How to get ChatGPT to recommend your brand and products.

Hey, it’s Alex.

In today’s issue:

• How to get ChatGPT to recommend your brand and products.

• The checklist you need to follow.
  

DEEP DIVE

How to get recommended by ChatGPT

Most of your future customers won’t find you by searching on Google.

They’ll be given an answer. 

From ChatGPT, from Gemini, from Perplexity - AI answer engines are increasingly becoming the first point of truth (minus the hallucinations of course). 

Unlike traditional search, these AI engines don’t reward who shouts loudest or pays the most. They reward clarity, specificity, and a broader signal of trustworthiness.

In June this year, ChatGPT became the fifth most visited site globally. Daily usage hit 2.5 billion prompts - edging ever closer to Google’s 14 billion daily searches. 

Meanwhile, Google is re-shaping itself around AI Overviews, which now appear in over 13% of search results - twice what it was at the start of the year.

In short: your potential buyers are asking AI what to buy, who to trust, and how to decide.

If you're not mentioned in the answer, you may as well not exist - or so say the AI pros.

Don’t Panic, Be Considered

I believe, as a brand you need to consider your industry, market and positioning before rushing to tick off a list that may not align with your growth or strategy.

If your brand is built around trust, quality, and considered buying - then customers who want to “belong”, be rewarded, or even be recognised for their loyalty aren’t going to be buying something instantly on ChatGPT without going to your website.

These customers care about your story, background, and they want to ”feel” this. If this wasn’t the case, then all brands would have the same website with a white page and a buy button.

But what if you are mentioned in Chat GPT?

Then these tools can become your fastest-growing, most invisible source of growth for new business.

No vanity clicks.

No attribution headaches.

Just a sudden, consistent swell in demand.

So how do you appear in the answers that matter?

I’ve summarised a few strategic principles to help you position your brand for AI discoverability - without compromising your integrity or flooding the internet with keyword-stuffed filler.

1. Decide what you want to be known for

Like SEO, AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) begins with clarity.

What questions should your brand be the answer to? Think in terms of relevance, differentiation, and intent.

For my design company Studio Almond, it’s not “best web developers”. It’s more specific: “best Shopify agencies for premium lifestyle brands”, “ecommerce studios that fix technical debt”, “how to build a high-performing Shopify site without stress”.

These are the conversations already happening. Being deliberate about which ones you want to lead is the first step.

2. Write with precision, not just polish

AI tools aren’t browsing your website - they’re parsing it.

That means they favour structure over style. Specificity over sentiment. Write clearly, break things into lists and tables, and cover a topic thoroughly enough that the engine doesn’t need to look elsewhere.

In our world: a guide comparing Shopify templates for high-ticket brands, or a checklist for diagnosing technical debt, will likely be surfaced more often than a portfolio gallery.

3. Make yourself quotable - in the places that matter

Consider that platforms like Reddit and YouTube, and niche blogs are some of the most cited domains in AI responses. Your brand doesn’t need to dominate the web. It needs to show up in a few trusted corners of it.

That could mean sharing real insight in a relevant subreddit. Publishing a well-reasoned comparison on LinkedIn. Or partnering with an overlooked blog that AI tools increasingly lean on.

It’s not a backlink arms race. It’s a quiet compounding of proof.

4. Measure influence, not impressions

AI-driven discovery is mostly zero-click. People ask a question, receive an answer, and move on. That means your traffic may stay flat - even while your pipeline grows.

So the metrics need to evolve. 

Track share-of-voice, brand mentions, and attribution from fields like “How did you hear about us?”. These signals can often reveal the true impact before Google Analytics catches up.

5. Treat visibility as a moving target

Unlike traditional rankings, AI citations shift rapidly. One month you’re the top pick. Next month, you’ve vanished.

Which means two things: refresh your content regularly. And don’t become reliant on a single platform or prompt.

Adaptability will outperform authority.

Final notes

This isn’t about gaming algorithms. It’s about understanding how your customers are now making decisions - and being there with the answer that earns their trust.

You don’t need to speak louder. Just clearer.

We’ll be implementing these principles in our own content at Studio Almond and Almond Labs. Quietly testing, adapting, and helping our clients show up in the answers that matter.

If you’re curious about how this shift could impact your growth strategy - or want help navigating it - feel free to reach out.

In the meantime, stay sharp. And stay visible.

✅ CHECKLIST

Your Chat GPT Visibility Checklist

1. Decide which prompts you want to own - check the volume of queries and searches that relate to your business alongside intent.

2. Be aware that answer engines behave differently.

3. Write specialised, specific content - be the most definitive and specific voice in your industry.

4. Create a moat around your product and business - user-generated content and social media sites are the most cited in AI search.

5. While bigger in the US than NZ & AU, get mentioned on Reddit - 5.9% of all ChatGPT citations come from Reddit alone.

6. Use structured comparisons and lists - 32.5% of citations feature comparative listicle content.

7. Use fewer images and more tables - engines and indexing can’t yet distinguish between images well so the focus is on text based content.

8. Measure your influence, not just clicks - the majority of AI search results are zero-click - remember - intent is important.

9. Stay on top of citation flux and shifting - around 50% of answer engine citations shift within a single month.

📣 HAVE YOUR SAY

Thanks for reading!

See you next week.

Alex Murton
Shopify for Lifestyle Brands
Co-Founder @ Studio Almond & Almond Labs.