Most business owners we talk to have spent years getting their site to rank on Google. That work still matters. But there’s a quiet shift in how people find businesses, and it has almost nothing to do with Google. If you’ve wondered how to show up in ChatGPT when someone asks it for a recommendation, the answer starts somewhere most companies have never looked: Bing.

We didn’t arrive at this from a blog post. We kept running AI visibility audits for client sites across different industries and seeing the same gap: businesses that ranked well on Google but barely showed up when someone asked ChatGPT. The common thread, every time, was Bing.

When someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, it isn’t searching Google. For now, it relies primarily on Bing’s index. Microsoft Copilot runs on Bing too, and Perplexity draws on Bing among its sources. So the index that shapes what these tools say about your business is the one most companies have ignored for a decade.

The part worth sitting with is what happens when your own site isn’t in that index. ChatGPT can’t pull from your pages, so it can’t cite your service descriptions, your results, or the way you’d actually explain what you do. That doesn’t make you invisible. ChatGPT can still mention you using whatever else is indexed: a directory listing, a review site, an old profile on an industry roundup, a competitor’s comparison page. So the real question isn’t whether you show up. It’s whether you show up on your terms or on someone else’s.

Why this is suddenly worth your attention

AI assistants went from novelty to daily habit faster than almost anyone predicted. In its most recent earnings, Microsoft reported more than 20 million paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats, and said weekly Copilot engagement now matches Outlook usage across the enterprise. Copilot is built directly into the Microsoft 365 software many businesses already run, and it pulls its answers from Bing.

That matters more than a general visibility argument. When a buyer at a prospect’s company asks Copilot which vendors to consider, that question is happening late, by someone who is already shopping, inside the tool they work in all day. Whoever the answer names gets into the consideration set. Everyone else finds out later, if at all, and never learns why the call didn’t come.

Why your Google SEO doesn’t cover it

The thing that catches people off guard is that being indexed in Google does not put you in Bing. They are separate indexes, with separate crawlers and separate rules. A site can dominate Google and be nearly absent from Bing, which means it’s nearly absent from ChatGPT.

When you ask ChatGPT a question that needs current information, it pulls candidate pages from Bing’s index and decides which ones to cite. If your pages aren’t in that index, they were never candidates. No amount of Google authority changes that.

There’s more than one way to show up

There isn’t a single path into an AI answer. There are a few, and they aren’t equally in your control:

Your own content, indexed in Bing. This is the one you most directly influence, and where ChatGPT can quote your pages instead of someone else’s summary of you.
Everywhere else you’re mentioned: directories, review platforms and industry roundups, and comparison pages that are already indexed.
What the model already learned. A well-known business can get named from training data, with no live search at all, though that isn’t something you control on a timeline.
Entity signals like Bing Places, structured data, and recognized profiles that help the AI understand who you are.

A business’s presence in AI answers usually depends as much on third-party sources as on its own website. Directories, review platforms, and industry roundups all feed it, and the brands that show up tend to be present across several at once. The strongest position covers both, because it gives the AI more trustworthy places to find a consistent story about you. Relying only on third-party mentions means living with how other people summarize you, and we dug into how brand mentions and citations drive AI visibility in a separate piece. Getting your own site indexed puts your version back in the mix.

Optimizing for AI isn’t one thing

“Optimize for AI” is not a single switch, because the major platforms read the web differently.

ChatGPT and Copilot lean on Bing. Perplexity is its own case: it runs its own crawler and index, though it references Bing among its sources. And Google’s own AI products, Gemini and the AI Overviews that sit at the top of search results, pull from Google’s index instead. So the work that gets you into ChatGPT is not identical to the work that gets you into Google’s AI answers. We compared all of them, engine by engine, in no two AI assistants read the same web.

There’s one more wrinkle worth knowing. ChatGPT appears to cite from a narrower set of sources than the other platforms, which makes it one of the hardest to show up in. That’s not a reason to skip Bing. It’s the opposite. Bing indexing is the highest-impact fix here, because it lifts your standing across both ChatGPT and Copilot at the same time, so it’s the place to start.

What it takes to show up

Showing up in Bing comes down to a few things. None of them are complicated, but they are easy to leave half-done.

Your pages have to actually be in Bing’s index, not just submitted to it through Bing Webmaster Tools. Those are two different states, and the gap between them is where a lot of businesses quietly lose visibility. Bing also tends to index fewer of a site’s pages than Google does, so a site can rank well on Google while key pages are missing entirely from the index ChatGPT reads. Being live is not the same as being fully indexed, which is why this is ongoing work rather than a one-time switch.

Microsoft has even reframed what its index is for. It now describes grounding, the layer that feeds AI answers, as being built “to help AI systems decide what to say,” not just to rank pages for people to click. One wrinkle comes with that shift: some sites now stay indexed in Bing yet quietly stop being served in AI answers, a pattern people are starting to call soft deindexing. Being indexed no longer guarantees being used.

The other half is making sure nothing is blocking the AI crawlers in the first place. OpenAI’s search crawler is named OAI-SearchBot, and if your site or your security settings block it, you drop out of ChatGPT answers no matter how well everything else is set up.

That last point is the one that quietly costs businesses the most. Some hosting platforms and security services now block AI crawlers by default to save bandwidth, often without the site owner knowing. A leftover setting from a site launch can do the same thing, telling every search engine to stay away long after the site went live. These are invisible from the front end of your website, which is exactly why they go unnoticed.

The distraction to skip

A quick word on llms.txt, since it keeps making the rounds. It’s a proposed file meant to tell AI crawlers how to treat your content, and it sounds sensible. But Google said on the record in 2025 that it does not support it, and traffic analysis shows the major AI crawlers almost never look for it. Robots.txt and real Bing indexing are where the actual influence is, and that’s where your effort pays off.

Where this is heading

This is moving. OpenAI now runs its own crawler, and it has been reported to be building its own search index. Nothing is confirmed on a timeline, and Bing is still the main path into ChatGPT today, which is why it’s where we start. Our read is that ChatGPT keeps leaning on Bing in the near term while it builds toward pulling from more places, including its own retrieval.

The good news is that the work doesn’t get thrown away. Being properly indexed, keeping your pages crawlable, and being a clean, trustworthy source are what every one of these systems rewards, whichever index ChatGPT leans on next. Getting into Bing now is how you show up today, and it’s the same foundation that carries over as ChatGPT broadens where it looks. The businesses that wait for this to settle will be starting from zero when it does.

Common questions about showing up in ChatGPT

Does ChatGPT use Google or Bing?

Bing, for now. When ChatGPT needs current information it pulls candidate pages from Bing’s index, and Microsoft Copilot does the same. Google’s index feeds Google’s own AI products, AI Overviews and Gemini, and nothing else. This is the single most common misunderstanding we run into, because it is reasonable to assume the biggest search engine feeds the biggest assistant. It doesn’t.

How do I check whether my site is in Bing’s index?

Open Bing Webmaster Tools, which is free, and look at how many of your pages are indexed rather than how many you have submitted. Those are two different numbers and the gap between them is the whole problem. You can also search Bing directly for site:yourdomain.com. If the count is far below your real page count, or your key service pages are missing, that is the gap ChatGPT is reading around.

Will good Google rankings get me into ChatGPT?

No. Bing and Google are separate indexes with separate crawlers and separate rules, so ranking first on Google has no bearing on whether Bing has your pages at all. We regularly see sites that dominate Google and are close to absent from Bing. Google authority does not transfer.

What is OAI-SearchBot and how do I know if I’m blocking it?

It is OpenAI’s search crawler, the one that fetches pages for ChatGPT. Your robots.txt file, your firewall, or your hosting provider can all block it, and some platforms and security services now block AI crawlers by default to save bandwidth without telling you. Check your robots.txt first, then your CDN or security settings for a bot-filtering rule. None of this is visible from the front end of your site, which is why it goes unnoticed for years.

Where this leaves you

If you’re already working with us on SEO, this is on our radar, and in many cases we’ve started the Bing setup on your behalf. We keep an eye on this daily across the accounts we manage, so if you aren’t sure whether your business shows up when someone asks ChatGPT about your category, that’s a quick one for us to look at.

None of this is expensive or complicated. It’s a Bing account, a sitemap, and a crawler setting most sites have never checked. The real question isn’t whether to do it. It’s whether, when someone asks ChatGPT about your category, the answer is built from your pages or from whatever a directory happened to say about you.

If you are not sure which one it is for your business, that is exactly what an AI visibility audit answers.

Sources

Kyle Gammon

Marketing Manager

As Marketing Manager, Kyle works across paid media, SEO, analytics, and web strategy to connect every piece of a client’s marketing to measurable business results. His hands-on, detail-oriented approach means nothing gets lost between the data and the decision, whether he’s building a campaign, diagnosing a tracking issue, or pressure-testing a new opportunity.

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If you’re not in Bing, ChatGPT only knows what others say about you