The short answer
To get your business cited in ChatGPT, its search crawler has to be able to read your site, a search index it relies on has to know your pages exist, and those pages have to answer real customer questions clearly enough to quote. Then other credible South African sites need to mention you, so ChatGPT trusts you over a competitor.
That matters because a growing share of your buyers now ask an AI assistant before they ask Google. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in October 2025 that ChatGPT had reached 800 million weekly users, and Google has shown AI Overviews to South African searchers since its October 2024 expansion to more than 100 countries. When someone in Sandton asks "who can fix my geyser today?" or "which accounting firm in Stellenbosch works with startups?", the assistant names a handful of businesses. The work below is how you become one of them.
How ChatGPT decides which businesses to cite
ChatGPT answers from two places: what the model learned in training, and what its search feature finds on the live web when a question needs current or local information. Recommendations for South African businesses almost always come from the live search step, because the model's training data is months old and thin on local detail.
For that live step, OpenAI uses its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot. In its crawler documentation, OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt if you want to appear in ChatGPT's search answers. OpenAI does not publish every index it draws on, but ChatGPT's results lean heavily on Microsoft Bing as well, which is why Bing matters far more than most SA marketers assume.
| AI platform | Where it finds sources | What to check first |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT search | OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot crawler plus third-party search indexes, notably Bing | OAI-SearchBot allowed; site indexed in Bing Webmaster Tools |
| Google AI Overviews | Google's own index, mostly pages that already rank well | Indexed in Google Search Console; strong page-one rankings |
| Perplexity | Its own crawler (PerplexityBot) and live web results, always shown as linked sources | PerplexityBot allowed; clear, well-structured, recent pages |
Being cited is not the same as ranking first. AI tools pull passages, not whole pages, so a clear, specific paragraph on a smaller site can be quoted ahead of a vague page on a bigger one.
What changed in 2026: ChatGPT favours original sources
ChatGPT is citing the sources that produce information more often, and the sites that summarise it less often. That is the main finding of an Ahrefs study published on 12 October 2026, which tracked which websites US ChatGPT answers cited between March and September 2026, and analysed 66.6 million responses from the free, logged-out version of ChatGPT.
| What Ahrefs measured | Finding |
|---|---|
| Reddit in US answers | Cited in about 1 in 5 answers in March, about 1 in 43 by late September |
| Wikipedia in US answers | About 1 in 7 answers in March, about 1 in 35 by late September |
| Types of sites gaining | Research bodies, regulators, brands and hands-on product testers (PubMed rose from 64th to 4th most-cited site) |
| Types of sites losing | Explainer sites, aggregators and syndicators |
| Official sources | 84.4% of factual prompts cited at least one official source, in a test of 20,000 US prompts |
| How often ChatGPT searched | Only 14.4% of free, logged-out responses ran a web search |
| Searches aimed at one website | 75.9% of site-specific searches to the most-searched domains went to brand websites |
| Wording of ChatGPT's searches | "Official" and "price" appeared in a growing share of the searches it ran in the background |
Read it with care. The citation rankings are US data, the search figures come from one model in the free, logged-out version over two months, and Ahrefs notes that paid and reasoning models search more often. There is no equivalent South African dataset that we know of. The direction is still useful: when ChatGPT does go to the web, it increasingly checks the business's own site and other primary sources.
For a South African business, that means your own website is the source that matters most. Your prices, service areas, opening hours, registrations and policies need to be on your site, in plain text, where a crawler can read them. A page that says "contact us for a quote" gives ChatGPT nothing to cite when someone asks what a service costs in Pretoria.
What we see in our own Search Console data
Between 9 September and 6 October 2026, the Click Genius site appeared in Google for searches that read like questions people now type into AI tools:
| Search query | Impressions | Average position |
|---|---|---|
| how do i get my business cited in chatgpt in south africa | 36 | 5.3 |
| get cited by ai south africa | 18 | 6.3 |
| who can i hire to optimise my website for chatgpt results | 12 | 4.2 |
| how to get found on perplexity in south africa | 2 | 1.0 |
Two things stand out. The questions are long and conversational, the way people talk to an assistant rather than how they used to type into Google. And they earned almost no clicks, even on page one. That pattern is consistent with AI tools reading search results to build an answer instead of a person clicking through. If your business is not in the results those tools read, it is not in the answer either.
7 steps to get cited in ChatGPT
1. Let OpenAI's search crawler in
Open yoursite.co.za/robots.txt and make sure nothing blocks OAI-SearchBot. A safe minimum looks like this:
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /Then check your firewall. Since July 2025, Cloudflare has blocked known AI crawlers by default on newly added sites, and some security plugins do the same. OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to reach its systems. GPTBot is a separate crawler used for model training; blocking it does not keep you out of ChatGPT search, but blocking OAI-SearchBot does.
2. Get indexed in Bing, not just Google
Most South African businesses verify their site in Google Search Console and never open Bing Webmaster Tools. Verify your site there, submit your XML sitemap, and check that your key service pages are indexed. Bing Webmaster Tools can import your Google Search Console setup in a few clicks. Turning on IndexNow, which Bing supports, notifies Bing the moment you publish or update a page instead of waiting for a recrawl.
3. Make your business details identical everywhere
AI tools cross-check facts. If your website says Sandton, your Google Business Profile says Rosebank and an old directory listing still shows a disconnected 011 number, the assistant has three versions of you and less reason to trust any of them. Keep your business name, address, phone number, service list and areas served identical across your site, your Google Business Profile, Bing Places and the directories you appear in. Add Organization or LocalBusiness schema markup to your site so the same facts are machine-readable.
4. Answer the exact questions your buyers ask
Write one page or section per real question, and put the answer in the first two sentences. "How much does a geyser replacement cost in Johannesburg?" should be answered with a rand range, what changes the price and how long it takes, before any sales copy. Keep each core answer to roughly 40 to 60 words so it can be lifted cleanly, then add the detail underneath. Use headings that match how people phrase the question, and add an FAQ section for the follow-ups.
5. Give AI something specific to quote
Vague claims are rarely cited. Specifics are. Name the suburbs you serve, the turnaround you commit to, the brands you install, the regulations you comply with, and real prices in rand. Ahrefs found "price" and "official" turning up more often in the searches ChatGPT runs in the background, so a clear, current price page is worth more than ever. Put a named author with real experience on your advice content and show the date it was last updated. In the GEO research paper presented at KDD 2024, adding citations, quotations and statistics improved how visible sources were in generative engine answers by up to 40% in the researchers' tests, while keyword stuffing did not help.
Our free SEO and website audit checks crawler access, Bing and Google indexing, schema markup and the pages most likely to be quoted, and gives you a prioritised fix list.
6. Get mentioned on sites AI already trusts
When ChatGPT recommends a business, it often leans on what other sites say about it, not only on the business's own website. For South African businesses, the most useful mentions usually come from:
- Reviews on Google and on Hellopeter, with replies from you
- Your industry association's member directory
- Local and trade press, such as Bizcommunity for marketing and business news
- Supplier, partner and client websites that link to you
- Genuine, helpful answers in communities where your buyers ask questions
One credible, accurate mention on a well-known South African site does more than a dozen thin directory listings. Do not build your plan around forums alone: in Ahrefs' US data, Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations fell sharply during 2026, while brand sites and official sources gained.
7. Measure it and keep it fresh
Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google the ten questions your buyers ask most, and note whether you are cited and who is. In GA4, look for sessions from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai under traffic acquisition; ChatGPT usually tags the links it shows with utm_source=chatgpt.com. Update your key pages at least every quarter with current prices, examples and the date, because AI tools favour recent, maintained content.
A 90-day plan for South African businesses
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Fix robots.txt and firewall blocks, verify Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your sitemap, turn on IndexNow |
| Weeks 2 to 4 | Align your business details everywhere, add Organization or LocalBusiness schema, list your top 20 buyer questions |
| Month 2 | Rewrite your main service pages answer-first, publish your first question-led guides with named authors and dates |
| Month 3 | Run a review drive, pitch one piece of local press, update directory listings, then repeat your monthly AI citation check |
There is no guaranteed date for your first citation. Crawler access changes within a day, Bing indexing usually takes days to a few weeks, and the content and reputation work typically takes a few months to show up consistently.
Mistakes that keep SA businesses invisible to AI
- Blocking AI crawlers by accident through a firewall, CDN or security plugin default
- Ignoring Bing because it has a small share of South African search traffic
- Hiding prices behind "contact us", which leaves AI tools nothing concrete to quote
- Copy-pasted location pages that swap the city name and say nothing new
- Key information only in PDFs or images, which are harder for crawlers to read
- Treating llms.txt as a shortcut. It is optional and harmless, but no major AI platform has confirmed it uses llms.txt for ranking
Our AI SEO and GEO service handles crawler access, Bing indexing, answer-first content and citation tracking for South African businesses, with teams for Cape Town and Johannesburg clients.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?
No. There is no paid placement inside ChatGPT's answers. Citations come from pages ChatGPT's search can find and trust, which is why the work is technical access, clear answer-first content and credible mentions on other sites.
How long does it take to get cited in ChatGPT?
OpenAI says robots.txt changes for its search crawler take about 24 hours to apply. Getting indexed by Bing usually takes days to a few weeks. Earning the outside mentions and content depth that make ChatGPT choose you over a competitor typically takes a few months of consistent work, with no guaranteed date.
Does ChatGPT use Google to find businesses?
OpenAI does not publish exactly which search indexes ChatGPT uses. Its results lean heavily on Microsoft Bing's index alongside OpenAI's own OAI-SearchBot crawler, so South African businesses should verify their site in Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Search Console.
Is getting cited in ChatGPT different from ranking in Google AI Overviews?
Partly. Google AI Overviews, live in South Africa since October 2024, draw mainly on pages that already rank well in Google. ChatGPT draws on its own crawler and other indexes, and can cite pages that do not rank on Google's first page. The same foundations help both: crawlable pages, answer-first content and consistent business information.
Do I need an llms.txt file?
It is optional and no AI platform has confirmed it uses llms.txt for ranking. It costs little to add a short plain-text summary of your business and key pages, but it will not replace crawlable pages, Bing indexing or outside mentions.
Does ChatGPT still cite Reddit and Wikipedia?
Less often than before. Ahrefs found Reddit was cited in about 1 in 5 US ChatGPT answers in March 2026 but about 1 in 43 by late September, and Wikipedia fell from about 1 in 7 to 1 in 35. Brand sites, regulators and research bodies gained, so your own website matters more.
The take-away
Getting cited in ChatGPT is not a trick. It is ordinary, disciplined website work done for a new kind of reader: let the crawlers in, get indexed in Bing as well as Google, answer real questions in plain language with real South African specifics, and earn mentions on sites AI already trusts. Most of your competitors have not started. The businesses that do this now will be the names assistants keep repeating.
Book a free strategy call and we'll check what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google currently say about your business, and what to fix first.
