How to Use a ChatGPT Business Profile for GEO and AEO (And What It's Missing)

If you searched for "chatgpt business profile" hoping to find a prompt that writes a company bio, this is not that guide. This is about the official ChatGPT business profile: the listing you claim in OpenAI's Business Hub so you can manage the information ChatGPT uses when people ask about businesses like yours.

OpenAI launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta on November 10, 2026. We already covered the launch in ChatGPT Business Hub Is Live. This post is the evergreen how-to that comes next: how to claim, verify and fill the profile, how to use it inside a GEO and AEO workflow, and what official Insights still leave out.

GEO and AEO here mean the same job: making your business easy for AI answer engines to find, understand and name. A claimed profile helps with that job on ChatGPT. It is not a substitute for being findable on Perplexity or Google AI Overviews, and OpenAI is clear that claiming the profile does not guarantee more recommendations.

What a ChatGPT business profile is

A ChatGPT business profile is the official record of your business inside Businesses in ChatGPT. In Business Hub, you can claim that record, keep details and product information current, and, after verification, see how people engage with your business in ChatGPT.

You can claim a business if you own it or are authorized to represent it. You do not need an Ads account or a ChatGPT Enterprise agreement. Eligibility still depends on the business's location and type, and on whether the required verification is supported. OpenAI's product page also says claiming is initially available to eligible businesses with a website. Local stores and restaurants can currently claim only an existing U.S. listing. If you run an eligible online business and cannot find a listing, Business Hub may offer an option to add one.

ChatGPT may use the information you provide when it answers questions about your business. It may also use other sources. That is why the profile is useful for GEO and AEO, and why it is not enough on its own: the rest of the web still matters.

Eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the United States can also create a Business Agent after they are verified. The agent is optional and separate from the profile. Today's agent can explain products and policies and link to your website. It cannot complete purchases, bookings or order checks.

How to claim and verify your profile

The setup has two gates. First you claim the business. Then you complete identity verification with Persona. OpenAI's help article is the source for the steps below.

1. Sign in to ChatGPT and open Business Hub from the sidebar. Search for your business by name.
2. Select the listing that matches your business and confirm the ChatGPT account you will use to manage it.
3. Choose one of the verification methods shown and follow the prompts.
4. Wait for OpenAI to review the claim. It will email you a decision or a request for more information.
5. After the claim is approved, complete identity verification with Persona. This is required before you can publish changes to your business information, connect a product feed, view insights, or create an eligible Business Agent.

If you received a claim invitation, open the personal link in that email and sign in with the address that received it. If the listing shows Contact support, it is locked and you need to request help with access. If the business has already been claimed, you can dispute ownership from the profile's more-options menu. OpenAI says claiming or disputing ownership does not change the profile's visibility in ChatGPT.

Claim verification methods

The methods offered depend on your business. OpenAI currently describes four:

Method	What you do
Business phone	Get a code by text message (SMS) or automated call, then enter it
Business email	Get a code sent to the email address associated with the business
Website domain	Add the TXT record shown in ChatGPT to your DNS, then select Verify domain
Shopify store	Connect Shopify, review the permissions, and sign in to the store for that business

Copy DNS values exactly, and allow time for DNS changes to appear. Shopify merchants can also start from the Shopify admin; connecting the store can streamline verification, and eligible Shopify products already reach ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog. You do not need Shopify to claim a business or, if you are eligible, to set up an agent. You still have to review an agent and publish it separately if you want one.

Persona verification and the blue check

Claiming the business alone does not give the profile a verified badge. The setup guide says the blue check appears after your Persona verification is approved, not after the claim alone.

You may need a government-issued ID, business registration information, and proof that you are authorized to represent the business. OpenAI reviews the submission and emails you its decision or a request for more information. Features that require Persona verification stay unavailable until that approval comes through.

One caution from the same guide: if you use Persona to create a new profile, OpenAI's approval automatically publishes it. There is no separate publishing step for that profile, so only continue when the details are ready.

What to fill in after you are verified

Once the claim and Persona verification are approved, open your profile and update the details ChatGPT can use: website, business description, product or service category, logo, delivery policy, return policy, plus a cover photo and other optional details.

Information you add must follow the Businesses in ChatGPT policy: it has to truthfully represent the business and be kept current, including the name, category, address or service area, hours, contact details, and products or services offered. Do not make false or misleading claims about prices, availability, qualifications or likely results.

OpenAI reviews and publishes changes. Updates can take time to appear in a listing or in a ChatGPT answer. A saved change does not mean every answer will reflect it immediately, and ChatGPT may still draw on other sources.

Product feed hygiene, if you sell products

Retailers can connect a product feed, including a Shopify feed, to share prices and availability. You can upload a file that follows OpenAI's product feed specification, or provide a hosted URL. The submit-feeds guide also describes manual upload, a hosted HTTPS URL, or SFTP, and it requires identity verification before you can upload products. Products in the feed must follow OpenAI's Commerce policies.

Connecting a feed does not publish an agent, and it does not guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend your products.

For GEO and AEO, the useful part of the spec is accuracy and stability:

• Include the required discovery fields on every row, and keep item_id values stable. Never reuse an ID for a different item.
• Use the real brand and seller name, not placeholders. Keep titles concise and descriptions factual.
• Point each product and image URL at a public page that actually matches that item.
• Submit a current availability value and a current price, and update the feed when either changes. OpenAI recommends a full snapshot at least daily.

The standard OpenAI-format upload currently targets the United States, so confirm your markets with OpenAI before you assume a multi-country feed will be used as written.

How to use the profile for GEO and AEO

A complete profile is only the starting point. The work that makes it useful for generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization is making the profile, your website and the other sources ChatGPT already uses tell the same story, in the words buyers actually type.

Keep your entity information consistent

Because ChatGPT may use other sources when it answers, the profile should match what already appears on your site and in the directories or listings those answers cite. Use the same business name, website URL, category, address or service area, hours and contact details in all of those places. If people know you by a short name, put the full name and the short name together on your About page and in the profile, so the link between them is obvious.

Inconsistent names, old addresses or a different URL in a directory give ChatGPT two versions of the same business to choose from.

Write the category and description in your buyers' words

The category and description are the main text fields you control. Write them the way a customer would ask an unbranded question, not the way your brand book would describe you.

If people ask ChatGPT for "weekend emergency plumber in Burnaby" or "invoicing tools that export to QuickBooks on a starter plan," those phrases belong in the description, as long as they are true. Generic lines such as "a leading provider of innovative solutions" do not help an answer engine match you to a specific question.

The best source for that wording is usually not a keyword tool. It is the questions already sitting in your support tickets, sales notes and intake forms. Our guide to prompt research from support tickets walks through how to pull those questions out and rewrite them as unbranded prompts.

Keep the product feed as current as the site

If you connect a feed, treat it as a public catalog ChatGPT can quote. A price, stock status or product URL that does not match the live page is the kind of inaccuracy the policy tells you not to publish, and it is the kind of detail an answer can get wrong. Use the feed for facts (price, availability, the right product page), and use your site for the longer explanations buyers ask for, such as returns, compatibility or who a product is for.

Use discovery topics as a hint, then go check the actual questions

After verification, Insights include discovery topics: common themes in ChatGPT answers that mentioned or cited your business. Those themes can point you toward content worth improving, or toward a question type you have not answered clearly on the site.

Do not treat them as a keyword list. OpenAI says discovery topics do not reveal individual prompts and do not directly measure customer intent. If a topic shows up, write the unbranded questions you think sit under it, then check what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview actually say. Our guide to checking whether ChatGPT recommends your business covers how to do that by hand.

OpenAI's own FAQ is direct: claiming lets you manage the information you provide, and it does not guarantee increased visibility or give you direct control over ChatGPT's independent recommendations. Advertising, OpenAI says, does not influence those independent answers either. Use the profile to make the facts accurate. Use prompt checks to find out whether you are being named.

What official Insights show

After your claim and Persona verification are approved, Insights in Business Hub show aggregate activity over the past 28 days. Official docs describe three things:

• Mentions. For an online business, a mention counts when ChatGPT references the business's website. The brand name alone does not count. For a local business, a mention counts when ChatGPT shows a result for that location, even if the customer does not open the listing or visit the website.
• Website clicks. How often people click through to your website.
• Discovery topics. Common themes in ChatGPT answers that mentioned or cited your business.

The figures are aggregated, and they appear only when volume clears a privacy threshold. A blank metric can mean activity has not reached that threshold, that data is still being collected, or that reporting is unavailable. It does not necessarily mean zero activity. If a metric stays blank, OpenAI says to contact Support.

The mention rule for online businesses is easy to miss, and it matters for GEO work. If ChatGPT names your brand but does not reference your website, that appearance may not show up as a mention in Insights. The only way to catch those cases is to check the answers themselves.

What a ChatGPT business profile is missing

This section stays with what official documentation says, and with what it does not describe. We are not claiming to have logged into Business Hub and confirmed a negative.

You do not get the prompts. OpenAI states this explicitly: businesses do not receive individual prompts or consumer conversations, including chats with their Business Agents. Discovery topics are aggregate categories, not a view of the questions people typed.

You do not get a cited-source list. Official docs describe mentions, website clicks and discovery topics. They do not describe a report of the URLs or pages ChatGPT cited when it talked about you. That matters, because the page an engine trusts is often not your homepage, and sometimes it is not your site at all.

You do not get a competitor view. The docs do not describe any comparison of how often you are named against other businesses in the same answers.

You do not get sentiment. There is no official metric for whether ChatGPT described you positively, negatively or inaccurately. Accuracy still has to be checked in the answers themselves.

The reporting is ChatGPT only. Business Hub Insights do not cover Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode or other answer engines. A healthy mention chart in ChatGPT can hide a complete miss on the other engines, and the reverse is also true.

Claiming does not guarantee recommendations. The profile lets you manage the information you provide. It does not, by itself, increase visibility or control ChatGPT's independent recommendations.

None of this makes the profile a bad idea. It makes it a first-party facts-and-engagement layer for one engine, which is useful and incomplete.

How to fill the gaps

Pair the Business Hub charts with a prompt-level check. The charts tell you whether mentions and clicks moved in ChatGPT over the past 28 days. The prompt check tells you on which questions you were named, who else was named, which sources were cited, and whether anything about your business was wrong.

A simple version looks like this:

1. Write 10 to 25 unbranded questions your buyers actually ask, in their words.
2. Run each one on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview, and record the results per engine.
3. Note whether you were named, which competitors appeared, which URLs were cited, and whether the description of you was accurate.
4. Re-run the same list after you update the profile, the feed or the site, and again on a monthly schedule.

If you would rather not do those checks by hand, the free Beket AI audit runs 25 unbranded prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview. Beket AI Pro is $49 a month with daily re-audits, starting at 50 prompts across the same three engines. Agency is $245 a month for 5 sites. Beket AI reports what the engines returned; it does not apply fixes to your pages.

A one-page checklist

• [ ] Confirm you own the business or are authorized to represent it, and that your location and business type are eligible
• [ ] Claim the listing in Business Hub and complete claim verification (phone, email, domain or Shopify)
• [ ] Finish Persona identity verification before you expect to publish changes, connect a feed, view Insights or create an agent
• [ ] Align the website, name, category, address or service area, hours and contact details with your site and main directories
• [ ] Rewrite the description and category in the wording of unbranded buyer questions
• [ ] If you sell products, connect a feed with stable IDs, required fields, and current prices and availability, and plan at least daily snapshots
• [ ] Wait for OpenAI to review changes, and remember that ChatGPT may still use other sources
• [ ] Read 28-day mentions, website clicks and discovery topics once they appear, and do not treat a blank metric as proof of zero activity
• [ ] For online businesses, remember that a brand name without a website reference does not count as a mention
• [ ] Build a list of unbranded prompts and check ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview on a schedule
• [ ] Do not assume that claiming the profile will increase recommendations

Sources

The setup and Insights details in this guide come from official OpenAI documentation fetched on November 13, 2026: the setup guide, the November 10 launch post, the Businesses in ChatGPT product page, the Businesses in ChatGPT policy, the create-business-profile developer page, the product feed schema and the submit product feeds guide. OpenAI may change eligibility, fields and reporting as the beta continues, so check those pages before you act on an older summary.