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It’s becoming increasingly clear that more and more people are using Chat GPT like a search engine. Considering the potential influence of Open AI’s chatbot in recommending your brand or products, many are wondering how they can optimize their positioning in Chat GPT. We analyzed everything you can do today to get Chat GPT to recommend you and to track if a chatbot is accessing your website. It could be crucial!
Can positioning be optimized for Chat GPT?
It is estimated that in March 2024, Chat GPT received around 1.8 billion visits. This is a significant amount of traffic that continues to grow each month. Many users ask the chatbot all kinds of questions, including inquiries to guide their purchases.
The results are certainly interesting, as Chat GPT offers a list of recommendations, shopping locations, and tips for finding the most economical products. There are even cases when it provides links so you can go directly to official websites or e-commerce sites. For many users, this is definitely quicker and more convenient than doing a search on Google. Additionally, it has the conversational factor, which allows us to ask successive questions about what we want to find. In fact, it is capable of interpreting your purchasing intent even if you are quite brief.
But, what does Chat GPT base its recommendations of some brands and not others on? How can we make our brand one of those that the chatbot considers recommendable? It seems evident that it could become an impressive source of traffic if your website is one of those recommended by Chat GPT. And we could already be seeing the first companies that are optimizing their content for chatbots.
Is GPT SEO already here?
How to Optimize Your Website’s Positioning for Chat GPT?
The first question we must ask ourselves is: What criteria does Chat GPT take into account when recommending certain products or brands? By understanding these factors, we can start working on how to optimize them. ChatGPT does not browse the internet in real-time nor does it access external databases during our conversations. Instead, it relies on a vast dataset that was used during its training in September 2021. This means it is not fully updated according to what appears on the internet today. And since Open AI is not fully open about the origins of its training data, we cannot know for certain if it also considers factors like reviews, user comments, or discussions in forums and blogs. However, we cannot rule it out.
Therefore, Chat GPT does not recommend companies in the way a real-time search tool based on specific algorithms or ongoing web content updates would. However, it can mention companies or brands in response to questions based on the training it received until its last update. For this reason, it is crucial to position your website among those that are included in the database of Chat GPT each time it is updated, or so that new models take it into account. To do this, the best general practices to ensure a solid and authoritative online presence are your best bet for increasing the likelihood of being recognized by advanced natural language processing models, now or in the future.
Although you cannot optimize your website specifically for Chat GPT in the same way you would for a search engine like Google, here are some strategies that might help you increase the visibility of your company so that it can indirectly influence ChatGPT’s responses:
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SEO: Ensure that your website is optimized for search engines. This includes using relevant keywords, having precise and descriptive metadata, and generating quality content that establishes your site as an authority in your industry.
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Presence on Social Media and Relevant Platforms: Enhance your online presence on platforms other than your own website. This includes social media, forums, and other platforms where your target audience can interact with your brand.
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Publications and Media Mentions: Work on obtaining media coverage or mentions in high-profile publications. This can help establish your brand as a leader in the field and make it more likely to be included in datasets used to train AI models.
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Quality Content and Outreach: Produce high-quality content that can be cited by others. This includes original research studies, detailed articles, and useful resources that other websites may want to link to and share.
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Collaborations with Influencers and Established Brands: Partnerships with influencers and other brands can expand your reach and strengthen your brand’s perception.
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Feedback and Positive Reviews: Encourage your customers to leave positive comments and reviews on various platforms, including Google My Business and review sites relevant to your sector.
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Transparency and Accessibility: Ensure that your website is easy to navigate, quick to load, and accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.
Although these strategies do not guarantee that your company will be specifically mentioned by Chat GPT, strengthening your online presence and establishing your brand as an authority in your field can increase the chances of being recognized as an industry leader, which could be captured in future updates of language models or similar systems. But what you can do is measure whether chatbots enter your website. This is the best way to know if your strategy is working.
Measuring Chatbots on Your Website: How to Tell if Chat GPT and Other Chatbots Are Entering Your Site
The best option to determine if bots from applications like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Perplexity AI have entered is to check the data from Google Analytics 4 through the “Session Source” dimension. You can see it in this capture. Simply go to the Traffic Acquisition report and select the Session Source dimension.
You can also use a regex like this: “.gpt.|.chatgpt.|.openai.|.neeva.|.writesonic.|.nimble.|.outrider.|.perplexity.|.*google.bard.|.*bard.google.|.bard.|.edgeservices.|.*gemini.google.”
To filter the results in an Explore section report.
