the right threads.
Not fake.
Not spammy.
Just present.
It matters more than you'd think.
4 How fast does this work?
Shockingly fast.
Individual responses can shift in a week
Quick wins are possible
Bigger category movement: 1–2 months
Sustained momentum builds over time
If nothing changes after 3 months, and you've actually taken action — then reassess
Time to adjust strategy
This is not SEO-timelines-2021.
It moves.
5 How to measure success
Traffic is only part of the picture.
Most people won't click — they'll:
- • read the answer
- • go direct
- • come back later
- • or convert without attribution
So track three things:
1
Visibility
Manually or via tools. Monitor share of voice for target prompts.
2
Sentiment
Is your product:
Huge difference.
3
Real outcomes
We've seen:
- dominant #1 recommendations for Bitcoin lending queries
- consistent inclusion for AI contract review
- 50% month-over-month increases in ChatGPT-origin traffic
- high-ticket leads from a single two-hour listicle
No magic.
Just predictable.
6 What CMOs get wrong
A few common traps:
1) Buying tracking tools with no action plan
Monitoring isn't a strategy.
2) Fully outsourcing to automated AI tools
They're not there yet. AirOps is interesting, but limited.
Human-in-the-loop still matters.
3) Skipping the basics
If your own content sucks, consensus won't save you.
7 What to actually do this quarter
Keep it simple:
Audit your site
Make sure every key question is answered clearly.
Publish the three core page types
vs pages • alternatives • best-X-for-Y
Refresh your cornerstone content
Monthly is ideal.
Do this before you touch earned media.
It's the highest-leverage starting point.
8 Who should own this internally
Ideally:
-
SEO-minded content strategist, or
-
External strategist creating briefs for in-house writers
Not pure PR.
Not generic content marketing.
Not "just let AI write it."
Quality matters.
9 Budget reality
Yes, budget helps — but only off-site.
Spend it on:
partnerships with high-authority third-party sites
not tools
not automation
not volume for the sake of volume
In some verticals (e.g., credit cards), this gets expensive fast.
In others, you can dominate cheaply.
It's not one-size-fits-all.
10 The naming (if you care about that stuff)
We break it into two parts:
On-site:
Model-ready bottom-of-funnel content
Off-site:
Consensus engineering
Call it whatever you like.
The strategy stays the same.
11 The only principles that actually matter
Get your own content in order first
No excuses.
Make sure AI can pull accurate, persuasive info from you
Not scraps.
Build consistent recommendations across the web
Mentioned ≠ recommended.
Act before you analyse
Tools don't move the needle. Execution does.
12 The one-sentence version
People are starting to make buying decisions inside chat interfaces — so make sure they can get every answer they need there, and make sure the internet consistently recommends you when they ask.
Want to see how your brand shows up in AI search?
Get a personalized AI Search Benchmark Report analyzing how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI engines understand and recommend your product.