Your Brand Is Missing From ChatGPT. What Should You Do?
Being absent from an AI recommendation can be frustrating. The worst response is immediately trying to "optimise for ChatGPT".
InView Insights · September 2026
You've asked ChatGPT a question that sounds exactly like something your customer would ask.
Your competitors appear. You don't. What now? The temptation is to start changing things immediately. Publish more content. Add an FAQ. Mention the category twenty more times. Find a GEO checklist. Rewrite your product pages. Don't start there. First, work out what kind of visibility problem you actually have.
Start by checking whether it's a pattern
One ChatGPT response isn't a reliable measurement. Ask several realistic questions around the same customer need. Then expand the test across other needs your product serves.
For example, a supplement brand might test:
Test set · Five buyer questions
01"What's a good Australian protein powder?"
02"Which protein powders are good for sensitive stomachs?"
03"What's a high-protein vegan powder without lots of additives?"
04"Which Australian protein brands have good reviews?"
05"What's a good protein powder that isn't overly sweet?"
If you're absent once, it may mean very little. If the same competitors appear repeatedly while you're consistently missing, you have something worth investigating.
Work out where the gap is
Not all AI visibility problems are the same.
You might discover that:
01AI doesn't understand your brand well.Descriptions are vague, incomplete or outdated.
02AI understands you but doesn't recommend you.Your brand is recognised when asked about directly, but rarely surfaces during unbranded discovery.
03You're visible for the wrong things.AI strongly associates you with one product or use case while overlooking another part of your business.
04A competitor owns the conversation.One brand repeatedly appears for a commercially important customer need.
Each problem suggests a different response. That's why jumping straight into optimisation is usually premature.
Look at what the winning brands have that you don't
If a competitor repeatedly gets recommended, investigate the information environment around them. Don't just look at their homepage.
Look at:
how clearly they describe their products
which customer problems they address
reviews
comparison content
editorial coverage
retailer and marketplace information
third-party mentions
product data
expert commentary
how consistently they're described across the web
Perhaps competitors have significantly more independent discussion around a particular use case. Perhaps their product pages answer questions yours don't. Perhaps their positioning is simply much clearer. Perhaps there is no obvious difference yet. That's useful too. The goal is diagnosis, not finding evidence to support a predetermined GEO tactic.
Check whether the information exists
Imagine you want your skincare brand to be recommended when someone asks:
Buyer question
"What's a good Australian moisturiser for sensitive skin without fragrance?"
Ask yourself a simple question. If a human researcher investigated your website and the wider web, would they find clear, credible information showing that your product meets those requirements? If the answer is no, expecting an AI system to confidently make the connection is ambitious. This gives marketers a useful way to think about AI visibility.
Key takeaway
Don't start by asking "How do we optimise for ChatGPT?"
Start by asking:
"What would ChatGPT need to understand and verify to recommend us here?"
That question usually leads to better work.
Strengthen the weakest part
Once you understand the gap, make the smallest sensible intervention. If the problem is unclear product information, improve it. If important customer questions aren't answered anywhere, create genuinely useful content around them. If your positioning is inconsistent, clarify it. If there is little credible third-party information about your brand, consider how PR, reviews, partnerships or expert coverage could strengthen the wider evidence available.
If product information is outdated across different sources, fix the underlying data. Don't change twenty things simultaneously. You'll have no idea what mattered.
Then measure again
Keep the original question set. After meaningful changes have had time to become discoverable, rerun it. Look for movement across the group rather than expecting one exact answer.
Did Recommendation Rate improve?
Did the competitor gap narrow?
Did you begin appearing for a customer need where you were previously absent?
Did the way AI describes your brand change?
This is where AI visibility becomes much more useful.
You're no longer asking:
No longer asking
"Does ChatGPT like us?"
Asking instead
"Are we becoming more visible in the customer decisions that matter?"
InView perspective
Measure. Diagnose. Improve. Rerun.
AI search is changing too quickly for anyone to promise a permanent #1 position.
A better objective is to understand where you're being considered, identify where you're missing and systematically improve the information and evidence surrounding your brand.
Then measure whether it worked.
Find out where you're missing
See which buyer questions your business appears for.
And which competitors get recommended instead, and where you have opportunities to improve.