# Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my brand?

**Short answer:** in most cases it is not a penalty or a mysterious algorithm. Either the model cannot reach your content, or your content does not contain the specific, verifiable statements that make a recommendation defensible.

There are five causes worth checking, in order.

## 1. The crawler cannot reach you

If `GPTBot`, `OAI-SearchBot` or `ChatGPT-User` is blocked by `robots.txt`, a CDN rule, or a WAF challenge, your site simply does not exist in the evidence set. This is the most common and most fixable cause.

Check `https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt` for any `Disallow` that targets those user agents, including a blanket `User-agent: *` disallow of paths you care about. Then confirm the pages return 200 to a non-browser user agent — bot challenges that pass humans often reject crawlers.

## 2. Your pages do not answer the question being asked

Models recommend sources that contain a clear, direct answer. A homepage saying "we empower businesses to unlock potential" contains no answerable claim. A page saying "for exporters shipping under 500kg to the EU, our clearance takes 48 hours at a flat €180 fee" does.

The test: take the question you want to win — "best customs broker for small EU shipments" — and search your own site for a sentence that would be the correct answer. If it does not exist, no optimizer can invent one.

## 3. There is no corroboration

Recommendations are stronger when the claim appears in more than one place. That means third-party evidence: directories, review profiles, industry publications, comparison articles, documentation others link to. A brand that only talks about itself on its own domain has one source. Models tend to prefer answers that multiple sources support.

Check where your brand is mentioned outside your domain. If the answer is "nowhere", that is the gap.

## 4. Your positioning is ambiguous

If your site does not state what you are, who you serve, and what you do not do, the model has to guess. Guessing tends toward the category leader. Explicit scoping — "we do X for companies of size Y in region Z; we do not do W" — gives the model a clean slot to place you in.

This is also why markdown fact sheets like `llms.txt` help even when they are not a ranking factor: they reduce ambiguity.

## 5. The category is contested and you are new

Some categories have entrenched answers. A model asked for "the best CRM" will name large brands because that is what its evidence set supports. Winning a generic head term is unlikely. Winning a specific, under-served question — a niche segment, a compliance detail, a price band — is realistic.

Pick the question where you are the correct answer, not the question everyone asks.

## A diagnostic order

1. **Reachability** — is the crawler allowed, and do pages return 200?
2. **Answerability** — does a page contain the literal answer?
3. **Corroboration** — does anything outside your domain say it too?
4. **Scoping** — does your site state category, audience, region, price band?
5. **Contest** — are you targeting a question you can actually win?

Only after all five should you think about prompt engineering, sampling frequency or content volume.

## What does not help

- Adding a `FAQPage` schema does not create facts. It exposes ones you already have.
- Publishing dozens of thin pages dilutes rather than builds authority.
- Repeating your brand name in copy does not create corroboration.
- Paying for mentions in low-quality directories is usually detectable and rarely influential.

## Where Bidvix helps

Bidvix samples the questions your customers actually ask, records which brands are named and which pages are cited, and checks whether the AI's statements about your brand match your published facts. The report separates "not mentioned" from "mentioned incorrectly" — two different problems with different fixes.

## Related reading

- [How to get recommended by ChatGPT](/guides/how-to-get-recommended-by-chatgpt)
- [Do I need an llms.txt file?](/answers/do-i-need-llms-txt)
- [How do I know if AI cites my website?](/answers/how-do-i-know-if-ai-cites-my-website)