How to get your SaaS recommended by ChatGPT and Perplexity, step by step

No one can make ChatGPT or Perplexity recommend your product. OpenAI says of ChatGPT's search results that "Placement is not guaranteed", and Bing's webmaster guidelines say "GEO does not guarantee grounding or citations in AI experiences." What you can change is what the answer is built from. For a question like "which invoicing tool should a freelancer use?", ChatGPT and Perplexity can search the web, read the pages that come back, and cite a few of them. Be on those pages, and have a page of your own that answers the question plainly, and the answer has something to name you from.

The steps below are the ones a founder can start this week. OpenAI's, Perplexity's, Microsoft Bing's, and Google's pages quoted here were read on November 8, 2026, Japan time; each is linked under Sources.

What each AI reads, and what you control

The first two rows are the part you control: whether each crawler can read your site. The rest is how each AI works, and it explains the steps below.

The steps

Write down the 5 to 10 questions your buyers ask an AI

Write full questions, not keywords: the ones someone types before they've heard of you. "Which invoicing tool is best for a freelancer in the UK?" "Is there a cheaper alternative to [your biggest competitor]?" "Which [your category] tools have an API?" Take the wording from sales calls, demo requests, and support emails. Then group the questions that ask the same thing: "cheapest invoicing app" and "invoicing app with the lowest monthly price" are one group, and one page will answer both.

Ask each question in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google

In ChatGPT, make sure the answer searched the web. OpenAI's steps are "Select View all tools", then "Select Search"; you can also type / in the message box and pick Search. Use a new chat: with memory on, OpenAI says ChatGPT "may use relevant saved memories when rewriting a search query." You don't need an account, since "People who are not signed in can also use web search."

Ask the same question in Perplexity, and search it on Google for the AI Overview. For each answer, note whether it named you and whether it linked to your site. To ask one question on 4 AIs at once, use the free AI visibility checker. How to check if ChatGPT mentions your brand covers the check by hand in more detail.

Note which sites the answers cite

Open every citation. In ChatGPT, OpenAI says to "Select Sources, when available, to view cited sources and other relevant links." Perplexity says "Each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources." Sort what you find by kind: software directories and review sites, "best X" lists and comparison posts, Reddit threads and YouTube videos, and vendors' own pricing and docs pages.

When Convika asked this guide's own question once on each of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode on November 8, 2026, ChatGPT cited G2, Capterra, GetApp, Product Hunt, and Trustpilot, with OpenAI's and Google's own docs. Perplexity and Gemini cited marketing blog posts, plus one X post. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode cited 7 YouTube videos, 2 Reddit threads from r/SaaS, a Quora thread, and more blog posts. How to see which sources ChatGPT cites shows the free tools that list them for you.

Get onto the cited sites that take submissions, honestly

• Directories and review sites. Claim your listing, keep your prices and plan names current, and ask real customers for reviews. Don't pay for reviews or write them yourself.
• "Best X" lists and comparison posts. Write to the author with what's new: a price, a feature, a free plan, and a way to try it. If they leave you out, take it as their call.
• Reddit threads and YouTube videos. Answer where your product truly fits, as yourself, and say you work on it. A plain demo of the job your product does gives the AIs a video of yours to find.

Google says "seeking inauthentic 'mentions' across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem." Bing lists "artificial social promotion schemes that simulate popularity" among the practices that reduce visibility in Bing and Copilot.

Publish or fix one page for each question group

Answer the question in the page's first 2 or 3 sentences. Then give the facts an AI can quote: each plan's price, its limits, who the product is for and who it isn't for, and the date you checked them. Your pricing and docs pages count, too. Outrank re-ran 48 questions through ChatGPT's API with web search and found it "reads widely, then cites the brands' own pages": it "builds its shortlist from what it already knows, then checks each brand's pricing and docs pages." Outrank notes that API answers "can differ from the consumer apps".

Write one page for each group of questions, not one for each wording. Google says that creating "separate content for every possible variation of how people might search", primarily to "manipulate rankings or generative AI responses in Google Search", "violates Google's scaled content abuse spam policy." Bing says "Publishing the same or substantially similar content across multiple URLs reduces confidence in selecting a preferred version."

Let the AI crawlers in, and tell Bing about the page

• Allow OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot in robots.txt, and in your host's or CDN's bot rules. OpenAI's help asks you to confirm that "the website host or content delivery network allows traffic from OpenAI's published searchbot IP addresses." Perplexity recommends "permitting requests from our published IP ranges."
• Training is a separate switch. OpenAI says "Each setting is independent of the others": you can allow OAI-SearchBot and disallow GPTBot, its training crawler. Perplexity says PerplexityBot "is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models."
• Get into Bing's index. OpenAI doesn't say which index ChatGPT's search partners use. Bing's guidelines cover "Bing search experiences, Copilot, and grounding API results", and ask you to "Use IndexNow to notify Bing" when a URL is added, updated, or removed. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap. IndexNow.org lists Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex, and Yep as supporters; Google isn't on that list.
• For Google, check that the page is indexed with Search Console's URL Inspection.

Pages published on Convika let AI search crawlers in by default, and on Pro and MAX, publishing sends the page to IndexNow.

Add structured data only where Google documents it

Google says "Structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add." For an app, the type Google documents is SoftwareApplication, for a rich result in Search. It needs name, offers.price, and a rating or review: "You must include one of the following properties", aggregateRating or review. Add it when you have real ratings to mark up, not to be cited.

Ask again once the crawlers have read the page

An AI can't cite a page its crawler hasn't read. Look in your server or CDN logs for OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot on the new URL, and in Search Console for Google. Then ask the same questions the same way. Count answers: "named in 2 of 6" says more than one screenshot, because answers change from one run to the next.

Who needs what

• The free checker alone if you have a handful of questions and want to see where you stand first. Run one question on 4 AIs, or ask by hand as above.
• A daily tracker if you need daily numbers across many prompts or brands, sentiment and share-of-voice reports, or AIs Convika doesn't ask, such as Claude, Copilot, and AI Mode. AI visibility tools compared lists their prices per check, and Otterly vs Peec AI vs Profound compares three of them.
• Convika MAX if you want the AIs to name you and will publish the pages that could get you named, from Claude Code or the dashboard. MAX asks your questions on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews whenever you run the check: 3,500 checks a month, $0.014 a check, enough to ask up to 200 saved questions on the 4 AIs 4 times a month. On the dashboard, Make a page that answers this opens Create with AI for a question the AIs answer without you. Point questions that ask the same thing at that one page with Page that answers it, or, in Claude Code, let the make_pages_for_questions prompt group them. Convika hosts the pages on your own domain. $49 a month, hosting included. How to run that loop from Claude Code.
• Pro or a pack for a few questions. Pro includes 100 checks a month for $12. Packs work on any plan, from 100 checks for $3, and a workspace's first pack adds its base checks once more.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get my SaaS recommended by ChatGPT?

You can't make it, but you can give it pages to name you from. Get onto the sites ChatGPT cites for your buyers' questions, publish a page that answers each group of questions in its first lines, with prices and limits, and allow OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says of its search results that "Placement is not guaranteed."

Is getting recommended by Perplexity different from ChatGPT?

The steps are the same; the crawler is different. Allow PerplexityBot, which Perplexity says "is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity." Perplexity-User fetches a page when someone asks about it and "generally ignores robots.txt rules."

Does ChatGPT use Bing to find products?

OpenAI doesn't name an index. Its help page says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers" and lists Microsoft's privacy statement, with Shopify's, for how they handle queries. Microsoft is one of the 2 providers it lists, so being in Bing's index, kept current with IndexNow, is worth doing.

Will blocking GPTBot keep my site out of ChatGPT's search answers?

No. OpenAI says "a webmaster can allow OAI-SearchBot in order to appear in search results while disallowing GPTBot." Blocking OAI-SearchBot is what keeps a site out of search answers: such sites "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers." GPTBot is about training: disallowing it "indicates a site's content should not be used in training generative AI foundation models."

How long does it take for ChatGPT or Perplexity to cite a new page?

Neither says. A robots.txt change takes "~24 hours" to count at OpenAI and "up to 24 hours" at Perplexity. A page can be cited only after the crawler has read it, so check your logs for the crawler's visit, then ask again.

Do I need schema markup to show up in AI answers?

No. Google says "Structured data isn't required for generative AI search." SoftwareApplication is the type Google documents for apps, for a rich result in Search, and it needs a rating or a review.

Should I make a page for every question buyers ask?

No. Write one page for each group of questions that ask the same thing. Google says a page for "every possible variation of how people might search", made to manipulate its results, "violates Google's scaled content abuse spam policy."

Do review sites and "best of" lists help ChatGPT recommend me?

They're among the pages AI answers cite: for this guide's question on November 8, 2026, ChatGPT cited G2, Capterra, GetApp, and Product Hunt, and the other AIs cited SaaS-marketing blogs. Get onto them with a real listing, real reviews, and facts sent to the author. Google says inauthentic mentions aren't "as helpful as it might seem."

How do I know if it worked?

Ask the same questions again after the crawlers have read your page, and count how many answers name you and link to you. The free checker asks one question on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews at once.

Sources

Each page was read on November 8, 2026, Japan time:

• OpenAI Help Center: Searching the web with ChatGPT (15:27)
• OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers (15:27)
• Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers (15:27) and How does Perplexity work? (15:29)
• Microsoft Bing: Bing Webmaster Guidelines (15:28)
• IndexNow.org: What is IndexNow? (15:28)
• Google Search Central: Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features, last updated July 10, 2026 (15:28); Spam policies, last updated August 28, 2026 (15:28); Software App (SoftwareApplication) structured data, last updated September 8, 2026 (15:27); and AI features and your website, last updated December 10, 2025 (15:27)
• Google Search Help: AI Overviews (15:27)
• Outrank: What do AI answers cite?, its ChatGPT re-run of 48 questions (15:27)