How a new client found my business throughChatGPT (and 4 steps to make your site show up)

On Monday afternoon I asked a new client on our 15-minute intro call how he found my business. He told me he typed his problem into ChatGPT, asked who he should hire, and signed the agreement that same evening.

Most business owners assume that if their website ranks on Google, ChatGPT will recommend them too. Usually it does not, and the fix has nothing to do with AI gimmicks: your site needs to be registered in both Google and Bing, and you need one clear service page that states who you help, what is included, and what it costs in plain text.

How a first-time founder found my consulting business in ChatGPT

He is a first-time founder who spent the past year building a consumer mobile app with AI coding tools and had 25 families testing it on their phones through Apple TestFlight. Before opening the app to the public, he wanted an experienced engineer to review the setup and make sure it was safe to launch.

When I asked him on our Monday call how he found me in the first place, his answer was candid:

"I'll be honest with you, so I just kind of searched some stuff online and then kind of put that into ChatGPT and kind of give me some of the best, or some of the higher rated guys, because this is new to me. I've kind of learned a lot on my own as I went through it, and I'm looking for somebody with a bunch of experience that can kind of help me through the process."

Ten days earlier, on October 9, he sent his first email. He told me two things stood out on my website:

1. A service page built for his exact problem. My site had a page explaining my launch-readiness review for AI-built apps, written in plain English for founders who needed an engineering check before launch.
2. A published price range that matched his budget. Instead of hiding every number behind a contact form, the page stated a clear $1,000 to $2,500 audit range. He wrote that my launch-readiness reviews looked relevant to how he built his app and that my published audit range aligned with his budget.

On Monday evening after our 15-minute call, he signed the agreement and paid the deposit, and the next day he approved the follow-on scope. He is the first paying client to find my consulting business through ChatGPT.

Why buyers are starting in ChatGPT instead of Google Search

This shift is happening across almost every industry right now, especially when a buyer has a specific problem and does not know what search terms to type into Google.

The 2026 research shows how fast buyer habits have moved:

• More than half of buyers now start in an AI chatbot. In an April 2026 G2 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers, 51% said they now start buying research in an AI chatbot more often than Google Search. A separate 2026 Semrush survey of 643 US buyers put that figure at 41%, while Forrester and 6sense found 94% use AI somewhere in their buying journey.
• Special AI-only text files do not work. Many agencies are selling "AI SEO" packages built around uploading special text files for AI models or generating doorway city pages. In June 2026, Ahrefs studied 137,000 websites that added special AI-only text files to their servers, and 97% of those files got zero visits from any AI tool. In May 2026, Google also confirmed that its search systems ignore those files completely.

Buyers are not typing two-word keywords into ChatGPT. They are pasting a paragraph about their business, their timeline, and their budget, and asking the AI who they should talk to.

How I audited my own website for AI search on September 12 and September 16

When I checked my own website last month, I realized I was making the same mistakes most small business websites make. So I built an AI skill for my workflow that audits a site for AI search and drives my Chrome browser to register the domain on Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools automatically. Running it on September 12 and September 16 fixed four gaps.

Four steps any business owner can use to get found by ChatGPT

You do not need to write code or hire an agency to fix the same four things on your business website today:

Step 1: Register your site on Bing Webmaster Tools alongside Google Search Console

Most business owners only ever set up Google Search Console. The catch is that ChatGPT's live web search pulls heavily from Bing's search index alongside OpenAI's own search crawler. If your business website is only registered in Google and missing from Bing Webmaster Tools, you are often invisible when a customer asks ChatGPT to search the web.

The fix takes two minutes and costs nothing:

• Verify your website domain in Google Search Console and submit your sitemap link.
• Open Bing Webmaster Tools and click the free one-click Import from Google Search Console button.
• After the import finishes, paste your page map link (sitemap.xml) directly into Bing's Sitemaps tab as well, since the one-click import often skips the page map row.

Step 2: Put your real price range and who you help in plain text on one service page

When a buyer asks ChatGPT for options within a specific budget, the AI cannot fill out your contact form or book a discovery call just to find out what you charge. It skips vague brochure pages and cites the business that answers the buyer's prompt on the page.

Pick your core service page and make sure a stranger can read five facts in plain text:

• Who the service is for (and who it is not for).
• What you actually deliver at the end of the job.
• How long it takes from start to finish.
• What it costs (a real starting price or a published price range like $1,000 to $2,500).
• How to book or email you directly.

Step 3: Check that your website host is not blocking AI search visitors

Several website hosts and security tools turned on a default switch this year that blocks AI crawlers from reading your pages. That setting was meant to stop training scrapers, and it often blocks live search visitors from ChatGPT and Perplexity at the same time.

Check two things on your site:

• Make sure your website host's security settings and your robots.txt file allow search visitors from OpenAI, Perplexity, Claude, and Google to read your public service pages.
• Keep your common customer questions and answers written directly on the page instead of hidden inside pop-up tabs that only load when a human clicks them. Automated search readers do not click buttons or tabs.

Step 4: Match your exact business name, city, and service description on LinkedIn and review sites

AI search tools do not just trust what you say about yourself on your own homepage. They cross-check your business across the rest of the web.

A 2026 Semrush study of 325,000 AI prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity found that LinkedIn is the second most-cited website in AI answers for professional queries. Separate 2026 research from AirOps found that 85% of business mentions in AI answers come from pages outside your own website, including LinkedIn articles, Google Business reviews, and industry directories.

Make sure your business name, city, contact email, and one-sentence service description match across your website, your LinkedIn profile, and your public directory listings so the AI knows all of those pages refer to the same business.

Two things your business needs when the next buyer asks ChatGPT

When the next buyer asks ChatGPT who to hire, your business needs two things: a site registered in Google and Bing, and a clear service page with real pricing. Comment on my LinkedIn post or reach out if you want the AI search audit and browser-registration skill I built, and I will share it with you.

Have you had a customer tell you they found your business through ChatGPT yet?