ChatGPT names the companies on the pages it fetches for a buyer's question: review sites, roundups, comparison articles, threads. To be mentioned, find the questions you are absent from, make your own pages quotable (crawler access, plain statements of price and scope, structured data), get onto the sources the answers cite, and measure again on the same questions.
What ChatGPT is doing when it names a company
When someone asks ChatGPT with web search 'best incident management software for engineering teams', it runs a search, reads a handful of pages (review sites, comparison articles, forum threads, sometimes the vendors' own pages), and writes an answer that names three to six companies with a sentence on each. Perplexity does the same and shows its sources; Google's AI Overviews does it above the results. None of them keep a list of companies. They repeat what the pages they trust say.
So 'getting mentioned' is two problems, in order. First, when the engine fetches your own site, it must be able to read it and find a plain statement of what you do and for whom. Second, and this is most of it, the sources the engine reads for your category's questions have to name you. We measure both, and the second is where the score usually is.
Step 1: find the questions you are missing from
Not 'what are my keywords'. The buyer questions: 'best X for Y', 'X for a 40-person team', 'A vs B', 'A alternatives'. Ask each one on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, and write down who is named and which sources are shown. Fifteen questions across three engines is forty-five answers, which is an afternoon by hand.
Or run the free check: it derives the questions from your website, asks four engines, and gives you the list of questions a competitor is named in and you are not, with the sources each answer cited.
Step 2: make your own site readable and quotable
This is the part you control, and it is an afternoon: allow the AI crawlers in robots.txt (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot), publish an llms.txt, add Organization and Product or Service schema, and write the one sentence that says what you do and for whom at the top of the home page. The starter kit generator writes the four files from your pages.
Then give the engines something to quote. A comparison page ('Us vs the leader'), an alternatives page, and a page per use case in the buyer's words are the pages the engines quote when they compare vendors, and most companies do not have them.
Step 3: get named where the engines read
Take the sources from step 1. They fall into kinds, and each kind has a different move. Review platforms (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, Clutch): your profile is yours to fill; the engines read the richest one. Directories and roundups ('10 best X tools'): get listed, which is an email or a form. Community threads (Reddit, Hacker News, niche forums): a genuine answer where the question is asked. Editorial (trade press, analyst pages): an earned mention, which is weeks of outreach and is a campaign, not a fix.
Do them in that order. A listing lands in days; a mention lands in months.
Step 4: measure again, on the same questions
Ask the same questions again in thirty days. Being named in three of fifteen instead of one is progress you can show someone; a feeling that 'ChatGPT knows us now' is not. The check pins the question set, so a rescan is the same test.
What does not work
- Stuffing 'best X' into your own pages. The engines quote third parties for 'best'; your page saying you are the best is not a source.
- Links on a competitor's site. You will not get them, and asking is a waste of a month.
- llms.txt on its own. It helps the engines read you; it does not make anyone name you.
- Waiting for it to happen. The companies named today are the ones on the pages the engines already read.
Questions people ask about this
Can I pay ChatGPT to mention my company?
No. There is no placement to buy in ChatGPT's answers, Perplexity's or Google's AI Overviews. What you can do is be one of the companies the sources they read already name, and be readable when they fetch your own pages.
How long does it take?
Site fixes show up in the next answers within days, because the engines fetch live. Being named in the sources takes weeks to months, because a review profile, a comparison page or an editorial mention has to exist and be found. Our clients on a monthly plan see the first new mentions in the second month, typically.
Does it matter which engine?
Yes. ChatGPT with web search, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews read different sources and answer differently, which is why the report scores them separately. A company can be named on Perplexity and missing on ChatGPT for the same question.
Do I need to be on Reddit?
If the engines cite Reddit threads for your category's questions, a genuine and useful answer on those threads is readable by the engines. Anything promotional gets removed, and should.
Find the questions you are missing from
Three minutes, no card: which buyer questions name a competitor and not you, and which sources decided it.