OpenAI documents no way to apply for brand recommendations, but you can make your brand easy to find and easy to describe. Let OpenAI's search crawler read your site, say plainly what you sell, and keep those facts the same on every page. Sellers of physical products also have a feed route. No tactic guarantees a mention.
We found no ranking formula for brand recommendations in OpenAI's documentation. The OpenAI pages we read cover eligibility instead: which crawler feeds ChatGPT's search results, and how merchants send product data. For brands, they do not say what makes ChatGPT name one brand over another. Be careful with any guide that lists exact ranking weights.
There are two routes, and they work differently.
Start here, because nothing else matters if the crawler is blocked. OpenAI's Overview of OpenAI Crawlers says OAI-SearchBot "is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features." It also says: "To help ensure your site appears in search results, we recommend allowing OAI-SearchBot in your site's robots.txt file." The same page recommends allowing requests from OpenAI's published IP ranges.
Three details from that page save people from common mix-ups:
To check your own site, open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for any rule that blocks OAI-SearchBot, including a blanket rule that blocks all bots. Then ask whoever runs your CDN or firewall whether it blocks the crawler's IP ranges. It is a quick check and the cheapest fix in this guide.
If you sell items with a price and a stock level, OpenAI has a product feed route. Its Get Started guide says: "Onboarding product feeds in ChatGPT is currently available to approved partners." You request access through a form on that page. The feed should include titles, descriptions, images, price and availability.
The file upload spec lists nine fields it calls required for a useful discovery feed: item ID, title, description, URL, brand, seller name, image URL, availability and price. It also says to "Update current prices and availability in your feed when they change." OpenAI's best practices page asks for short, factual copy. Its key concepts page says recommended attributes, "like rich media, reviews, and performance signals," "improve ranking, relevance, and user trust."
The spec asks you to "Submit one row per purchasable item or variant," so feeds are built for catalogs. If you sell software or services, begin with Route 1.
This section is our advice, not OpenAI's. OpenAI does not say these steps raise your odds. They are plain practice that gives a search tool clear material to read and quote.
Schema markup is fine to add. It helps machines read a page, but none of the OpenAI pages we read ask for it, so write the answer in visible text first.
Do not guess. Test it the same way every week.
Pair this with Search Console, which shows your Google clicks, impressions and positions for the same pages.
Mergeflo is an autonomous SEO platform for startups. It finds search gaps and buyer questions, drafts articles in your brand voice, adds FAQ schema when an article is published, and publishes to Webflow when you press Publish. On paid plans, a weekly scan asks ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude your buyer questions and records whether your brand is mentioned, cited or recommended, and it also records Google results. It does not check Perplexity, and it does not manage your robots.txt.
Not that we found. The OpenAI pages we read describe no form or program for brand recommendations. The only application we found is for product feeds, which OpenAI says are currently available to approved partners.
OpenAI says GPTBot relates to training and OAI-SearchBot relates to search, and that each setting is independent of the others. A GPTBot rule is therefore not a search rule. Check what your robots.txt says about OAI-SearchBot on its own.
OpenAI says it can take about 24 hours from a robots.txt update for its systems to adjust. Make the change first, then test your buyer questions a day or more later.
None of the OpenAI pages we read ask for it. Structured data helps machines read a page, but the answer has to work as plain, visible text first.
Probably not much. The feed spec asks for one row per purchasable item or variant, with price and availability, so it is built for product catalogs. A software or services company should start with the web route: a crawlable site and clear pages.
Ask it. Write a fixed list of buyer questions, ask each one on a schedule, and record whether your brand is mentioned, cited or recommended. Answers can vary from one run to the next, so judge the trend over several weeks, not one answer.
