Every week somebody announces the revolutionary, groundbreaking new thing you never knew you needed. Most of them are Ralphie’s bunny pajamas. You didn’t ask for it, you don’t want it, and you’ll never use it.
This one is different. I know because I did it myself this week.
On Tuesday, November 10, OpenAI launched a beta called Businesses in ChatGPT. It lets you claim your business profile inside ChatGPT, fix what it says about you, and see how often you come up. Think of the business listing you already have on Google, except it lives in the place OpenAI says 1.2 billion people a week now go to ask questions.
So on Wednesday I went looking for my company, JMan AI. It was already there. Address. Phone number. A five-star rating. A category I never picked (“Educational consultant”). It also said we’re open until midnight. News to me.
Here’s the thing. Nobody asked me. ChatGPT built that listing from whatever it could find, and that’s the version a customer gets until the owner shows up.
You have to have the store ready before the customers arrive
That’s my whole opinion on this, and I’m not going to water it down. If you wait until people are finding you on ChatGPT to care what it says about you, you’re already late.
And here is the part that should bother you. You can’t tell if anyone is knocking. The only way to see how often ChatGPT mentions your business is to claim the profile first. So it isn’t that nobody’s answering your front door. You don’t even have a doorbell.
Now, what it won’t do. Claiming your profile is NOT a ranking trick. OpenAI has been clear that a claimed profile doesn’t guarantee better placement, and ChatGPT keeps making its own recommendations. What you get is the right information in front of people and a scoreboard you couldn’t see before. It’s free right now. Nobody has promised it stays that way.
How to claim your business in ChatGPT, including the parts the announcement skipped
Let me simplify this. There were four steps, and three of them had a surprise.
First, find yourself. Sign in to ChatGPT with an account the business owns (not the personal login of somebody who might leave), open Business Hub, and search your business name. Mine came right up.
Second, prove the business is yours. I was offered two ways to do it. A code sent to the business phone, or a small record added to my website’s domain settings. I picked the text, got pulled into something else, and by the time I came back the attempt had expired. So I went with the domain.
That’s where I hit the first surprise. The record didn’t go where I expected. My domain is registered with one company, but its settings are managed through my web host, so that’s where the record had to live. If you don’t know where your domain settings are managed, find out before you start. Once the record was in the right place, ChatGPT verified it in under ten minutes. One more thing. The record they hand you expires in 24 hours, so this isn’t a “get to it next week” job.
Third, prove you are you. The blue check showed up on my profile right away, and I’ll admit it felt good. Then I tried to fix those midnight hours. Every edit was locked until I uploaded a photo of a government ID. As I write this, that review is still pending. So today I have a verified badge and I can’t change a single word.
Fourth, read the scoreboard for what it is. Mine is blank. Not zero. Blank. ChatGPT only shows mention numbers once there are enough to report. The welcome screen also offered me an AI agent that chats with customers for my business. When I clicked it, I was told that feature isn’t available for my kind of business yet. The agents are starting with eligible online stores and online service businesses in the U.S., and they’re rolling out slowly.
The hands-on part was short. Most of the day was waiting.
Why bother when the scoreboard is empty
Because we’ve seen this movie.
Remember when claiming your Google listing felt optional? Then one day it wasn’t, and the businesses with the wrong hours and the old phone number found out the hard way. The ones who claimed early didn’t do anything fancy. They were just correct when the customer showed up.
Even TechCrunch described this launch as ChatGPT becoming a little more like Google. I’d rather be early and a little bored than late and wrong.
Here is the play
Search for your business in Business Hub this week and read what it says about you. Claim it with a login the business owns. Have your business phone and your domain login within reach before you start. Have your ID ready for the second check. Fix your hours, your category, and your description the minute the edit screen opens.
Then leave it alone and look at the numbers in two weeks.
One thing I’d skip for now. The dashboard offered me an advertising credit on day one. I haven’t touched it. Get the free part right first, then decide if the paid part earns a look.
The store is already open. Go stand behind the counter.
P.S. Full disclosure. I didn’t click most of those buttons myself. My AI assistant drove the browser while I approved each step. It wouldn’t type a password or take my ID photo, and it shouldn’t. That’s what a good new hire looks like.
Want to put AI to work in your own business?
Reading about AI and using it are two different sports. If you want to learn it yourself, with a room full of people doing the same thing, start with AI-Cademy.
Sources
- Reuters, via The Star: the launch, what Business Hub does, and who gets Business Agents first
- VentureBeat: claim steps, cost at launch, and what claiming does not do
- TechCrunch: the Google comparison
