How to get cited by ChatGPT
Get your brand referenced in ChatGPT answers.
ChatGPT cites a source when web search is active by retrieving candidate pages, then quoting the passages it judges most relevant and trustworthy. It draws from a wide range of trusted sites — Reddit and Wikipedia prominent among them — not just the top-ranked result, so extractable content and third-party presence matter more than rank alone.
ChatGPT at a glance
| Operator | OpenAI |
|---|---|
| Cites sources | When search is active |
| Recency weight | Moderate |
| Reddit reliance | High |
| Crawlers | GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot |
Allow GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, and OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt — blocking them prevents ChatGPT from citing you.
How ChatGPT selects its sources
With search enabled, ChatGPT runs queries through OpenAI's search infrastructure and pulls from a broad pool of sources it already trusts. It favors pages with clean, self-contained answers and corroboration across community and reference sites. Because OpenAI's models are heavily exposed to Reddit, recommendation-style queries ("best tool for X") frequently surface the consensus from a Reddit thread.
How to get cited by ChatGPT
- Lead each page with a 40–60 word self-contained answer ChatGPT can lift verbatim.
- Build authentic Reddit presence — it's the source ChatGPT leans on most for recommendations.
- Add cited statistics with dates; original data beats aggregated data.
- Allow GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, and OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt.
- Keep an accurate Wikipedia and review-site footprint so your entity is corroborated.
Check if ChatGPT cites your brand
Reddit is the source ChatGPT leans on most. RedditGrow scores how visible your brand is across the subreddits AI engines cite, finds the conversations worth joining, and tracks your citations over time.